There’s only one thing worse than listening to the Beach Boys. Give up? Listening to the Beach Boys doing Christmas songs. Scarface, which I just watched recently, better puts me in the holiday spirit than listing to a Beach Boys ditty. “Greedy little cockroaches. Goodbye. You wanna play games? Ok. I play with you. You wanna play rough? Ok. Say hello to my LITTLE FRIEND!” – Tony Montana. Deck the halls with boughs of holly falalalalala la la la la. Ratatatatatat. If you hate year in review reports just quit right here because that’s what this is. Our industry is…
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A few weeks back I came across an energy blogger that referenced a software developer who would do an energy audit via address and energy bills. Period. Really? As my roommate and I used to say, “C’mon dude,” as in give me a big fat (or favorite expletive here) break. We have done the address / energy consumption analysis many times but at MOST, we can do a decent job of benchmarking the facility against comparable ones but even this is difficult. We can measure the building footprint with satellite images. Easy. The challenge is multi-story facilities, and I mean…
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In October 2011, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy delivered a report, “Follow the Leaders: Improving Large Customer Self-Direct Programs”. But before I discuss/interpret that, what is a self-direct program? Some large energy users wish to opt out of utility sponsored energy efficiency programs, and specifically they want to avoid paying the energy efficiency cost recovery rider. This particular rider is a surcharge, similar to tax on gasoline that is supposed to be used for roads. These large energy users state they can better invest this money in their own energy efficiency program – a self direct program.…
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Recently, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy issued a report, “The State of the Utility Bill” and I thought, “now there is a topic for plenty of discussion.” No, that was no joke, although there was an interesting finding that I found to be very hilarious: All of the ~100 bills analyzed in the study (100%) included the amount due to the utility from the customer. I would say not having the amount due would have its disadvantages. (that WAS a joke) I’ve witnessed and studied many issues regarding end user understanding of energy, energy consumption, and end…
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