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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 plumberRead more

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, itRead more

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]Read more

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.Read more

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 betterRead more

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 equipmentRead more

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 thatRead more

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. WhenRead more

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. SEMRead more

Four years ago, I wrote about a few home energy-saving tips in Refrigerator Sitcoms and Lethal Toaster Ovens. I said I would need to write a series because there are so many, mostly bad, energy saving tips to write about. With four years passing, it is more like a movie sequel than a TV series.Read more

Today, let’s consider a subject that is as squishy, subjective, and amorphous as net savings and non-energy benefits (see here and here). Today’s subject is savings persistence. Savings Persistence and Its Importance Even allowing for generous latitude, if I polled readers of this post, I would probably get a dozen definitions of savings persistence. ForRead more

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 ManagerRead more