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AESP

Jan 05
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The Deaf and Mute Smart Meter

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 5 Comments
Smart meter.  Smart meter.  Smart meter. Smart meter. Smart grid.  Smart grid.  Smart grid.  Smart grid. So what?  What are customers, utilities, rate payers, and tax payers getting for their money? At an AESP conference several years ago, I sat in place of a colleague for a Pricing and Demand Response Committee meeting.  I’ve been in/on the committee ever since.  Within the last year, I took a survey from the committee, and I asked questions that went something like this: What does demand response in the US look like?  How much of it is interruptible rates?  How much is direct…
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Aug 11
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Energy Efficiency Baselines – Do or Don’t, Not This or That

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
This week’s post is brought to you by AESP’s 2014 Summer Conference, which went off last week in San Francisco.  I was speaking with a lifelong esteemed consultant from the Bay Area during the opening reception, and his disclosure was that regulators in a certain state are wrenching down too tightly on baseline assumptions.  At the same time, they are unyielding in their energy-saving targets.  This is a problem because it leaves customers that haven’t been picked over with artificial barriers.During the closing plenary, I noted a similar comment by Janice Berman from Pacific Gas and Electric.  Her comment, stated…
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Mar 10
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Energy Efficiency Challenge – A Felonious Case of Acne

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I read AESP Board Chair, Sara Van de Grift’s monthly letter/email to AESPers (if you are not a subscriber, get with it: aesp.org).  She describes diminishing opportunities for energy efficiency due to the industry’s addiction to widget-based programs {my phrase), but that there are still opportunities with homes and commercial and industrial facilities operation, and of course a few widgets here and there, like the Nest thermostat.  She ends by asking, “Are you up to the challenge” ?Hell yeah!  I’m also thinking that capturing savings isn’t the challenge in my view.  The challenge is convincing stakeholders, particularly governors…
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Oct 07
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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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Jul 29
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Project Performance and Customer Satisfaction – Three Strikes and Yer In, or Out

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I attended the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy’s (ACEEE) Summer Study for Industry, which had excellent content, but one phrase prompted me to this week’s topic, one that’s been simmering a while in my gray matter.  Due to multitasking and poor note-taking, I don’t remember the phrase exactly, but it was something to the effect of the rule of three.  My version is when it comes to project performance and customer satisfaction (and many other things), three in a row has meaning. Fortunately, the conference featured heavy doses of benchmarking, planning, and continuous improvement, which is…
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Dec 17
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Diet Soda and the Triple Bypass

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I took a survey by AESP as they are gathering a pulse on where hacks like me think the trends are heading.  This coincided with last week’s rant regarding the end of lighting, and I essentially gave AESP a special edition rant in the survey, for free!  Unfortunately, I didn’t save my responses so I will just redo them.In my responses, I used parallels between energy efficiency and diet and health.  They are amazingly comparable.  Much of energy efficiency is akin to diet soda and low-fat ice cream.  The masses assume that, like doing a lighting retrofit, consuming diet…
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May 21
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Boredom or Drone?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week’s AESP Spring Conference in Baltimore wrapped up with Dr. Julie Albright’s presentation, The Social Utility – great stuff. I had already attended a similar presentation by Dr. Albright, apparently during last fall’s conference (crap for memory here). As the title suggests, the subject is social media: LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and dozens of offshoots that aggregate and/or process information from these sites into a preferred presentation. It’s mind blowing. Dr. Albright’s presentation includes generational views of these things – the people aspect. There are three generations of folks in the workforce today, from old to young: boomers…
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Feb 13
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Paint by Numbers EE

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
True or false: It’s easier to teach Pablo Picasso how to paint a house than it is to make a house painter into a Picasso-grade painter/artist.  For the answer, keep reading. I was sitting in a session at last week’s AESP conference sipping my weak overpriced Starbucks when I almost sprayed a mouthful on the bystanders sitting in front of me.  Not one, but two guys opined that it is easier to teach, for example, a refrigeration expert retrocommissioning than it is to teach a retrocommissioning/energy expert efficient refrigeration.  Allow me to demonstrate with an example, a true story. A…
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Oct 10
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The Super Genius Grid

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Utility Stuff 3 Comments
The barrier to having a decent energy policy is very similar to the barriers of solving illegal immigration.  Both the left and the right have their own vested interests in not fixing the problem.  I see the political spectrum as a circle, not a line from far left to far right.  It is a circle because when views get so extreme, they are supported by both the far left (e.g. Dennis Kucinich) and far right (e.g. Ron Paul).  Personally, I respect both of these guys and I have no doubt they are sincere in their beliefs and want the best…
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Aug 30
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1984 Was Not Like 1984

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff One Comment
Interestingly, several things collided last week resulting in a loud voice saying, “talk about the fuuuuture”, Yoda style.  First we began by discussing our marketing theme for this fall’s AESP conference in Dallas.  If you don’t have your tickets yet, get with the program!  Next, came the stepping down of Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple.  Finally, it was a follow up email from the IEPEC conference (see last week’s rant for details).   What do these have in common?  Read on. The first topic and actually the theme of this post is change.  Like it or not, we live in globally…
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We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

All things energy. That’s our jam.

We talk a lot about energy – from the serious to the satirical.

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