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exergy

Better than Best Programs with Market Transformation

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week I couldn’t resist responding to the ISO New England’s report, 2021 Economic Study: Future Grid Reliability Study Phase 1 because it paralleled what I wrote a couple of weeks earlier in Electrification At Scale. This week, we’re back to better than best practices in efficiency programs. Last time I described how downstream rebates are often wealth transfers because they are downstream of key decision points and barriers. As I replied to a job candidate who asked me how I would approach a utility to try to persuade them of this, I described how our purpose for being in…
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Smart Free Energy

Homely But Smart Free Energy

By Energy Rant No Comments
I introduced exergy to readers 4.5 years ago, had a refresher on it for industrial decarbonization earlier this year, and it is part of our decarbonization training course that is frontrunning AESP's annual conference in Nashville on February 7th. Decarb Course Contest Speaking of the pre-conference event, we're giving away a FREE pass to our decarbonization course to one lucky energy nerd. All you have to do for a chance to win is write a sassy 250-word explanation on WHY you want to attend. Get the details and enter to win here. We're announcing a winner on January 5th. Preserving…
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Is Energy Recovery Always Good? No.

By Energy Rant No Comments
Last week we introduced exergy and at least one application of it in a building. First, let me make something very clear, for the refrigeration cycle, if I’m cooling beer or freezing leftovers, the heat that is sucked out of those masses is rejected somewhere else. For refrigerators and freezers, it is rejected to the room in which they exist. For air conditioning, most commercial refrigeration, and all industrial refrigeration, it is rejected outside – unless, it is captured for useful heating. Commercial HVAC For commercial HVAC, if CONsultants don’t think holistically about the entire heating and cooling needs, and…
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Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant

Exergy, Easy – Heavy Savings

By Energy Rant No Comments
Exergy is a sexy word (maybe only to energy nerds), but it represents a vital class of measures and opportunities as we sprint head-on into the game changer (cliché alert) that will be the post-gravy-train-of-lighting-retrofit-era of energy efficiency. Pay attention!Exergy, also known as availability, is the total useful energy that can be captured before a system comes into equilibrium with the surroundings. Equilibrium can be as simple as a mass coming to rest. Potential Energy Consider a hydropower plant. The potential energy is in the form of elevated water on one side, the reservoir, and a shallow stream for whitewater…
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