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Jul 08
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Summertime Energy Use and Your Abode

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
Now that winter, followed by a couple months of flooding rains have passed, at least for a few days, summer is here, and this brings about some energy saving tips, rumors, bologna, and truths about summertime energy use around the house.First, allow me to destroy the inappropriate and overused term “humidity”.  When someone complains about 90% humidity, it would be entirely wrong in most instances.  For demonstration, see the chart nearby.  Each curve represents relative humidity (RH) over a 24 hour period. Which represented day is more comfortable from a RH perspective?  The correct answer - I can’t tell because…
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Jan 07
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Best Practice Hamburger Helper

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant One Comment
The phrase that always has me reaching for a complimentary bag that can be found in the seat pocket in front of you on an airplane is “Best Practice”.  Are you following “best practice”?  Are you familiar with “best practice”?  Will you use “best practice”?  No. No. And no. Define best practice, anyway. What does it mean?  It’s something someone with many letters in their title block, who was paid a princely fee to declare, “This is the way it ought to be done”. Let’s examine a few deep thoughts on this concept. “Best practice” infers this is the best…
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Jun 18
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Universal Widgetitis

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant No Comments
As blasted in this blog many times, most recently in Widgetman, humans almost always have their priorities far out of whack.  With EE for example, facility owners should probably establish marshal law to ensure lights are shut off overnight in their office buildings before they start adding photovoltaic panels.  But then, I guess, to the casual observer (schlep) one can see how green the building is during the day, but at night when the building is lit like the headlamp of an oncoming train when no one is there, the wonderful PV panels cannot be seen and nobody pays attention…
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May 24
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EE, Policy, and Irony

By Energy Efficiency, Government, LEED, Stimulus No Comments
As my crop of silver hair continues to expand, I have become more of a historian, particularly when it comes to cause and effect, and peoples’ behavior.  I step back and observe what is happening and what has happened as a result of this or that policy.  Theories are nice, and they may be well thought out and make sense but if they fail miserably, should we double down and try it again?  Policy isn’t like launching rockets or breaking the speed of sound. For those things, you can test, observe failure/problems and make adjustments.  For example, Chuck Yeager was…
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Mar 01
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Pregnant Snake Armpits

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, Stimulus No Comments
Although I don’t appreciate talking about it, we have a black list of companies and organizations for which we will not again partner with, work with, or bid their request for proposals.  What type of activities land somebody on this list? Companies or organizations that take our business development efforts and give it to someone else. We are working on retro-commissioning for a major player in the Midwest grocery market.  As with most of our investment-grade studies for energy retrofit or retro-commissioning, we like to use contractors to provide us with pricing because we expect they will get the work…
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Dec 21
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The Unholy Holiday Tree

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability No Comments
If you’ve been a regular reader of this blog you must have disagreed with something or maybe more strongly taken exception or offense to something.  In this week’s post, maybe I can pick up everyone else. Christmases were great when I was kid.  It was by far my favorite holiday.  I couldn’t wait for my mom to put up the same crappy artificial tree every year.  It consisted of a broomstick like trunk with holes drilled to support the “branches”.  The branches consisted of twisted No. 9 wire with plastic pine needles that I guess may be best described as…
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Dec 14
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Flash Cards, CFD, and Jujus

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Sustainability No Comments
I just finished plowing out after probably a foot of snow fell over about 18 hours Saturday afternoon into the wee hours of Sunday morning.  My wife suggested I go blow out the neighbor’s driveway.  He’s had heart problems but he does have a blower so I said give them a call to see if it’s ok because if somebody blew my driveway out I’d be pissed.  It would be like watching somebody else reel in my trophy fish for me – especially with the virtually unstoppable John Deere at my fingertips.  A few years ago, I first added a…
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Nov 30
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Feral Cat, What Say You?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, LEED, Stimulus, Sustainability One Comment
Back in August I came close to posting a blog “Enough of the Empire State Building Already” but that one faded away.  In case you never read anything about energy savings and sustainability, the building is undergoing a $20 million renovation to improve energy efficiency.  The project would shave the facility’s $11 million energy bill (a cool $4 per square foot) by 38%.  Johnson Control ran ads in every trade magazine I get and various publications, including major newspapers, ran articles by the dozens. Coming in a close second to the Empire State Building was the Northland Pines High School…
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Oct 13
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The Delectable Light Bulb

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, Government, LEED, Sustainability One Comment
The Wall Street Journal this week weighed in on the ban on incandescent from the energy bill of 2007 signed by Bush to phase out the incandescent light bulb by 2014. Naturally, their opinion is that banning products that are essentially harmless and in demand from citizens is bad policy.  As usual, I have multiple points of view on this issue as well. First, I agree with the WSJ that ramming things like this down peoples’ throats is never a good idea.  It appears that next month we are going to see the political fallout of such lawmaking processes.  In…
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Oct 05
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Upside Down Consequence of EE?

By Energy Efficiency, Energy Rant, LEED, Sustainability, Utility Stuff 2 Comments
Many posts ago, I wrote “The More You Spend, The More You Save” explaining how poor system control wastes energy but results in even greater energy savings for efficient equipment.  For example, consider an air handling system that wastes heating energy provided by an efficient boiler.  The boiler saves x% versus a conventional model, so x% multiplied by greater use (wasted energy) results in “more” savings. Recently I picked up on buzz that argues greater efficiency results in greater energy consumption.  At one point I recall reading in the Wall Street Journal an editorial that argued more efficient vehicles just…
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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.

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