“Don’t drink the Kool-Aid” and being as objective as possible are how I roll. If you feel otherwise, by all means, let me know. Driving across Southern Minnesota recently, a billboard like the image nearby caught my eye. I thought this would be worth looking into to see what they have to say. As I expected, the paper it promotes is jaded against wind energy. But what arguments do they make? Are they legitimate? Wind is Fuel When thinking about wind-driven power generation, it has a lot of hurdles to overcome to be cost-effective. One near the top of the…
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Since you are reading this, you are probably on board with the theory that ratepayer funded efficiency programs help keep energy costs lower than with the status quo: building generation transmission, and distribution for whatever quantity and whenever millions of customers in aggregate want to use the resource. The “what and when” generates a load curve. We will discuss load shape management in future posts. For now, I will share some insights from a true thought leader in the industry. Costs and Benefits of Efficiency Tom Eckman worked for years with the Northwest Power and Conservation Council as a resource…
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Apparently, the nauseating term “low-hanging fruit” is not even a relevant idiom. According to Priceonomics.com, low-hanging fruit is all there is these days. Priceonomics says growers have for centuries been developing the modern Frankenfood-producing apple trees of today, but this miserable term lives on anyway. Priceonomics produced the following chart showing the use of four idioms for “easy” in recent decades. First, I must ask, why is pie easy? Making a good crust is as easy as dunking two basketballs at once. And why are fish in a barrel? My choice for replacing the miserable “low-hanging fruit” is “can of…
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