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program administrators

Mar 04
Love69

Four Steps to Energy Code Flatline

By Energy Rant No Comments
Energy efficiency program administrators can be quite conservative regarding change and innovation. I love hearing, “Bring us new ideas that have been successful in three or four other programs.” There you are! The pinch is on. Energy efficiency codes and standards have raised the bar consistently such that incremental savings from one code change to the next are exceedingly scarce. The gravy-train days of incremental widget-efficiency improvements, including lighting efficacy and heating and cooling equipment efficiencies, are quickly closing. Vehicles A nice parallel to diminishing returns on efficiency is vehicle mileage. The following chart shows fuel energy consumed per thousand…
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Aug 30
Love2

Champion Elements for Energy and Demand Management Programs

By Energy Rant No Comments
This is the finale of better than best commercial and industrial program practices – including a summary cheat sheet for program administrators. Energy Analyses Utilities want to build efficiency businesses in their service territories, which is very important. However, few service providers, designers, or contractors are proficient with energy calculations, especially for complex measures. Moreover, they don’t live in our goofy world of arbitrary baselines and will likely determine actual savings or some other goalposts to give their project a better shine. If you have reviewed papers, articles, or maybe some reports, you know what I mean when I say,…
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Mar 02
Love0
impact evaluation - yoga

Impact Evaluation, Bull Riding, Cookies

By Energy Rant No Comments
I've been doing a lot of program impact evaluation for the last few months. That comes with pluses and minuses. One of the minuses is that I needed to suspend writing this blog for a while. Pluses include problem-solving, working with staff throughout our company, and forensics engineering. Impact Evaluation But first, what is impact evaluation? I have a broad audience, and I get great feedback, some of which is, "I don't know what you're talking about sometimes." Entities delivering efficiency programs (implementers) are responsible for delivering savings or impacts. For custom efficiency portfolios, which entail a wide variety of…
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Aug 13
Love0
electric

Electricity – Breakpoints, Tipping Points and Imagination

By Energy Rant One Comment
The Wall Street Journal published an interesting article last week – it would be fascinating if it weren’t sadly true. The title: Everyone Hates Customer Service. It is a perfect addition to my continuation of last week’s post regarding innovation with electric utilities. Are Electric Utilities in for a Taxi Ride? Tales of Customer Service Last week during a raging thunderstorm, I was in the pickup-window line at Walgreens. It’s a pickup window, not a chat room. Every time, the cars ahead of me take at least five minutes each. What are they talking about up there? The baseball trade…
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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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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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