Blog

Many of us at Michaels are gluttons for data and accompanying analysis. Our homes are test beds. In this post, we look at impacts from smart thermostats, the dangers of wrong assumptions, and extrapolating findings for impact evaluation. Every smart thermostat evaluation I’ve seen uses billing regression models to estimate savings. Unfortunately, this provides anRead more

The Energy Rant is not for the weak-kneed who prefer to live in the land of unicorns, fairy dust, and lollipops. This week is no exception. This Rant is brought to you by the recent ACEEE paper, Recent Developments in Energy Efficiency Evaluation, Measurement and Verification. Burned on the Alter of 90/10 A major objectiveRead more

Everyone has applied for health insurance[1], and many of you have applied for life insurance. Anyone over, oh, 40, 50, or for sure 60, knows health flaws start to accumulate like the dumpster’s worth of unwelcome gifts, used shoes, and outdated clothes for those of you who stay current with the style trends of theRead more

Thank you to Mike Frischmann (our Director of Evaluation Engineering) for contributing to this week’s Rant. Eight hundred pound gorilla alert! Energy efficiency program evaluation “best practices” need a big overhaul. I am not talking about best practices for doing impact evaluation like the Uniform Methods Project. It’s disgusting that so much money is spentRead more

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 happenRead more

People and firms talk about integrating evaluation findings into programs and portfolios closer to real time than the conventional methods.  But what is really being done about it other than talk? This post features some concrete ideas to put in the bank – money. First, what is the conventional evaluation process? Approaches and plans varyRead more

This week’s rant is brought to you by Ryan Kroll, Michaels’ Program Evaluation Manager.  Last week Ryan issued a Program Brief discussing 90/10 confidence and precision sampling that is the industry norm for energy efficiency program impact evaluation.  The 90/10 simply means the results of the sampled projects have a 90% probability of being withinRead more

Without fail, it seems that every custom efficiency or self-directed impact evaluation we do has a controversial, giant project accounting for 25% (or more) of the program’s savings.  It turns out it shouldn’t even have been allowed into the program because it doesn’t qualify – and in many cases, aside from that, the savings calculationRead more

For many years of my adult life I thought, “courts and judges: who cares?”  I’ve learned that I do, big time.  Why?  Because courts can bend and twist laws and essentially rewrite them to the point that we might as well send legislators home, which in and of itself sounds like a good idea.  TheRead more

One of the most rewarding aspects of our business is ensuring people get it right and customers get the legitimate energy and monetary savings they should be receiving.  My answer to “why should we pick you?” is: we are passionate about what we do; we get things right; and we want to make a differenceRead more

This week in Coon Valley, where I’ve lived for 15 years, we were hit with frost that ended the growing season for unprotected plants.  I have said for years that the first killing frost is always around the first of October, depending on the timing of cold fronts, but this year was earlier than normalRead more

Earlier this year I was partaking in an interview for a large project and we were asked a formal list of specific questions, the last of which was, why should we hire your team?  While one possible response would be to ramble on for a few minutes about how great we were as demonstrated byRead more