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Monthly Archives

November 2014

Energy Storage; Something Old, Something Old

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant 2 Comments
Want a fast car?  How does a 1972 Datsun sedan sound?  These are related and not two back to back stupid questions.  This baby, the “White Zombie”, can burn from 0-60 in 1.8 seconds.  Per my calculations, this is about 1.5 Gs of acceleration; not quite aircraft carrier catapult (0-160 mph in the same ~2 seconds) acceleration but enough to thrash any “gasser” muscle car on the market.  The secret sauce?  Thirty-six humdrum 12 Volt batteries crammed in the back seat, plus two powerful electric motors, like those in a forklift.  This provides a good lesson and starting point to…
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Retro-Commissioning v Commissioning; Similar Purposes, Vastly Different Approaches

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Last week, I was reviewing a scope of work for retro-commissioning, also cleverly known as RCx – and it moved me to pulling hair out by the fistful.  “That’s it”, I thought.  “I’m going to relieve my rage on next week’s Energy Rant.”First, there is the infamous flow/process chart for completing an RCx project.  As you may infer, I am not fond of the “Planning Phase”.  In fact, it seems this process was developed by a program implementer for the program implementer (to spend more time and thus make more money while achieving little more than wasting time). Retro-commissioning has…
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Clean Power Plan & 111(d)

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government One Comment
Last week I attended the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance (SEEA) conference in Atlanta.  With that, I have a confession to make: I rarely sit and listen to speakers or take notes either because there is nothing new, and there is rarely any sort of technical or programmatic breakthrough to learn from.  There are certainly differences in programs, but it comes down to blocking and tackling, so to speak – the basics – hard work, communication, persistence, trust, and so on.  A couple speakers pulled me away from my work.  One was a talk by Tim Echols, Commissioner from the Georgia…
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graphic of a train

What’s Newer Than the iPhone? Crude Oil by Rail

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
Paid any attention to news lately?  Need any ideas for a Halloween costume?  Whoops – too late for that.  A good costume would be the Ebola virus – the current obsessive, 24/7 news feeding fixation.  Other than Ebola, it is fair to say the region between Morocco and India is as chaotic as ever.  There are civil wars, religious sects at war, heinous videos, Iran plowing ahead with nuclear weapon development, and last, but not least, Vlady Putin, the KGB thug clearly wants to reassemble the Soviet Union.  If one were to board the DeLorean time machine (incidentally fueled by…
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