Category: Uncategorized

As I reflect on the transitional and rightful questions facing energy industry professionals today, it amazes me to see so many stuck in the rut of old paradigms.

I am not implying that leaders should chase dreams willy nilly, but the spirit of exploration and curiosity seems conspicuously missing.

It is almost as if standing still and doing nothing was deemed the best and safest strategy … which of course it isn’t … but it always appears least risky in the short run.

I was talking to someone about how hard it is to get children to try a new food, and I guess I see way too many parallels.

You really don’t know whether you like it until you try it.  It may not look good, and in some cases, it may not even smell appealing.

But, you will never know unless you try.

Silk is using this angle in their latest Almond Milk TV commercials where their sprout-character challenges a man who has never tasted almond milk but who says he does not like it.

Kind of reminds me of the TV commercial … let’s see if Mikey likes it …

Take a look if you don’t remember or have never seen it: Click Here

We need more Mikeys.

 

Go figure.  Who knew? A phone app that can get them to walk? I wouldn’t have imagined this.  Check it out. Read the Forbes article Ten Things I Wish I Knew When I Started ‘Pokémon Go’

I took our son Stephen out for lunch today and he showed me local interest points that I had no idea existed and sure enough, he found a Pokémon in our restaurant.   What shocked me more was that he has started walking around our neighborhood to collect these digital critters. And he tells me that there are some remarkable success stories of overweight kids getting out and shedding weight in their search for critters.

We have a lot to learn about customer engagement … not looking back at the old media or methods, but by critically thinking about what we are beginning to learn today with modern media.

There is something here folks … there are a lot of things people will spend their time doing for free if you can tap into their reward systems.  Very interesting.

And, Just in case you think I have gone off the deep end, the market has already monetized this idea. Read the Wall Street Journal article below.

Pokémon-Chasing Investors Send Nintendo Shares Soaring
Craze added $9 billion in market value to gaming company

 

 

It is funny how some phrases seem timeless and require no explanation.  I am not sure anyone can claim the origins of this one, but we all know what it means.  Recently, Dick Niess, my partner who helped us found Apogee, sent me a note indicating that the original place has officially been identified as the picture here indicates.  It is real.  It is in Pennsylvania and this is not a Photoshop ploy.

The engineer in me wants to correct the clarity of the desperation here and remind everyone that it is better to be up the creek than it would be to be down the creek.  This reminds me of the two ways to look at any situation:  is the glass half-full, or half empty?

The engineer in me wants to say, “You appear to have twice as much glass as you really need.”

Maybe the operative word here has more to do with the paddle.  That reminds me of the famous international competition between the American and the Japanese rowing teams.  The Japanese team had eight people rowing and one person steering.  The American team had two people rowing and seven people steering.  Needless to say, the Japanese team won.

So, the American team reorganized.  They fired one of the two people rowing and added a steering supervisor to manage the one person rowing.

 

 

It is interesting how much we admire symmetry … unless you just happen to be in love with Picasso’s form of art.

Symmetry comes from Greek word symmetria, which implies “agreement in dimensions, due proportion, arrangement.”  In everyday language, it means a sense of harmonious proportion and beautiful balance.  If you are a Photoshop user, you can really make this point by slightly distorting a human face to prove how much we dislike imbalance from side to side in any form of facial feature.

This last week we saw illustrations of just how flawed our energy policy discussions are as we observed blackout conditions in the West alongside political correctness about closing down a nuclear plant in the region.  We see incentives to promote solar without due regard for cost recovery and long-term planning to reflect the real costs and the sustainability of short-term decisions.  We see advocates for wind without due regard for the costs to keep the grid stable with its vagaries.

It seems we dislike the natural symmetries of running an electrical power system.  We somehow think a beautiful thing will emerge as we forget or disregard the differences between capacity, energy, and the true operational costs of keeping the lights on in our control strategies.  These are the elements of symmetry … and they are beautiful when kept in proper balance.

I guess asymmetric decisions seem perfectly OK when you simply have no idea how the electrical supply system really works.

Acting this way in my engineering profession is considered incompetence and can result in criminal charges.  Yet in today’s PC energy policy world, it seems to be perfectly acceptable.  There is a natural balance between energy and capacity.  There are natural dependencies in the control of power flows that also require symmetrical balance.  Ignoring those because they are complex to explain does not make them go away.

They will show up and present a very ugly picture … perhaps all too soon.

Perhaps you have all noticed how prevalent electronic measurements have become in tennis for what used to be dominated by human judgement.  Anyone who has watched recent tennis matches has to have been impressed with the precision of the “in vs. out” calls on serves including video simulations of the ball motion.  And, of course, every serve is now measured for speed which is posted for all to see.

Lots of “analytics” have now emerged as well.  A player can study how their opponent hits and review return percentages on almost any shot.  And, what was once subjective perhaps can now be described by a more instructive set of numbers.  The scoreboard is the final arbiter, but now the leading indicators are known with precision that historically was impossible.

Today’s WSJ had an article on how robotic umpires are likely to replace the existing umpires calling balls and strikes.  Today’s technology can certainly do that.  I have to admit I am also amazed at the ability for computers to compute the yards to go in football games and paint the lines on the screen.  That makes my brain hurt when I think of all the computing going on.  Think of how instructive that is as you watch.

Yet, here we are in the energy industry and we still think the scoreboard is interesting.  We also seem to believe that customers will do something as a result of us graphing it and comparing them to their neighbors.

When will our industry be ready to move beyond our scoreboard in the energy game?  Why is it we think customers want to watch the scoreboard?  Do we really think we can be relevant to customers by just showing them that?  A pretty graph isn’t going to cut it.

Apogee has three pilots going this summer that will probably change all that using inexpensive temperature monitors in homes that show homeowners how their house is operating.  Stay tuned.  This is going to get very interesting.