On-Bill Repayment (OBR) for Energy Efficiency Upgrades – Will California Lead the Way?
(Originally appeared on Groom Energy’s EnterpriseSmartGrid.org) I spent last Wednesday at the California PUC in San Francisco participating in a workshop debating the merits of California’s newly proposed policy for utility on-bill repayment (OBR). (Although being at the workshop necessitated my taking the Boston redeye that night (ugh) my spirits were lifted as I waited at SFO...
How Soon Until We See Energy Efficiency Backed Securities?
Jon Guerster of Groom Energy on the market opportunity for financing energy efficient building upgrades through a shared savings approach.
Companies Buying Energy From Their Utilities – the Math Works, Until It Doesn’t
In a world where utility rates and incentives are dynamic, energy costs are likely to be accelerating (after a three-year hiatus) and new energy technology development is being introduced, our engineers should expect to be performing more of this in-house vs. pay-for-service tradeoff analysis.
Money is Not a Bad Incentive for Energy Efficiency Behavior Change
Top business schools Harvard, Kellogg and University of Chicago have entire departments studying Organizational Behavior (OB). Wharton even has an annual conference called OB.
Traditional Energy Audits Are So Yesterday
For years large ESCO’s (Johnson Controls, Siemens, Honeywell, etc.) have been performing Level Three Investment Grade Audits (IGAs), which are required for MUSH/Federal performance contracts. Their audits produce a detailed energy savings spreadsheet which makes it possible for a tax-exempt entity to issue bonds which pay for the retrofits.
Home Energy Apps – Not Yet “Plug and Play”
Originally posted at Groom Energy Of course the conventional view is that the smart grid market will be “huge” – and the target for smart grid today is squarely on the residential market. So it shouldn’t be missed that within days of each other both Google and Microsoft killed their initial home energy software applications. First...
What’s the Fracking Problem?
Originally posted at Groom Energy Like a trendy social networking term, fracking has entered everyday conversation. For the sake of the US economy we should all hope the trend is not fleeting…. Based on the controversial horizontal drilling technique, the energy markets have already assumed new access to large US natural gas reserves, and consequently prices...
Lightfair 2011 – Welcome to LED 2.0
While its more clear that eventually LEDs can replace every type of lighting fixture, vendors must now combat customer perception that if expensive products have made so much progress since last year, why not just wait for LED 2.1 when the math gets better?
Enterprise Smart Grid Helps Corporations Drive Energy Efficiency Behavior Change
How will Smart Grid 2.0 account for behavior? Our engineers can model energy savings from intelligent systems based on past operating history, but predicting savings from behavior change is more challenging.