Consultants to our industry advise small business owners to have life insurance in the amount of company value held so surviving partners can carry on without a crushing debt load. I begin with a story of the torturous quest for more insurance. Insurance Rant Once insured, the seller of insurance wants customers to be healthy, do preventive maintenance, and have proactive checkups like an annual physical. Much of this is even “free.” So they like us? Not so much. For the next policy you need, you’re better off leaving no trace. God forbid something might need to be pre-emptively treated.…
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Custom efficiency programs are held to a higher standard than others (prescriptive). The customer pursuing custom incentives must wait to see what the incentive amount will be before they purchase anything. If they buy first and ask second, no rebate for you. This is not the case for prescriptive programs, where customers know they will get $75 for the purchase of a smart thermostat, or $100 for the replacement of an evaporator fan motor with an electronically commutated motor. Prescriptive participants can make their purchases and claim their rebate any time, usually before the end of the calendar year. Custom…
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Thank you to Mike Frischmann (our Director of Evaluation Engineering) for contributing to this week’s Rant. Eight hundred pound gorilla alert! Energy efficiency program evaluation “best practices” need a big overhaul. I am not talking about best practices for doing impact evaluation like the Uniform Methods Project. It’s disgusting that so much money is spent on standards like that and others, while ulterior motives drive program evaluation in entirely different directions. Purpose of Program Evaluation The State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network, aka SEE Action’s Energy Efficiency Program Impact Evaluation Guide, states the following are objectives of program evaluation.…
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A disturbing trend with custom efficiency is sweeping the industry, and guess what, I’m going to rant all over it like black on my little spazoid Labrador, Lily, aka, Blacky. Michaels is packed to the rafters with engineers who know a thing or two about energy, thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluids – all the building blocks of being an expert in custom efficiency. We know this because our job candidates get an eclectic, off-the-wall quiz when we interview them. Candidates have to leave their props and crutches on the table or in their pockets, exposing only their brain and how…
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In recent years, there has been a push by some intervenors and program implementers to move larger and larger, and riskier measures from custom efficiency into prescriptive buckets. These include air handling system replacements, control system replacements, and of course, the variable frequency drive. To make sure everyone is on board, prescriptive savings are determined for a specific piece of equipment, or determined by preset formulae with some combination of stipulated (assumed) values and project-specific information. This is opposed to custom savings calculations that are estimated by an engineer/philosopher according to the project specific application. Uncertainty If there are two…
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In the past week or two, we evaluated whether or not we wanted to respond to a request for proposal to deliver a commercial and industrial (C&I) custom efficiency program. The metrics of the RFP were doomed to a disservice for this particular utility’s customers, and therefore, of course we passed. What do I mean? The project term was one year. In that year, the program needed to be designed and promoted, customers needed to be recruited, projects developed, AND implemented within the year. Give me a break! Here again, large C&I is treated like an upstream program for LEDs…
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Natural gas utilities tend to howl about making EE goals because it is much more difficult to capture savings for natural gas than it is for electricity. With one giant exception, lighting, this isn’t really true and I do not agree. Lighting retrofit/replacement is indeed easy for a number of reasons: Utility DSM product managers and account managers understand it. Customers understand it. Lighting upgrades improve lighting brightness and color rendering. Some level of investigative analytical study is NOT required. With the exception of early T8 electronic ballast technologies, maintenance is reduced, at minimum because the customer has new equipment…
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