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OPOWER

I’ll Take Smart Grid for $200, Alex – What is AMI?

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
Last week, in a moment of weakness, I was on my Pinterest board (is that what it’s called?), when I came upon this excellent tip sheet from a marketing blog. I noted that the “emotional” alternatives to the “intellectual,” bloated phrases were simpler with fewer syllables and easier to read. On the same day, I was studying the benefits and costs of “advanced metering infrastructure,” aka, “smart grid.” Do you see a problem with our industry here? Name something with grotesquely puffy language, and then tag it with an incomprehensible acronym, rather than using a simpler term like, oh, smart…
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The Ultimate Consumer Behavioral Program?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
With a long weekend to prepare this rant, I'm taking a bit of a house cleaning approach and it's fitting because this week I'm talking about residential energy efficiency programs. Residential programs are certainly not something Michaels plans to get into but we do occasionally get involved with some residential program evaluation. If you know anything about residential programs you've heard of Opower. Their flagship product is the home energy report, which includes mailed reports to virtually all residential customers. The report compares participants to neighbors and against themselves last year or the month before. The mailers include energy saving…
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Holy Cow, Fumble!!!!

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Yale and Environmental Defense Fund socialites have published an article for Nature  (you can purchase the article with a federally backed low-interest loan or borrowing against the negative equity in your home) indicating that rebound effect is over-hyped.  Rebound, snapback, backfire, fumble, boot, bogey, crash, and other terms are used to describe consumers’ change in behavior to use efficient energy consuming products more because they are cheaper to operate. Sometimes one needs to use perverse reasoning beyond social norms (no not that) to shoot down illogic.  First, consider that behavior change is the golden pinnacle of any energy efficiency portfolio. …
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Replacing the Burger

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability 2 Comments
The race is on to develop and deliver next generation successful energy efficiency programs.  There is indeed innovation in the marketplace.  The days of what I call “hamburger selling” will end, probably in the next decade.  Selling EE in these cases is like selling hamburgers – who can sell the most and the cheapest hamburgers that people will eat.  The product is unsophisticated – lighting, primarily.  The market is huge and opportunities ubiquitous.  Marketing and selling the burger is the name of the game and will be for a few more years. In the past five years, energy efficiency has…
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