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energy efficiency programs

Feb 18
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Program Evaluation – Nellie, You Are Toast

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
In the blah, blah, frufrah blogosphere there are plenty of rosy fables and opinions of energy efficiency and green energy.  In a blatant marketing pitch, the Energy Rant is the only blog from the inside, critical of things in our industry.  Our industry is not unlike any family, marriage, workplace, company, celebrity, elite athlete, pet, child, or even a normal person.  It has faults.  It has problems and failure.  There is trouble.  There is dishonesty (gasp!).  Lots of money is wasted.  There are problem children.  There are competent reliable firms, and there are “yes ma’am” firms.  This is what one…
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Oct 22
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Retro-commissioning Savings

Old School EE

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Retrocommissioning (RCx), Tax Stuff, Utility Stuff One Comment
Forging on from last week’s Arthur Fonzarelli crash into Arnold’s chicken stand, this week I will posit some challenges and problems presented with state takeovers of energy efficiency programs.  Per last week’s post, Wisconsin has fallen from 8th place in the nation to 17th place since the state essentially took over its energy efficiency programs.  This is according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, ACEEE, a well respected national think tank (my term) and advocacy organization for energy efficiency. One problem is the money moves further away from where it is collected.  The further program spending is…
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Sep 04
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Free Riding Poachers

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff One Comment
A couple weeks ago, I wrote about nationalizing pieces of energy efficiency programs, namely technical resource manuals from which energy impacts (savings) and measure costs are derived.  The post explained why this is a bad idea for a number of reasons.  This week features chaos at the state level. It seems states with their energy efficiency policies are parallel to people who go to Washington DC and operate in the alternate universe inside the beltway.  The longer they exist, the more schizophrenic and/or demented and/or dysfunctional they become. Utilities are forced, for lack of a better term, by regulators to meet…
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Jul 23
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Billy Bob, Evaluation Virgin

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Retrocommissioning (RCx), Utility Stuff No Comments
It has been a while since I’ve written anything about programs, so here it goes.  Program evaluation provides about half our business, and much of that is verifying gross savings estimates, which are simply the original program-claimed savings.  Verifying custom projects, those that don’t fall into mass categories like light bulbs and air conditioners, are generally more interesting, at least from an energy analysis perspective.  Findings from the field can be follical (new word derived from folly) for any type of measure. Implementers of custom efficiency programs, especially implementers not accustomed to the evaluation process, can be especially entertaining.  In…
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Jan 30
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Dodging the Absurd

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
In Stalin Lives, I mentioned our plan for securing an ENERGY STAR® clothes washer and dryer for our house.  What I did not mention was that the local appliance stores do not even stock gas-heated dryers. Think about how stupid it is to generate electricity with maybe 35% thermal efficiency, lose 10% of it to line losses, as discussed last week, in it’s transport to the home and then use this high-value energy as a toaster coil to dry clothes.  We, as well as I am sure millions of households, use “gas”, natural gas in our case and propane in…
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Jan 16
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Replacing the Burger

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability 2 Comments
The race is on to develop and deliver next generation successful energy efficiency programs.  There is indeed innovation in the marketplace.  The days of what I call “hamburger selling” will end, probably in the next decade.  Selling EE in these cases is like selling hamburgers – who can sell the most and the cheapest hamburgers that people will eat.  The product is unsophisticated – lighting, primarily.  The market is huge and opportunities ubiquitous.  Marketing and selling the burger is the name of the game and will be for a few more years. In the past five years, energy efficiency has…
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Sep 13
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Tapeworm or Honeybee?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Utility Stuff No Comments
Earlier this year I was partaking in an interview for a large project and we were asked a formal list of specific questions, the last of which was, why should we hire your team?  While one possible response would be to ramble on for a few minutes about how great we were as demonstrated by this, that and the other, I thought of a different direction. We are passionate about energy efficiency.  We are passionate about getting it right. We are passionate about making a difference and improving things. If you do not want these things, we are not your…
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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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Jul 06
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Tri-Gen EE

By Energy Efficiency, Government No Comments
My mother informed me during my annual July 4 visit to her house that I’m getting more gray hair.  Thanks for that information, Mom.  I can do things such as exercise and stretch to keep my body in a youngish condition but I’ve never heard of anything not fake that keeps non-silver hair growing from my melon like a chia pet. As I’ve gotten older I have taken a much greater interest in history to determine cause and effect.  While figures never lie and liars never figure, or something to that affect, I think I can look at data and…
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May 10
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Prudes Trafficking Cud

By Energy Efficiency No Comments
Having been in the EE industry for 15+ years and regularly attending conferences around the country (for just a few years), I find myself being volunteered to contribute to these conferences with planning, presenting papers, and “peer” reviewing others’ papers.  The planning, peer reviewing, and being peer reviewed are learning experiences as I gain awareness of how others think and what they find interesting and important.  I say “awareness” and not necessarily “understanding” because quite frankly, the way some people think, baffles me. For example, I was talking with a gun collector the other day and prior to this I…
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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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