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May 23
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dna

Thinking Required; Uh Oh – Effective v Triggering DNA

By Energy Rant No Comments
A year ago, I ranted about the Powerwall, part of Elon Musk’s grand vision of flashy widgets. From that post, I will modify a portion to fit this post: Uber is disruptive. Powerwall isn’t. Powerwall is mostly disruptive to the owner’s bank account. It solves no problem, but it does create new ones. In last year’s post, I assessed the cost of electricity storage via the 7 kWh Powerwall. Over the lifetime of the unit, the cost per kWh would be 11.7¢ per kWh, kWh and installation not included. In other words, the storage alone costs 11.7¢. Imagine if your…
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Apr 11
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incentives

Targeting Incentives – The Retired Farmer in the Mechanical Room with a Crescent Wrench

By Energy Rant One Comment
As we transition out of the dollars-like-dog-biscuits for widgets era into an integrated, connected, behavior and knowledge based era (EE Wave 2), we must reconsider incentives. We must reconsider what incentives are, and who gets them. I am only able to get started on this topic with a specific true story, but first… Sacred Cow #9: EE Programs are not Welfare Programs The status quo dictates that incentives must go to customers paying the electric or natural gas bills. In other words, like a welfare program, dollars must flow from the masses within a population to a smaller group of…
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Oct 19
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building

Building Energy Simulations – More is NOT Better

By Energy Rant One Comment
Do you recognize the city shown?  It is Chicago.  How many twin buildings do you see?  Ok.  Consider downtown in your city.  How many twin buildings are there?  Ok. Why are they all different?  I would guess because if, say Donald Trump is going to build a $500-$1000 per square foot tower in the middle of all this, he wants an icon.  Wouldn’t you?  Besides, you’re not going to stop an architect from making it so anyway.  They want every building design to be a trophy for their wall.  Why not? Even schools, office buildings, college and university buildings, hospitals,…
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Mar 09
Love0

State of the Electric Utility; Get Engaged

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Utility Stuff No Comments
Recently, Utility Dive released its report, 2015 State of the Electric Utility – a compendium of utility company prognosticative surveys.  Findings include: Utilities will move away from vertical integration – see last week’s Utility 2.0. The biggest opportunities are distributed generation, transmission, and customer relationships. The biggest challenges include old infrastructure, old employees, and primitive regulatory models. The biggest concern is flat to declining sales. There will be more use of natural gas, wind, solar, and distributed generation. As my personal finance instructor used to say, the most likely price (trend) tomorrow is the price. First, I wanted to see…
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Jun 02
Love0

Energy Program Evaluation, Not Activism

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 4 Comments
In my day, we didn’t have peewee soccer, football, gymnastics, or tee-ball.  We had to improvise and make up game rules to play two-on-two football.  We had no gear; not even the cheap plastic crap from Sears.  We set the lawn mower as low as it would go to cut the sidelines and goal lines and made up the rules as we went.  We were a bunch of hayseeds throwing a rubber football around, inflicting bone-on-bone pain to each other, pretending to be in the NFL – and we liked it!This may sound like the Grumpy Old Man, but it…
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Jan 14
Love0

One of these Days

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Our friends at the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) have published another source report worthy of a post on this blog.  The title of this report is Frontiers of Energy Efficiency: Next Generation Programs Reach for High Energy Savings, which can be found here. The report is quite a detailed whomper, but I gravitated to the commercial and industrial sections of the Executive Summary to see what they have to say.  They are singing our (Michaels) song all the way baby, and we can hum to that tune.  Only my dogs will listen to my lyrics in…
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Dec 10
Love0

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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Oct 21
Love1

Tax Deduction Pennies

By Energy Rant, Tax Stuff No Comments
Recently, we received our umpteenth “request for proposal” (RFP) to provide the engineering required to capture the elusive $1.80 tax deduction on new or remodeled buildings.  We spend a lot of time, money and effort to drive business through our doors but I’m not sure I want to see another one of these. Like the rest of the universally incomprehensible tax code, the engineering piece of this is relatively complex.  If we did this all the time, it wouldn’t be a problem.  But it seems we get the next RFP just as the rules are overwritten in my long-term memory…
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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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