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May 06
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Energy Rant: A Survey

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Alright Rant fans.  You may want to don one of these to hold your skull together as your brain fills with more information than it can contain.  This week we will cover the results of the Energy Rant survey.  Thank you all (y’all) for participating. The first question: How often do you read the energy rant (see Figure 1)?  Essentially half the survey takers read it every week and the other half usually read it.  A few cheesers must have been looking for prizes for taking surveys - as if we would have given them the prize.Most are good with…
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Feb 25
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Energy Management System – Not Another Litter Box

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
In recent weeks, I have been spending considerable time examining energy management system projects for energy efficiency program evaluation on the east coast.  My conclusion is this: blown opportunity abounds. The program documentation for one particular project drips with evidence that the project is a free rider, which means the project would have happened anyway in absence of the program.  How do I reach this conclusion?  First, the calculation methodology could work if the user knew what they were doing, but it is clear they either don’t know what they are doing or don’t care to get it right –…
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Jan 21
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Bounteous Savings at Home

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Continuing on from the surface scratch delivered in Refrigerator Sitcoms and Lethal Toaster Ovens, this post provides more fact, fiction, and maybe some things you’ve never considered for saving energy. First, I came across some interesting data while reviewing evaluation reports for a major Midwest utility last week.  Recall in Bait and Switch, and again backed by ACEEE as explained just last week, regulatory agencies need to stop stopping fuel switching from dumb uses of electricity to smart uses of natural gas.  The specific item is the electricity guzzling clothes dryer.  As it turns out, the saturation of electric clothes…
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Dec 10
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The End of Lighting

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 4 Comments
Believe it or not, I did not have a rant topic in mind going into Saturday morning – my rant writing time.  But the fog burned off quickly as a topic came into view – one that arose during the prior week.  Incidentally, I once heard a “meteorologist” instructor say he always scolded his students for saying fog “burns” off.  Instead, they should say the fog lifted.  What?  Fog is suspended water droplets, not vapor.  Water vapor in air, or as steam, is invisible.  When fog “burns off,” it changes from visible water droplets to invisible vapor, so while “burn…
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Nov 19
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Mad States of Saudi America

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Remember peak oil?  That was the glorious theory, which at some point will occur and no one will know, or maybe it won’t matter, that the stewards of the planet have maxed out oil production, and we would be headed for terminal depletion – and we adopt Mad Max-like diplomacy to survive.  By the way, the Mad Max dog is an Australian Cattle Dog, or Blue Heeler, and his name is Dogmeat and he has his own Facebook page.  We had a Red Heeler when I was a kid, and her nickname was Tough Dog for a reason.  Not mean. …
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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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Oct 01
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Opting to Make Money

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Investments, Utility Stuff No Comments
In many states that are relatively new to energy efficiency, legislators often cave to large energy users and allow them to opt out of programs because hey, they use a ton of energy and therefore, OBVIOUSLY to any moron, they control and manage these costs as well as any dunce could.  Why should they throw money at a program that won’t help them? Come to think of it, programs available to these large users in many places are dysfunctional, poorly conceived, and not thought through from the perspective of the customer, so I can see their point to some extent. …
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Sep 17
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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 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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Sep 10
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Delta Lambda Jamba Effect

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff One Comment
I was recently pushed over the edge again by multiple opinion pieces declaring that energy efficiency is a waste of time and money because of rebound effect.  Rebound basically means that if consumers buy an efficient appliance, car, or light bulb, they will simply use it more and therefore save less, or even use more energy at the proverbial “end of the day”. First in this series was an opinion piece from a Cal State Fullerton professor published in The Wall Street Journal.  Below is my response to the journal: Robert J. Michaels’ commentary on August 20th suggests energy efficiency…
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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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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.

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