Skip to main content
search
Tag

energy efficiency

Jan 03
Love0

And the 2017 Oscar Goes to… AESP!

By Energy Rant One Comment
Happy New Year! I am launching 2017 with this positive, upbeat Rant (my apologies to all my Oscar the Grouch fans). I have a go / no-go test for our company’s involvement with organizations: if we are going to be members of something, we are going to participate in, benefit from, and contribute more than money to the organization. Otherwise, it is indeed a waste of money. The Association of Energy Services Professionals (AESP) is an organization I’ve been involved with since 2010. That was the year I attended the big shindig, the National Conference, for the first time. Since…
Read More
Oct 31
Love0

Benchmarking Clowns

By Energy Rant One Comment
It’s Halloween. Hundreds of thousands of people have to figure out a different costume because a clown plague has infected the country. While I don’t consume tabloid news, I did hear that in some cities, the clowns are getting beat up. I thought, now that isn’t a bad idea, but I wouldn’t advise that. When I was a kid, Halloween antics included dozens of mushy tomatoes and cucumbers left behind in the garden. These have the impact of water balloons, and they make a fine mess. For this post, I referenced my program booklet for ACEEE’s 2016 Summer Study on…
Read More
Oct 03
Love0

Evaluation, Measurement and Verification 2.0; A Whale Bus or an Airbus?

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
Evaluation, Measurement and Verification 2.0, or EM&V 2.0, is a nerdy term coined in 2014, according to this blog by Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships (NEEP). The hype of EM&V 2.0, which I will explain later, is that it will automate measurement and verification, putting us engineers out of business. This is not going to happen anytime soon. Definition 2.0 The definition of EM&V 2.0 boils down to using utility meter interval data, typically hourly or sometimes every 15 minutes, or maybe even 5 minutes, to disaggregate and measure impacts from energy efficiency measures. One could consider that EM&V 2.0 is…
Read More
Sep 06
Love0

Investor Confidence Project – Inoculation Against Hucksters

By Energy Rant One Comment
Led by the Environmental Defense Fund, the Investor Confidence Project (ICP) provides a platform of quality assurance checks and balances for energy efficiency project developers, quality assurance providers, investors (lending companies), and building owners. It could be the greatest mechanism for deep and wide energy savings since the T8 light bulb. I was first introduced to the Investor Confidence Project as I was reviewing abstracts for AESP’s 2016 Spring Conference in Philadelphia. The following snippets are from the abstract summary. There are many investors and tons of capital waiting to be poured into energy efficiency projects. The problem is that…
Read More
Aug 29
Love0
NTG

Net to Eeeew, Gross – Pin the Tail on the Donkey

By Energy Rant One Comment
Anytime I listen to a net-to-gross (NTG) scrum, the philosophical gears in my brain ramp up to a smooth whir. This is what happened at ACEEE summer camp, also known as the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. This post is inspired by a paper titled “Applying Gross Savings and Net Savings in an Integrated Policy Framework”, presented by Dan Violette (Navigant) and co-authored by Elizabeth Titus (Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships), Pam Rathbun (Tetra Tech), and our very own Teri Lutz. Since Dan referenced the SEE Action Energy Efficiency Program Impact Evaluation Guide, for purposes of saying the…
Read More
Aug 15
Love0

Building Energy Models – Less Useful Than You Think

By Energy Rant One Comment
The convergence of several issues, and AESP’s Summer Conference, Technology – The Great Game Changer, gave me no choice. I have to do this – talk about the many issues involving building energy models, which are used for everything from single family homes to high rise office and apartment buildings. I prefer the term simulation over model for these detailed and very complex computer models. In this post, Simulation = Energy Model. A Good Excuse for a Simulation The best use of an energy simulator is when there is nothing else to work with. When is there nothing to work…
Read More
Aug 08
Love0
deregulation

Betting with Deregulation – A Risky Proposition

By Energy Rant No Comments
Energy is a commodity, and like all commodities, it is wise to hedge risk; not go the other way and place bets. Unless you are a certain presidential candidate with privileged information on cattle futures, I would stay away from betting, er investing in, commodities in general, and energy specifically. To digress for a moment, recall when gasoline cost $4 per gallon, there were all kinds of calls to investigate price gouging and rigging the market. Bill O’Reilly would ignorantly rant about the “speculators”. I said then, in 2008 just before this blog was born, that was poppycock. Senators Chucky…
Read More
Jun 27
Love0

Savings Persistence – Funner than a Barrel of Monkeys

By Energy Rant No Comments
Today, let’s consider a subject that is as squishy, subjective, and amorphous as net savings and non-energy benefits (see here and here). Today’s subject is savings persistence. Savings Persistence and Its Importance Even allowing for generous latitude, if I polled readers of this post, I would probably get a dozen definitions of savings persistence. For retro-commissioning, persistence is ensuring the measures aren’t undone. For the broader group of behavior programs, persistence is getting customers and their occupants (family or employees) to continue to value and manage energy over the long term.To the evaluator, savings persistence opens many cans of worms.…
Read More
Apr 11
Love0
incentives

Targeting Incentives – The Retired Farmer in the Mechanical Room with a Crescent Wrench

By Energy Rant One Comment
As we transition out of the dollars-like-dog-biscuits for widgets era into an integrated, connected, behavior and knowledge based era (EE Wave 2), we must reconsider incentives. We must reconsider what incentives are, and who gets them. I am only able to get started on this topic with a specific true story, but first… Sacred Cow #9: EE Programs are not Welfare Programs The status quo dictates that incentives must go to customers paying the electric or natural gas bills. In other words, like a welfare program, dollars must flow from the masses within a population to a smaller group of…
Read More
Apr 04
Love0
Non-Wire Alternatives

I Disrupt this Blog with Non-Wire Alternatives

By Energy Rant No Comments
As I read in The Wall Street Journal last week, I would like to disrupt the use of the overused buzzword disruption and the use of buzzwords in general, but I gotta do what I gotta do – talk about Utility 2.0 again. Come to think of it, the utility industry, and those that supported it, must have been asleep at the wheel in the 1990s. That was Utility 2.0 – deregulation, which didn’t work out so well with widespread bankruptcies, some of which exist to this day. Utility 2.0 gave rise to hucksters like Jeffrey Skilling and Ken Lay…
Read More

All things energy. That’s our jam.

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.

Subscribe for Expert Insights
Close Menu