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energy efficiency

Spring Forward Monday Afternoon

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
I was blindsided by the onset of daylight savings time this weekend.  Wonderful.  As though I don’t already have enough work to do before I can get outside to do some badly needed yard work - hack an hour off my weekend to boot. If I remember correctly, daylight savings time used to begin at the end of April and end on the last weekend of October.  I also believe that these dates were moved to the current dates of mid March and early November as part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.  This is supposed to save energy. …
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Hannibal, Max and Me

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Retrocommissioning (RCx) No Comments
I hate electricity.  I love what it allows me to do but I just don’t understand it.  I sat through an in-house safety training session on arc flash, which I actually understood – there is a huge burst of energy through a “fault” that melts and actually vaporizes the copper conductor, which expands 7,000 times at Mach 2 and 1 million degrees F (made up numbers but the premise is correct).  It’s one heck of an explosion.  During a break I was asking our electrical engineers what the difference between a neutral and ground was, the flow of electrons, the…
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Need Not Miracles

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Renewable Energy, Sustainability No Comments
Thousands, make that millions of people, including some smart people and congress people, when talking solutions for our energy efficiency low-carbon future are continuously babbling about “technology” that will save us all.  Bill Gates says we need Miracles.  Whadahyou talking about man?  The White House announces $130 million for a new building energy efficiency effort - “a multi-agency initiative to spur regional economic growth while making buildings more energy efficient.”  It will be “an Energy Innovation Hub focused on developing new technologies to improve the design of energy-efficient building systems”.  Get ready for cold fusion to reemerge. Let me tell…
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This is not Tee-ball

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability 2 Comments
Carbon taxes or cap and trade seem to have been a foregone conclusion in our industry of energy efficiency.  I’m not so sure.  I, like many other engineers in the energy efficiency business have always been cynical about global warming, which for some reason is now known as climate change.  I would argue that a relatively small portion of anti-carbon people are true believers, that carbon is having or will have a significant effect on the climate and I have no problem with that.  What I do have a problem with is the vast majority of people and organizations who…
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Paying to Lose

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
Jenny Craig customers do it all the time – pay money to consume less.  This may make perfect sense to people who understand customers’ needs, but to others it seems really stupid to pay somebody to help use less of something.  This is a bit like utility programs that spend money for customers to use less of their product. The vast majority of our energy work comes from referrals and repeat clients.  On numerous occasions, we seemed to have customers at the tipping point, only to have them bail out at the last minute.  Why?  The utility introduced us to…
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Jacque – Fix My Car

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
There is a running joke in our business that electrical engineers don’t know anything about energy efficiency.  It is only a joke.  One of the sharpest energy guys I have interviewed was a physics major who started on the ground floor of an energy efficiency consulting firm filling orders of equipment they also happened to sell.  In 10 years he worked his way up to really understanding how buildings and their complex systems work and he became a manager of a team of energy engineers teaching his group how buildings work and how to model them. This article made laugh…
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Green Will Follow, Then Lead

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, LEED, Sustainability No Comments
Some of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA or “stimulus”) targets energy efficiency and green jobs training.  Wisconsin just announced $2 million in green jobs training.  Oregon: $6 million.  First off, I’m skeptical of these curricula.  Who will be teaching?  What is the curriculum?  At a cost of about $6,000 per graduate, it’s close to one year of in-state tuition and fees at a public university.  Wow. Who is going to attend these courses?  I would say a significant portion would be laid off construction workers and skilled trades workers.  Once they are trained to weatherize homes, which does…
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Dermal Beauty but Ugly to the Bone

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Attending a training session for steam systems a few years back, the class collectively chuckled as the instructor explained why he couldn’t go to the supermarket with his wife anymore.  As they would walk down the aisles he would be explaining how steam is used to make this and that.  See those potato chips, steam is used to peal potatoes rapidly and cleanly – and then he would launch into detail only a thermodynamics class would welcome.  Cheeseballs: puffed up by steam.  Carrot sticks: pealed using steam.  Chocolate milk powder: chocolate adhered to sugar using steam.  Aaaaaah!  Shut up already! …
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Incentive or Discount?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
I read this article http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2010-01-05-home-energy-efficiency-demand_N.htm and the thought came to mind, “are energy efficiency incentives really incentives pushing people to implement energy efficiency - or coupons offering a discount for energy efficiency measures?”  What’s the difference?  I would say it’s huge. Retailers abhor it when the trained shopper waits for deep discounts to buy, obviously at a much lower profit margin.  Likewise, there is nothing airlines hate worse than an airfare war.  Buyers of “American made” automobiles (GM, Ford, Chrysler) have been trained to wait for huge incentives, which is one of the reasons two of three essentially failed.  Again,…
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Water Runs Uphill – I Think Not

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Stimulus, Tax Stuff No Comments
This week – a little diversion into engineering.  Go ahead.  Shake those goose bumps out. There are three universal laws of thermodynamics but I’m not going to explain them all now or you might fall asleep and hit your head on the table.  I will only cover one of them. A law is essentially a theory of something that has never been disproven.  One of these laws indicates the direction of all processes.  Heat travels from hot to cold.  Water runs downhill.  However, heat can travel from cold to hot and water can go up hill if you add energy. …
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