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AESP National Conference

segmentation

Segmentation with AESP, Featuring Mason Verger

By Energy Rant One Comment
This post contains wild ideas that sprouted during last week’s AESP National Conference in Phoenix. Specifically, it emanates from Brad Kates’ (Opinion Dynamics) presentation on evaluation by segmentation A comment by Susan Gilbert (Apogee) Comments from Elizabeth Titus’ (NEEP) panel, “The Future of Energy Efficiency Evaluation” Segmentation Segmentation, according to this simpleton, includes not only splitting customers by business and industry types but also by geographic and demographic factors. Segmentation terms include psychographic and firmographic. I don’t know about you, but my first visualization of psychographic includes stunts featured in the movie Hannibal. For instance, psychotic Mason Verger plotted revenge…
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HVAC’s Cure for Cancer

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
In January, I wrote about code compliance and that while energy codes keep ratcheting down energy intensity in theory, reality is misery.  That post was a thinly veiled advertisement for my AESP National Conference session in the Lion’s Lair, and that presentation can be seen here.  My Lion’s Lair proposal was a thinly veiled pitch to fix what would be the equivalent of curing cancer for commercial HVAC systems. The cancer is the widely used variable, air volume system.  Another boondoggled application of one such system triggered this post.  The boondoggle was part of an evaluation we are doing on…
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Energy Code Compliance; Any Relation to Performance?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 4 Comments
Last week, I received a late Christmas package in the form of an opportunity to throw a pitch for code compliance that would actually move the needle.  This will be at the AESP National Conference in Orlando.  I owe a substantial thank you to ACEEE for choosing papers at last year’s Summer Study for Buildings and this recently published research report, Energy Codes for Ultra-Low-Energy Buildings: A Critical Pathway to Zero Net Energy Buildings. I discussed the Summer Study papers in a post back in August.  There were seven(!) papers presented on the subject of code compliance.  The lack of…
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Google Buys Nest – Say, What’s In Your Underwear Drawer?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
At last week’s AESP National Conference in San Diego, Meg Matt, AESP CEO, joked in her opening remarks that AESP was acquired by Google.  Others at the conference asked that with the purchase of Nest, is Google getting into the energy efficiency business?  At the risk of cliché, my answer is literally, “I don’t think so.” After the acquisition announcement, I opined to a couple colleagues that Google is the new Microsoft, and that when it came to Google’s SWOT, Google just buys all the WOT.  This doesn’t always go well.  Google purchased Motorola to battle Apple’s dominance in software…
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Market Transformation in Wonderland

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
I just completed my draft of the forthcoming paper titled, “Know-How and the Incessant Energy Diet”, for the AESP 2014 National Conference.  In preparation for that, I thought, this is more work than writing Energy Rant blog posts because I have to scrounge for expert research to back my assertions because “this is the way it is – trust me”, isn’t good enough for a published paper.  Fortunately, I found plenty of ammo to make my point in a couple evaluation publications including this one conducted by our friends at Research into Action regarding the Southern California Edison Retrocommissioning program. …
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Retrocommissioning Attribution – Roosters and Sunrises

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
This week, or last week I should say, I spent considerable time researching for my upcoming paper, “Know-How and the Incessant Energy Diet”, to be featured at AESP’s National Conference in San Diego – get your tickets and reserve your seat today.  In doing so, I read a few evaluation reports for retrocommissioning (RCx) – the program of choice for the paper. When I arrived at the attribution section, as in, what are the savings attributable to the program, I scoffed at the findings.  For a refresher on terminology, refer to recent post Energy Program Evaluation Asylum.  I didn’t scoff…
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RFPs from the Edge

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Stimulus One Comment
Last month, the one session I attended at the AESP national conference was how to write a better request for proposal (RFP).  It was sort of a forum led by our friends at Tetra Tech.  Essentially, it was full of people like me, for whom a major responsibility is business development and marketing – responding to RFPs.  For a while I sat there like a lump, thinking, eh, just deal with it and quit whining.  Toward the end of the session I started getting fired up. Here are some guidelines for writing RFPs: If you’ve already decided who you are…
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