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Aug 02
Love2

Better than Best Program Practices

By Energy Rant No Comments
When Val Jenson talks, I listen. When he writes, I read. His recent article in Energy Central triggered an avalanche of ideas for a program, portfolio, and industry overhaul needed to get us there, which is the next level of savings equal to the last 25 years of lighting replacements and retrofits. Those days are gone, and unfortunately, the line of thinking that got us here (light bulbs) won’t get us there. Downstream Days are Numbered Let’s start with my favorite need for an overhaul, which is my greatest peeve – rebates and cash incentives to customers, known as a...
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Feb 08
Love0

Indestructible Code Compliance Villains

By Energy Rant No Comments
In case you missed last week’s post, you’ll need to go back and review the setup for this week’s demonstration of code challenges and mistakes. To summarize, I have an installed ENERGY STAR-qualifying 95% AFUE[1] (efficient) boiler with a brazed plate heat exchanger, hot water reset control, and a variable firing rate that ranges from 20% to 100%. That firing range is even better than code requirements. The system is a duded-out energy code breaker in theory. Let’s look at what went wrong in order. I have a Nest cam in the backyard and a Nest thermostat for the boiler....
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Feb 01
Love0

Code Compliance Setup – A Boiler Project

By Energy Rant No Comments
Over the last forty years, computers have become orders of magnitude more powerful while they have become much easier to use. When I was in college, mainframe IBM computers owned all the muscle of computations. I was terrified of coding and wanted nothing to do with that. Thankfully, graphical interfaces emerged to make it easy. I even conquered graduate school with Engineering Equation Solver (“do it with EES” as its creator, Professor Sandy Klein, used to say). Energy codes went completely the opposite direction, from a simple document from the IBM mainframe era (1989) to a behemoth that would break...
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Oct 15
Love0

ENERGY STAR Gets it Right – Owners Complain

By Energy Rant No Comments
Show me the money, Jerry! That is what I have to say about building energy performance. I don’t care for bling and doohickeys. What is the bottom line at the meter? I surmise that ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager[1] was conceived and developed with the best of intentions to score and rank buildings, at the meter level, for energy performance considering vast factors including building type, hours of use, climate zone and so on. However, as noted in the Lake Wobegon post a few years ago, not all, but most buildings are above average [sic]. In that case, the average building...
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Jun 26
Love0

Valuing ENERGY STAR in Trump’s Budget

By Energy Rant No Comments
I think nearly everyone reading this knows Trump’s budget blueprint calls for eliminating the popular ENERGY STAR® program. This is an enormous topic, so let’s dive in and see where Jeff takes us. Absurdities I have no idea what Trump is thinking – that eliminating this program will do anything for profligate, runaway, candy-for-all federal spending. The Huffy Post and NPR both claim the program costs about $50 million a year to administer. I could not confirm this with a conservative news source, in 15 minutes of precious research time. Perhaps the reason is the budget cut is so absurdly...
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Apr 10
Love0

Benchmarking Flaws and Best Practices; Pot Growers Discover Sunshine

By Energy Rant No Comments
The City of Chicago recently issued its annual report on commercial building benchmarking. I pick on Chicago because (1) its upper-Midwest location has a climate like that of many of our readers, and (2) because it uses ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager, which I addressed several times before. With Portfolio Manager, everybody seems to get a trophy, and results are troublesome to me. Also, for reference, I published this post last fall, pointing out the failures of energy codes to move the energy intensity[1] needle. Using data from the Energy Information Administration, that post showed that buildings built in the past...
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Apr 03
Love0

Trump on Energy Policy – Yawn

By Energy Rant No Comments
The Donald has been in office long enough for an assessment of performance, if I may use that term, on energy policy. States Matter Most, but not all, of us are employed under a patchwork of state policies. State houses and executives set the policies, and utility commissions see to it that the policies are carried out. States tend to zig when the federal government zags. It doesn’t happen overnight but over the course of several years. For instance, the Obama administration was anti-coal, anti-carbon, and as a result, purplish-red (raspberry, I guess) states, including Ohio, Indiana, and Wisconsin, pulled...
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Feb 09
Love0

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager Benchmarks Lake Wobegon

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Not that my opinion is worth anything, but the results of Chicago’s 2014 commercial building benchmarking report are excellent.  The report indicates that most of the 348 buildings that were benchmarked for the study were benchmarked using ENERGY STAR® Portfolio Manager.  The cross-cutting data provided reveals interesting facts that are not expounded upon – but I will. The first thing is rather stunning.  The median ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager score for 348 buildings, accounting for 260 million square feet of building space, was/is 76.  By definition, the median score of all buildings in the Portfolio Manager database is 50.  The...
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Apr 22
Love0

Demand Side Market Transformation

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I was reading a couple regulatory dockets; one by a citizen and another by an intervener.  They made some good points, including a situation of being locked out of the market[1] in one’s own state, to which I replied, “Welcome to the party.”  Both dockets had a ring of “market transformation”. Our friends at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) define market transformation as, “The strategic process of intervening in a market to create lasting change in market behavior by removing identified barriers or exploiting opportunities to accelerate the adoption of all cost-effective energy efficiency...
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Sep 17
Love0

Lessons from NYC Benchmarking

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff One Comment
New York City recently completed its report for the benchmarking of all its “large” facilities, generally with square footage of 100,000 or greater.  The results of the study are not surprising.  You may be thinking, “Who cares about NYC?”  Answer: this post includes universal challenges with benchmarking whether it’s Batswana or the Yukon. The benchmarking was completed using ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, which as far as I can tell ranks buildings by source Btu[1] per square foot, otherwise known as energy intensity.  For example, it uses a factor of 3 for electricity, which is one over the efficiency of delivering electrical...
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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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