Quality Services to the Energy Industry For Over 30 Years

I have accepted an offer to join KEMA (now named DNV GL) full-time as a Senior Principal Consultant effective July 18, 2011. Since starting Lopes Consulting Services in 2010, I have continued to work on client projects involving load research, program design, research and evaluation, which fit very well with my new responsibilities at DNV GL. I will continue to work out of my Glen Cove, NY office, and travel to DNV GL and client offices as needed. Please contact me at 516-277-1087.   Thanks to followers of Lopes Consulting Services, which is now inactive since all my energy-related work will now be through DNV GL.

A paper entitled “Do-it Yourself Home Energy Audit: Tricks and Techniques” by Joe Lopes has been accepted by a peer-review panel and Joe will be presenting the paper at the August 16-18, 2011 International Energy Program Evaluation Conference (IEPEC) in Boston.  The paper discusses some low-cost metering options and results that can help home-owners and energy program evaluators understand “miscellaneous” energy use and presents some interesting results on metering electronic devices, the primary source of “vampire” usage.

Ever wonder why, despite all your efforts, your electric bill keeps going up?

While each of your appliances is probably as efficient as ever, the electronics industry marketers have been quite successful at filling your house with “miscellaneous” electric loads!  I wondered myself what was using all that electricity.  So, I invested in some electric meter loggers and did some monitoring, with some interesting, and I’m sure to many, surprising results:

My Cable TV Digital Video Recorder (DVR) Set-top box uses 34 watts 24 hours a day!  That’s 300 kWh per year (about $60 per year here!)  Of course you can unplug it but then it will take 15 minutes to “boot” back up and you miss half your next show!  My refrigerator only uses 450 kWh!  Even without the DVR, my digital cable boxes (3 of them) each use 21 watts all the time!  That’s 180 kWh each ($36)!

My little bookshelf stereo uses 25 watts when on, but 18.5 watts when “off”.  So, using it only 2 hours a day will still mean 170 kWh per year ($34)!  I’ll be unplugging that one!

My main stereo, which I hardly use any more, has a powered subwoofer that uses 22 watts all the time!!  That’s 193 kWh/year ($39)!  I’ve now hooked it to a remote plug switch so I can easily turn it on only when I use it!

Anyone else think this is absurd!!!

This was presented at the 2005 International Energy program Evaluation Conference in NYC. The abstract is shown here, with a link to the complete paper below. (There’s a link to the conference presentation as well.)

ABSTRACT

Consolidated Edison Company of New York, Inc. (Con Edison), in cooperation with the New York State Public Service Commission (NYPSC) and other state agencies, has been working to address their growing summer peak, most recently through control of residential and small commercial Central A/C systems via a two-way system for thermostat control. Con Edison performed an assessment, implemented a pilot program and full-scale rollout of this technology, which communicates with the Central A/C thermostat via two-way pager, and enables features such as confirming feedback, recordable customer overrides, monitoring and thermostat access via internet by both customer and utility, utility control of either thermostat setpoint or duty cycle limit, and collection of hourly runtime and temperature data for virtually all units.

This paper presents background on the program, lessons learned, and impacts from the perspective of both the utility and the participants, including kW impacts and customer satisfaction.

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Presented at the AEIC Annual Conference in 2003 for Westar, this examines contribution of school loads to system peak, as related to regulatory inquiry.

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This is a summary of several projects involving technical research and evaluation for advanced metering, demand response, thermostat control and sub-metering.

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This is another presentation co-authored with Herbert Hirschfeld and presented at the Multifamily Buildings Conference in Brooklyn, NY July 2008.

Its title is “NYSERDA R&D: Time-Sensitive Pricing Demonstration: Advanced Metering, TOU Pricing and Technologies for Multifamily Buildings.”

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I presented this paper back in 2000 at the AEIC Load Research Conference. The introduction is shown here, with a link to the complete paper below. (There’s a link to the 2000 AEIC Load Research Conference presentation as well.)

INTRODUCTION

Load Research has had a long and varied history, having been carried on the coattails of a variety of applications since the early days of Load Research in the 1960’s and 1970’s. With the collection of load data associated with load research came the need for quality assessment, decisions on how (and whether) to fix problem data and, once data was sufficiently clean, expanding results to the population, whether the load data represented one customer or part of a group representing tens of thousands.

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“Is it On? Impact of Duty Cycles on A/C Control Strategies” is a presentation I delivered at the 2002 Annual AEIC Load Research Conference in Las Vegas, NV.

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Here is a presentation I gave at the New York chapter of the AEE back in 2007. It was co-authored by Herbert Hirschfeld.

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