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retro-commissioning

Feb 20
Love67

Progressive Outline to Decarbonize Buildings

By Energy Rant No Comments
Two weeks ago, I described an array of district heating and cooling plants that serve medical, college, industrial, and even city-scale loads. Last week, I explained options to decarbonize district heating and cooling plants. Those options include converting systems from steam to hot water as equipment reaches the end of its useful life, heat recovery chillers, and, most importantly, energy efficiency in facilities and processes served. But before getting started on efficiency, I must add that there are also many barriers to shutting down a district steam plant and transitioning to distributed heating and cooling plants. First, there are loads other than space…
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Aug 23
Love2

Program Secrets for Large Commercial and Industrial

By Energy Rant No Comments
Maybe it’s the Implementation Contractor Classic golden opportunities in retro-commissioning include fixing the root cause of the problem rather than trying to treat the symptoms. For example, it may be too cold in a space, so what should be done? Turn up the hot water temperature, of course! No. The problem could be any number of things like a new partition (wall) being installed, isolating one space with a diffuser from another space that has the thermostat. Or my favorite – parking a 1 kW printer under the temperature sensor. We were RCx geniuses in ha school. When our room…
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May 24
Love2

Leveling the Skateboard Curve with a Demand Side Attack

By Energy Rant No Comments
NERC sounds alarm on solar tripping in sobering summer reliability report, May 19, 2022, UtilityDive.com. This seems like a timely sequel to last week’s Blistering Wind and Solar Energy post, in which I summarized the results of a renewables integration study performed by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator. The blisters represent pockets of excessive renewable energy generation and the “very different reliability risks than are experienced today,” as described in the MISO report. Electronics provide voltage and frequency control from solar panel generation. When the solar tiger grows from a cub that we had a few years ago into the…
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Sep 03
Love0

Strategic Energy Management is Elvis

By Energy Rant No Comments
You’ve been there – on the phone trying to get some help from a car dealership, appliance store, online retailer. The menu choices are unclear, especially for auto stores (hit zero). It makes me cringe when I hear my Mom say she called Dell for help with her computer. Yikes, Mom. This isn’t the plumber on Main Street. Maybe Dell isn’t bad, but hearing my Mom say she was on the line “with them” for two hours, I have my conceptions. I would expect no help from an organization like that. Any help would be above and beyond. So what’s…
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Feb 18
Love0

Stifling Impacts of Jurassic Evaluation Dogma

By Energy Rant One Comment
If efficiency programs were telephones, the evaluation community would still be using wall-mounted analog dial-ups rather than the iPhone. Yes, I’m going to tell you why programs are designed to be evaluated and not to be effective, part 2, herein. The following is the list of flaws in demand-side management theory, as presented last week. Efficiency must cost more than inefficiency Building energy codes are sacrosanct Efficiency has to be the primary factor in customer decision making Customers must “get their money back” The unfamiliar get fifty cents on the dollar Immortality is fantasy Last week we covered the first…
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May 15
Love0

Efficiency by Baby Steps and Giant Bounds

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
This post features concepts everyone can use to identify terrific savings opportunities, even if you did not take beloved calculus and thermodynamics. Let’s review a general hierarchy of typical energy efficiency families: 1. Shut it off 2. Slow it down, set it back (temperature, etc.) 3. Reduce waste 4. Retrofit or replace with efficient equipment Those are all wonderful and probably capture over 98% of portfolio savings. Even newer programs like behavioral, retro-commissioning, and strategic energy management merely pursue these items. What’s left? Smart design. I.e., 5. Don’t be stupid Or for the glass half full message, it would be…
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Oct 31
Love0

Benchmarking Clowns

By Energy Rant One Comment
It’s Halloween. Hundreds of thousands of people have to figure out a different costume because a clown plague has infected the country. While I don’t consume tabloid news, I did hear that in some cities, the clowns are getting beat up. I thought, now that isn’t a bad idea, but I wouldn’t advise that. When I was a kid, Halloween antics included dozens of mushy tomatoes and cucumbers left behind in the garden. These have the impact of water balloons, and they make a fine mess. For this post, I referenced my program booklet for ACEEE’s 2016 Summer Study on…
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Sep 19
Love0

Strategic Energy Management or Strategic Anger Management – Which is Right for You?

By Energy Rant One Comment
I have written about, and formally discussed, strategic energy management (SEM) so much I was sure I already wrote a Rant on the topic. After looking, I wrote about SEM and Yoda, Try Not, Do or Do Not, a year ago, but that was about measures and opportunities. This time, let’s consider SEM programs. SEM Beyond Industrial Strategic energy management is often pigeon-holed as an industrial or manufacturing effort. This is unfortunate and wrong. Strategic energy management is great for commercial and multi-family facilities. Strategic energy management is especially good for MUSH (municipalities, universities, schools, and hospitals) but also office…
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Jun 06
Love0
demand

Learning Calculus via Demand and Energy

By Energy Rant 2 Comments
Last week, I was commenting on some retro-commissioning findings, and I was considering demand savings estimates versus energy savings estimates. A colleague asked, “If you are aware of any energy versus demand papers I would like to know more.” I was informed that the Association of Energy Engineers coursework for becoming a Certified Energy Manager only skims the surface, using a garden hose as a metaphor, for demand and energy. The flow of water represents the flow of power (kilowatts), and the water represents energy – the sum of power over time. This is a disservice because demand charges can…
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May 09
Love0
program

Program Adoption Curves – Telephones and Televisions

By Energy Rant No Comments
There are certain energy efficiency programs that we are never going to pursue – all those that are in the late majority and laggard stages. Those ships left the pier 10-15 years ago, and we are not going to attempt to catch them. In two words, they are widget programs, up, down, mid, over, under-stream programs of all stripes, including direct install. The previous chart shows theoretical adoption and market share curves. Of course, in reality, adoption isn’t nearly as pretty, as shown in the next chart, which is fascinating. You will want to get your own version of that…
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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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