by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 20, 2026 | Energy Rant
I was planning to write about toothpaste this week. Instead, data centers hijacked my inbox—and the headlines. Opposition to data centers is accelerating fast enough that one of my six-pack predictions came true almost immediately: they’re becoming as politically...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jan 13, 2026 | Energy Rant
Models are useful tools. They simplify complex systems, quantify trade-offs, and provide decision-makers with concrete arguments to support their decisions. But models also share a weakness: they assume cooperation from reality. In energy, electrification, and climate...
by Jeff Ihnen | Jun 14, 2023 | Energy Rant
A couple weeks ago, I quickly read this article, Cracking the Code – Aligned Incentives, on EnergyCentral.com. It concerns incentives for high-performance employees, but my read was about incentives for efficiency programs. It applies to that too. Myopic Focus...
by Jeff Ihnen | Aug 9, 2022 | Energy Rant
When I started at Michaels millennia ago, we had a brilliant walking encyclopedia of knowledge and engineering know-how. His name was Dave Hamilton, or Ham for short. He was probably 30 years older than me. My boss at the time said Ham knew the answer to any problem....
by Jeff Ihnen | May 17, 2022 | Energy Rant
Grid reliability issues are upon us, and they will become more severe and disruptive in the next 10-20 years. But first, why is this happening? If governments mandated things in medicine[1] as they do with the grid, they would declare that chemotherapy will phase out...
