Skip to main content
search
Tag

setbacks

Feb 08
Love0

Indestructible Code Compliance Villains

By Energy Rant No Comments
In case you missed last week’s post, you’ll need to go back and review the setup for this week’s demonstration of code challenges and mistakes. To summarize, I have an installed ENERGY STAR-qualifying 95% AFUE (efficient) boiler with a brazed plate heat exchanger, hot water reset control, and a variable firing rate that ranges from 20% to 100%. That firing range is even better than code requirements. The system is a duded-out energy code breaker in theory. Let’s look at what went wrong in order. I have a Nest cam in the backyard and a Nest thermostat for the boiler.…
Read More
Feb 01
Love0

Code Compliance Setup – A Boiler Project

By Energy Rant No Comments
Over the last forty years, computers have become orders of magnitude more powerful while they have become much easier to use. When I was in college, mainframe IBM computers owned all the muscle of computations. I was terrified of coding and wanted nothing to do with that. Thankfully, graphical interfaces emerged to make it easy. I even conquered graduate school with Engineering Equation Solver (“do it with EES” as its creator, Professor Sandy Klein, used to say). Energy codes went completely the opposite direction, from a simple document from the IBM mainframe era (1989) to a behemoth that would break…
Read More
Oct 16
Love0

Energy Efficiency in a Land of Renewable Foie Gras

By Energy Rant No Comments
A couple weeks ago in Renewable Energy, Bad Parents, and Strawberries, I wrote that the value of an electrical generating resource depends a little on how cheaply it can produce energy (kWh), but a LOT on when and the (new word alert) dispatchability of the resource. For instance, California already has so much solar generation at the wrong time of day that it needs to dump kWh by paying producers to quit. This is demand response in reverse, or (new term alert) supply response. Yes, they are curtailing less than 1% of sales, but they are also two years ahead…
Read More

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.

Subscribe for Expert Insights
Close Menu