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AESP

Groupthink and the Yes Man

By Energy Rant One Comment
When this post launches, I will be sitting in a critical thinking course as part of AESP’s National Conference. As luck would have it, I also stumbled onto a couple interesting articles while eating my curds and whey last week. The first covers echo chambers from Inc. Magazine, and the second was referenced in that article: How to Defeat Groupthink, from Fortune Magazine. The Fortune article points out instances such as investment clubs, where robust debate leads to better results. In other words, avoiding echo chambers and groupthink is good and results in greater productivity. In case you haven’t noticed,…
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Low Electricity Prices – Impacts and Longevity

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
As I’m sitting here reading about topics including electricity prices, electric cars, and utility innovation in Public Utilities Fortnightly, it occurs to me: why are so many organizations and companies in the utility industry named after Edison when the electric car company is named after Tesla? This makes no sense, whatsoever. Edison was the vehement direct current advocate, and Tesla was the alternating current advocate. They were fierce rivals. But the car uses Edison’s direct current, while the utilities, of course, produce and deliver Tesla’s alternating current. I can only conclude that Edison was a better marketer, but I’ll bet…
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And the 2017 Oscar Goes to… AESP!

By Energy Rant One Comment
Happy New Year! I am launching 2017 with this positive, upbeat Rant (my apologies to all my Oscar the Grouch fans). I have a go / no-go test for our company’s involvement with organizations: if we are going to be members of something, we are going to participate in, benefit from, and contribute more than money to the organization. Otherwise, it is indeed a waste of money. The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) is an organization I’ve been involved with since 2010. That was the year I attended the big shindig, the National Conference, for the first time. Since…
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Electricity Supply – Listen and Watch the Herd or Prepare for an Ugly Ending

Electricity Supply – Listen and Watch the Herd or Prepare for an Ugly Ending

By Energy Rant One Comment
Ross Shafer delivered the keynote speech at AESP’s 2016 National Conference in Phoenix a few weeks ago. Mr. Shafer is a former late night talk-show host/comedian, game show host, author, and speaker. His message for AESP was excellent. He was engaging and funny, but most importantly, he presented sound, valuable advice for business; specifically customer satisfaction and experience. I cannot recall a single thing of substance he said that I disagree with. In fact, I passed along much of his advice to our team at Michaels via The Daily, our employee-only blog. One area of advice from Mr. Shafer was:…
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Strategic Energy Management – Try Not, Do or Do Not

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
A couple months ago, I co-authored an AESP Strategies article with Diana Husmann from Nexant and Teri Lutz from Tetra Tech. The subject was non-residential behavior programs. One of the undercurrents that was revealed to me in that process is that strategic energy management, SEM, seems to get pigeonholed as a “behavior program”. First, to digress a bit, every program is a behavior program. ACEEE summarizes these nicely in their Field Guide to Behavior Programs. A super summary of behavior elements are as follows, taken directly from that paper. Cognition programs focus on delivering information to consumers. Categories include general and targeted communication…
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customer satisfaction

The Value of Customer Satisfaction – Subduing the Eddie Haskells

By Energy Rant No Comments
I did some research on features and benefits, in general.  A quick internet search of features and benefits revealed that definitions vary from one source to the other.  Indeed, we surveyed our own management team for features and benefits of the services and programs we provide.  I found that one person’s program description was another’s features. Going further, what I found was that benefits aren’t necessarily the end of the story to the buyer.  What is the value of the benefit, and how does that relate to customer satisfaction? Customer satisfaction is a benefit of energy efficiency programs to any…
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Distributed Energy; Batteries and Bread Machines

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 3 Comments
The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) Summer Conference included interesting bookend plenary discussions for this post.  The opening plenary featured motivational speaker, Murray Banks; not to be confused with Matt Foley: “eating a steady diet of government cheese and living in a van down by the river”.  Actually, if triathlons and mountaineering were auto racing, the Banks family would be the Andrettis. The closing plenary featured representatives from SolarCity, Opus One Solutions, and Enbridge, Inc.  SolarCity is the Elon Musk-owned photovoltaic manufacturer/installer.  Opus One is a smart grid software company with ties to Tesla as well.  Enbridge is a…
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Supercharging Behavior and the Four Dollar KiloWatt Hour

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Google search tells me that I have never used the word “hoopla” in an Energy Rant.  Here goes.  There is a great deal of hoopla in the industry for behavior programs.  Last week, AESP featured a brown bag webinar – Current and Future Trends for Behavior Change Energy Efficiency Programs.  It is so new, it isn’t yet available in the AESP library, at least as I write this.  Now that I mention it, the other half of our subcommittee produced a Strategies newsletter article for commercial and industrial behavior programs, coming next month.  Don’t take your eye off the inbox.…
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RFPs, Wind & Participants from Hell; Tales from AESP Spring 2015

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Last week’s AESP Spring Conference was the best that I can recall, in terms of the content delivered, in my opinion.  Perhaps I got lucky and went to the right presentations.  Perhaps it’s because I went to more presentations than usual.  Most likely it is for another reason, and readers will have to call me for that because it’s an advantage I want to hold among die-hard rant fans. I attended an Espresso Learning Shots discussion led by Laura Orfanedes from Fiveworx.  The topic was requests for proposals (RFPs) from both sides of the fence – from the buyer (utility)…
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Industrial Energy Efficiency; Bad News for Pimento Loaf

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
The big energy saving opportunities in a building are usually hidden from the unsuspecting field auditor.  The obvious exception is lighting because it isn’t hidden!  The hidden things are what go on behind closed doors in the dark.  Yes, the salacious activity spawned by an out of control brain – the energy management system. Similarly, nuggets flow across my desk, computer screen, and directly from people that feed topics of this Energy Rant.  A few weeks ago, I stumbled onto data confirming my years-old assertion that tight fitting ductwork does not save energy, relative to in situ status quo.  Being…
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