Although, or maybe because Michaels Energy has provided research and evaluation services for about 25 years, I’ve been a consistent critic of evaluation, measurement, and verification (EMV), and I’ll tell you why in several chapters. Chapter 1 Resource Acquisition Evaluation methodologies are predominately based on widget programs, also known as resource acquisition programs. The hypothesis is this: efficient equipment costs more, and that extra cost is the barrier. How to mitigate or remove the barrier? Pay down the incremental cost with a rebate after the purchase or incentive before the purchase. It’s that simple and dumb. The simpleton approach to…
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Last week I couldn’t resist responding to the ISO New England’s report, 2021 Economic Study: Future Grid Reliability Study Phase 1 because it paralleled what I wrote a couple of weeks earlier in Electrification At Scale. This week, we’re back to better than best practices in efficiency programs. Last time I described how downstream rebates are often wealth transfers because they are downstream of key decision points and barriers. As I replied to a job candidate who asked me how I would approach a utility to try to persuade them of this, I described how our purpose for being in…
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