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retro-commissioning

Aug 23
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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
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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
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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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May 20
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Low Hanging Fruit – Meet Vortex Madness

By Energy Rant No Comments
This week, we are taking a trip down easy street to explore what I called three years ago in DOE Pumping Standards a nauseating term, “low hanging fruit.” I love charts like the one below. Where can you find stuff like that? Well, the source vanished, except that I posted it in the Rant, it lives! Because of associated nausea and our love of acronyms, let’s call it LHF. On that note, it looks like left-handed fingering (think guitar playing) dominates the market for the LHF acronym. What does the idiom LHF mean? Lighting and Motors Lighting and motors are...
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May 13
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NMEC Hedgehogs and Straw Dogs

By Energy Rant No Comments
As the third in a series, we are going to wrap up the normalized metered energy consumption (NMEC) protocol groundwork this week. See the first and second posts to catch up in case you missed those. The first post covered new construction programs for which NMEC doesn’t apply because a baseline of normalized energy use[1] is needed for NMEC. The first post introduced non-routine events (NREs), which are random and not accounted for in any model. The second post explained that NMEC is ideal for residential behavior and weatherization programs. The second post explained that because of several specific NRE...
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Feb 18
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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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Aug 28
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Driving Ms. Free Rider Daisy

By Energy Rant 3 Comments
Sitting on high levels of energy efficiency program design and evaluation provides a wonderful perspective and results in some astonishing epiphanies. Warning – data-backed bluster straight ahead. New Construction Programs We study the performance of new buildings all the time, whether it is for evaluation or looking for great retro-commissioning opportunities. Nothing provides a better opportunity for retro-commissioning than a stock of new buildings, whether they filtered through a new construction program or not. The chart below features energy performance of new buildings that went through a new construction program. We implement, and we evaluate projects nationwide (don’t bother guessing...
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May 15
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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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Jan 30
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Behavioral Economics, Deep Thoughts of the Irrational Mind

By Energy Rant No Comments
I promised two weeks ago that I would discuss the results of our survey concerning behavioral economics this week. Delivered. Why explain something when you can just find it on the pure, and always correct, internet. Behavioral economics is defined in the graphic below, courtesy Google search. It would be wonderful if everyone understood that nothing (nothing) comes without a cost, that the cost may be higher than one thinks, and certainly higher than the value of benefits. The following are two examples. Health Insurance and Care Everyone reading this has complained about healthcare between one thousand and one million...
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Oct 31
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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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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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