As folks recover from having filed their taxes, comes the news item in today's WSJ that close 90% of spreadsheets have errors in them leading to wrong results. According to the article:

Close to 90% of spreadsheet documents contain errors, a 2008 analysis of multiple studies suggests. “Spreadsheets, even after careful development, contain errors in 1% or more of all formula cells,” writes Ray Panko, a professor of IT management at the University of Hawaii and an authority on bad spreadsheet practices. “In large spreadsheets with thousands of formulas, there will be dozens of undetected errors.” Given that Microsoft says there are close to 1 billion Office users worldwide, “errors in spreadsheets are pandemic,” Panko says.

Such mistakes not only can lead to miscalculations in family budgets and distorted balance sheets at small businesses, but also might result in questionable rationales for global fiscal policy, as indicated by the case of a math error in a Harvard economics study. By failing to include certain spreadsheet cells in its calculations, the study by Harvard economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff may have overstated the impact that debt burdens have on a nation’s economic growth.

......Simple arithmetic errors may be rampant, but spreadsheet use is likely to go on as before, Panko warns in his paper. “Despite this long-standing evidence, most corporations have paid little attention to the prospect of serious spreadsheet errors,” he says.

The problem is not just in general business calculations - several companies still use Excel files to track their DSM program savings and performance; so, do several companies to track and report on emissions to meet regulatory requirements. These companies are putting themselves in serious risk of reporting wrong results. In the case of Title V air emissions reporting, such mistakes could be very costly - fines for permit violations could run into several thousands of dollars each.

The solution is simple - use a proven tool such as our E2DR® product suite for complete tracking and reporting of DSM portfolios or our EnvCTR(TM) product for Title V compliance data tracking and reporting. We build in several validation tools and process steps to review data and calculations so that the results are reliable and repeatable. Call us - we are ready to help! 

Now we can add a new kind of economic stimulus to the list of benefits of making one's home into an energy efficient one. According to an article in Washington Post, homeowners who invest to make their homes more energy efficient turn out to be better credit risk for banks to lend money. According to this article:

A new study by the University of North Carolina suggests that the answer to both questions is a resounding yes. Using a massive sample of 71,000 home loans from across the country that were originated between 2002 and 2012, researchers found that mortgages on homes with Energy Star certifications were, on average, 32 percent less likely to default than were loans on homes with no energy-efficiency improvements. Energy Star homes, which can be renovated dwellings or newly built units, provide documentable savings of 15 percent or higher on utility bills compared with houses containing minimal energy improvements.

Researchers took pains to statistically separate out factors other than energy-efficiency savings that might account for the strikingly different performances by borrowers on their mortgages. They controlled for house size; age of the house; neighborhood income levels; house values relative to the area median; local unemployment rates; borrowers’ credit scores; loan-to-value ratios; electricity costs; and even local weather conditions.

Best way to get this message out to a wider audience is for the EE industry to work with utilities, builders and DSM program implementors to get the banks to factor in the lowered risk to the mortgage rates offered to customers investing in makign their home more efficient. I am sure it will boost the overall benefit/cost ratios of EE programs to make these programs even more attractive to the regulators.

In a lighter vein:

We are bombarded by all kinds of news from seemingly infinite number of sources - ranging from world is going to end due to budget gridlock in the US to Euro crisis to emerging battle lines between Japan and China to follies of movie stars and so on and on. Amidst all these noise, really important news tend to get lost: one such gem is the announcement by Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg: the two billionaires/philanathropists have joined forces to put out a plan to eradicate polio worldwide. Efforts to data have eliminated polio from all countries except 3 - Afganishtan, Nigeria and Pakistan. 

According to their Op-Ed piece in today's Wall Street Journal:

As recently as 1988—the year the world adopted eradication as a goal—polio was circulating in more than 125 countries, and more than 350,000 children were paralyzed annually. Since then, thanks to a massive world-wide effort, the number of cases is down by more than 99%. In 2011, India, considered the most difficult place to achieve eradication, was declared polio-free. Last year, we witnessed the steepest drop in new cases in a decade. In 2012, there were fewer than 225 cases and the spread of the virus has to be stopped in only three countries: Afghanistan, Nigeria and Pakistan. That is the fewest cases in the fewest countries ever.

However, the last 1% is the most difficult of all. In Afghanistan, Nigeria, and Pakistan, vaccinators travel long distances across difficult terrain, and some parents won't allow their children to be vaccinated. Security is also a concern, as health workers in Pakistan and Nigeria have recently been targeted by militant groups.

.....Some might wonder why so much effort and money is being devoted to fight a disease that is contracted by fewer people than can fit on a commercial airplane. The answer is that keeping the number of new cases this low cannot be sustained year after year—polio will make a comeback if it is not eradicated. To capitalize on the current momentum, fast action is needed. Furthermore, eradication will save billions of dollars over the long term. When success is achieved, the world will have a workable, scalable model for global vaccination—a blueprint for success that can be used time and again to reach children throughout the developing world and prevent disease on an unprecedented scale.

Thinking big is an important part not only of successful businesses, but also of successful societies. It reflects a belief in human ingenuity and the ability to overcome even the toughest problems facing the world.

From the truth is stranger than fiction dept, comes the news item in Washington Post today that says authorities have uncovered links between organized crime families and the renewable energy industry in Sicily, Italy. According to the article, about third of the wind and solar farms in Sicily - which happens to be the best locale for solar and wind in all of Italy and also, a major stronghold of Mafia - are controlled by Mafia families. Gives an entirely new meaning to renewable money laundering.....

Here's an excerpt from that article:

Inside a midnight-blue BMW, a Sicilian entrepreneur delivered his pitch to the accused mafia boss. A new business was blowing into Italy that could spin wind and sunlight into gold, ensuring the future of the Earth as well as the Cosa Nostra: renewable energy.

“Uncle Vincenzo,” implored the businessman, Angelo Salvatore, using a term of affection for the alleged head of Sicily’s Gimbellina crime family, 79-year-old Vincenzo Funari. According to a transcript of their wiretapped conversation, Salvatore continued, “for the love of our sons, renewable energy is important. . . . it’s a business we can live on.”

And for quite awhile, Italian prosecutors say, they did. In an unfolding plot that is part “The Sopranos,” part “An Inconvenient Truth,” authorities swept across Sicily last month in the latest wave of sting operations revealing years of deep infiltration into the renewable energy sector by Italy’s rapidly modernizing crime families.

The still-emerging links of the mafia to the once-booming wind and solar sector here are raising fresh questions about the use of government subsidies to fuel a shift toward cleaner energies, with critics claiming huge state incentives created excessive profits for companies and a market bubble ripe for fraud. China-based Suntech, the world’s largest solar panel maker, last month said it would need to restate more than two years of financial results because of allegedly fake capital put up to finance new plants in Italy. The discoveries here also follow so-called “eco-corruption” cases in Spain, where a number of companies stand accused of illegally tapping state aid.

Because it receives more sun and wind than any other part of Italy, Sicily became one of Europe’s most obvious hotbeds for renewable energies over the past decade. As the Italian government began offering billions of euros annually in subsidies for wind and solar development, the potential profitability of such projects also soared — a fact that did not go unnoticed by Sicily’s infamous crime families.

Roughly a third of the island’s 30 wind farms — along with several solar power plants — have been seized by authorities. Officials have frozen more than $2 billion in assets and arrested a dozen alleged crime bosses; corrupt local councilors and mafia-linked entrepreneurs. Italian prosecutors are now investigating suspected mafia involvement in renewable energy projects from Sardinia to Apulia.

“The Cosa Nostra is adapting, acquiring more advanced knowledge in new areas like renewable energy that have become more profitable because of government subsidies,” said Teresa Maria Principato, the deputy prosecutor in charge of Palermo’s Anti-Mafia Squad, whose headquarters here are emblazoned with the images of assassinated judges. “It is casting a shadow over our renewables industry.”

You can read the full article here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/sting-operations-reveal-mafia-involvement-in-renewable-energy/2013/01/22/67388504-5f39-11e2-9dc9-bca76dd777b8_story.html

When you see an article about energy efficient lighting in the main page of NYTime online, I think it's safe to assume that the product is ready to go mainstream. Today's NYT has a lead item on LED bulbs ready to take over as the replacement for incandescent bulbs and in the process, knocking out the CFLs. The main reasons are the prices have been dropping steadily due to increased marketing and higher awareness amongst consumers of the long life and power savings characteristics of the LEDs over both incandescent and CFLs.

In addition, manufacturers have been adding bells and whistles to LEDs since they are based on electronic chips and so, can be made to do different things [such as change color, dim, communicate over wireless networks, etc]. As a result, software and homa automation companies have jumped into the fray making the LEDs more attractive to a wider audience. For instance, Apple offers the Hue system [in partnership with Phillips] with LED bulbs that can be controlled via an app on iPhone or iPad or linked with the NEST communicating thermostat.

This just proves the point that consumers will adopt EE products and technologies readily only if such products are not treated as something special only for a special group of people. If the product can be shown to meet consumers' needs without them having to sacrifice convenience or pay an exorbitant price, EE products will gain the same market traction as any other product in the market.

Now, that lighting has shown the way [pun intended!], can whole house energy management systems be far behind??

On a lighter [this was not intended to be punny] note, courtesy of Dilbert & Scott Adams: