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efficiency

Stifling Impacts of Jurassic Evaluation Dogma

By Energy Rant One Comment
If efficiency programs were telephones, the evaluation community would still be using wall-mounted analog dial-ups rather than the iPhone. Yes, I’m going to tell you why programs are designed to be evaluated and not to be effective, part 2, herein. The following is the list of flaws in demand-side management theory, as presented last week. Efficiency must cost more than inefficiency Building energy codes are sacrosanct Efficiency has to be the primary factor in customer decision making Customers must “get their money back” The unfamiliar get fifty cents on the dollar Immortality is fantasy Last week we covered the first…
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P2P – Proven to Perform – Program Design

By Energy Rant No Comments
This post rolls out better ideas for pay for performance (P4P) programs you read about in the last two posts here and here. But first, I will set the stage from the perspective of the program implementation contractor. Perhaps it is best depicted with a scene from the cartoonish 1977 Clint Eastwood flick, The Gauntlet. I think a bit of cooperative teamwork is needed to make P4P approaches work – and they can work well! Punk There is another issue with third-party P4P concepts, and staying with the Clint theme, it goes like this: “Go ahead, punk. Make my day.”…
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A Prolific Coincidence in Power Generation

By Energy Rant No Comments
When I dig in to research a topic for the Rant, it’s a bit like American Pickers with Mike and Frank, but not drama. Pickers cover thousands of square feet of junk or treasure. I suppose the contents of this blog could be described as thousands of words of junk or treasure. This week we “pick” the last bits from the research that came from the paper, Climatic Impacts of Wind Power.This week we examine data representing the Midcontinent Independent System Operator’s (MISO) load and wind supply curves. First, the MISO territory is enormous, stretching from the Gulf of Mexico…
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Carbon tax – avoid the slow-mo sucker punch

By Energy Rant One Comment
If polling managers were competent, we would have election day rather than the election playoffs. For several days they were finding ballots in the usual places anyone normal would stash them, like elementary school classrooms, rental car trunks, vans, and the bottoms of bird cages. Most of the results are in, and the one that facilitates this post, the Washington state carbon tax, went down hard by about 10 percentage points. That is about as big as it gets for a statewide election. In February, I laid out the only carbon tax plan I would get behind, and that is…
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Efficiency – With Tectonic Power and Pace

By Energy Rant One Comment
I am no mountaineer, but without looking, I know the Himalayan range is growing taller. How do I remember this? Because the earth’s crust is made up of tectonic plates that are always moving. The edge of tectonic plates forms fault lines for earthquakes. Did you know, that at some point, coastal California will be neighbors with Alaska? It’s true. A hell of a lot of earthquakes will happen in between, giving “bumpy ride” new meaning. In Southern Asia, the plate that India sits on is slamming into Asian landmass, thrusting Everest higher, adding roughly 2.4 inches per year to…
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Shared Economy and Distributed Capitalism? Pffff

By Energy Rant No Comments
I spent last week at the Grid Evolution Summit presented by the Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) in the Nation’s Capital. The opening speaker, Jeremy Rifkin, has authored 20-some books, the most recent of which is called, “The Zero Marginal Cost Society.” This post is based on a related article you can read yourself, here. The crux of the book, message, and article is that “investor-based capitalism, which focuses on resources for immediate returns, will inevitably be replaced by a more distributed and streamlined network-based capitalism, alongside a sharing economy governed by a high-tech global commons.” You have heard the…
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Utilities v Big Tech Google and Facebook

By Energy Rant No Comments
“Don’t be evil.” That was the tagline for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, the founders of Google, er Alphabet. Hahahaha! For some reason, they ditched this motto three years ago. They also used the name change fig leaf to paint over their sins. When you make an audacious statement like that and demonstrably act in ignorance of it, putting the best of spins on it, I do not forget. I’m reminded of it every time I see headlines like, “Tech’s Dirty Secret; The App Developers Sifting through your Gmail” or “How to Keep Google from Owning Your Online Life.” These…
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trailing loads and forecasts

Mindbender: Efficiency Thrashes Supply

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
A couple months ago in Outside the Boxer, we considered efficiency as a resource to be compared with supply-side resources. In May, we challenged minds with We All Un-Bundle, suggesting that utilities get markups for services delivered over their infrastructure. Let’s advance these concepts! Efficiency – A Utility Perspective Utilities are slow to change for many reasons: Every interest group and intervenor wants more from them. They are rewarded for 30-40 year investments and not breakthroughs like iPhones. Customers demand reliability, resilience, and low cost above all else. Utilities have captive customers with few (but growing) options. They deliver a…
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From 1985 With Lov(ins) – Prescient Predictions

By Energy Rant No Comments
As I get older, I’m more interested in old stuff, especially how our ancestors lived, the challenges they faced, and the technologies they used. As I mentioned last week, our ancestors needed to be more creative than we are today. They had to use their brains or work tirelessly to serve customers to be successful (some of this is still required today). Today, we simply make an algorithm to grind numbers to optimize processes. Compare the toil and ingenuity required to launch and  build Facebook compared to Boeing, Ford, IBM, McDonald’s or Hilton. The efforts and ingenuity required to build…
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Question: Carbon and Benefits? Answer: Efficiency

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” and being as objective as possible are how I roll. If you feel otherwise, by all means, let me know. Driving across Southern Minnesota recently, a billboard like the image nearby caught my eye. I thought this would be worth looking into to see what they have to say. As I expected, the paper it promotes is jaded against wind energy. But what arguments do they make? Are they legitimate? Wind is Fuel When thinking about wind-driven power generation, it has a lot of hurdles to overcome to be cost-effective. One near the top of the…
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