Best. Moment. Ever.

The housing post will still happen, but I had to pop in to share this story. God, I wish I had brought a camera today (or at all to Denmark, now that I think about it. I'm just using my macbook camera to take photos of my dorm, and that's it).

Today, I was walking past where the harborbus picks up (a boat that travels up and down this canal near the center of town). This is, of course, a natural tourist stop, and pickpockets love tourists. So, on the booth, there is a sign (in English) warning that this is a high-zone for getting pickpocketed. Leaning against the side of the booth, not more than a foot away from this sign, is the sketchiest man I have ever seen. Shades, cigarette, hands in his pockets leaning against the booth, his emotionless face silently scanning the streets. He was that guy, for lack of a more descriptive term.

And that pretty much made my day.

København, if we want to be technical about it...

...and not look like stupid Americans.

Hi all, this is Eli Cohen ('11), welcome to my Study Abroad blog. You'll notice that there are old posts from when I was keeping a blog during my internship at EnerNOC. However, as of Monday, August 24, 2009, this is my study abroad blog for Copenhagen. København. So far, this place has been nothing but awesome. I'm glad I spent the summer in Boston prior to coming here so I could adjust to challenges of learning a transit system, cooking for myself, etc. before coming here to do all that in another language (well, partially in another language; there's plenty of English speakers).

Some things I've learned about money in my first 36 hours that are worth sharing.

1. "Everything costs more in Denmark" is only somewhat true. Most things cost more, and certainly eating out costs more. However, many common groceries have proven to be the same price or even cheaper than American goods (note: I've only been to two supermarkets, one which I'm told was cheap, one I've been told was average). I got a large box of corn flakes for about $2-$3 and a 1.5L carton of fruit juice for $2 (usually something like $4 for a half-gallon). And this is including the 25% sales tax. Which brings me to my next point:
2. It is the law in Denmark to include sales tax in the posted price. That means that when it says something costs 50 kr. (Danish kroner or DKK) that is the amount you will pay the store. None of that fussy "This $30 thing actually costs $31.50" business.
3. All that said, anything that could be thought of as a luxury item definitely costs significantly more. I went into a board game store thinking, "These are German board games, they'd probably cost a little less here than in the states." Turns out, the opposite is true. Games that cost $40 in the US cost about $70-$80 here. That also goes for movie rentals and purchases, video games, CDs (although those are less inflated), cafe food, and many other items.
4. Public transportation is expensive. DIS is buying passes for us, but we paid for them in a sense when we paid for tuition. Same goes for books; they're "free" for us in the sense that we're not paying for them right now.
5. Larger grocery stores are required by law to be closed most Sundays. It's an equalizing measure, of sorts. You're only allowed to be open every day if you're small; once you hit a certain size of store, you can only be open the first Sunday of each month. Helps the mom & pop stores out, I suppose.
   

That's all the insight I can muster right now. I'm going to go to the grocery store to get some dinner things. Unless something really interesting comes up, my next post will be about where I'm living (there will be pictures!)

Revving up for Denmark

It's true, my Denmark trip is less than a month away, and I'm learning new lessons about the power of serendipity.

I picked the DIS program as my study-abroad for a number of reasons; the choice of classes, positive reviews of the program, etc. However, since committing to the program, two pieces of news have come out that I'm extremely excited about.

1) The UN Climate Change Conference is taking place in Copenhagen in December. Sure, it'll be happening while I'm trying to write my final papers and whatnot, but it will be a great change of pace to see environmental issues become local news.

2) Greenland is taking steps towards independence from Denmark. There are definite environmental and economic issues involved, and it will be great to talk to Danes about this.

Neither of these things were public knowledge (at least among the average American college student) when I chose this program, but now that they're happening, I feel like I got lucky. It's like Denmark is actively working to help me with my Peace Studies research!

Less than four weeks to go!

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you probably thought Greenland was thriving with plant life.

Sweet Caroline (BAH BAH BAH...)

On Saturday I attended the big July 4th celebration on the Boston esplanade. The main act was Neil Diamond, who was cheesy as ever. Plus, the Boston Pops and a few other musical acts were part of the show, and the fireworks were set to music as well. It was a pretty fun time.

There was one particular song in the lineup that reminded me of a number of conversations I've had during the school year about American identity. For the time-constricted, the song more or less says that America is about lemonade stands, high school proms, and driving around in a Chevy. You may be surprised to find out that I don't feel particularly represented by that version of America. Another verse mentions helping out the neighbors, and I couldn't help but think, "...as long as they grew up in the same white, rural area as I did."

Admittedly, I knew what I was getting into when I went to a 4th of July fireworks show. I wasn't expecting anything more out of the show. For example, when Neil Diamond failed to point out that women in the Congo died for his audio equipment, I wasn't particularly surprised or disappointed. Like I said, I knew what I was getting into. And yet, I couldn't help but notice the cultural, social and environmental issues at play.

We blew up 2500 points of fireworks on the 4th, and that's just one show in one city. Looking just to the right of the flashing lights, one could see a huge, slow-moving cloud of thick smoke. Thankfully, we weren't downwind of it, but some folks were, and that can't be healthy. Plus the material costs. Tons of metal and plastic wasted for, more or less, a big shiny thing. It's a very pretty shiny thing, but no amount of shiny things are worth that level of damage, in my opinion.

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you probably also yell "BAH BAH BAH" and "so good! so good! so good!" during Sweet Caroline, but don't actually know any of the lyrics.

Nobody puts coal in their stockings anymore...

So, we all know coal is bad, from an environmental standpoint. It contributes to global warming, and it kills fish. This so-called "clean coal" is more or less non-existent; you've all see the commercials. So why do we still use it?

Well, the obvious answer is "the oil companies are run by people who care more about money than the environment," and that would be true. But as it turns out, the story is more complicated than that.

As much as we don't like coal, it has one major advantage over renewable energy: it's consistent. If you burn one ton of coal, you're going to get the same number of megawatt-hours from it every time. With solar and wind, we're at the mercy of weather. If it's a cloudy day, a solar panel array could operate at 75% or 50% or 25% of its capacity, and we'd be left in the dark (literally). If we rely too heavily on wind power, what happens when it's just not a windy day in Kansas? Believe it or not, that actually happens sometimes.

The problem is that the supply of energy changes over time. Luckily, there are companies like EnerNOC, dealing in demand response. Offically, we call our service Demand Response, but it could be Supply Response as well. When a power plant goes down, we call an event, just like we would any other time (see earlier posts for an explanation of what EnerNOC does).

So, another reason I like EnerNOC? They're making a grid that relies more and more on unstable sources of energy like wind and solar a possibility. We couldn't just build solar panels and hope things work out, but by coupling solar/wind and demand response, we have a solution that's truly sustainable.

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, I'm totally putting coal in your stocking this Christmas.

Transmission Lines

Man, I don't know how people update these things every day. Welcome back to my blog, after two weeks of me having too much fun to pay attention.

I recently learned some things about transmission lines. Transmission lines, for the uninitiated, are high-voltage power lines used to transmit electricity across long distances. These are not the power lines that you would see out on the street in your neighborhood; those are called distribution lines. They're lower voltage (though still dangerous) and are used to distribute electricity to homes.

Transmission lines have everything to do with why we haven't stepped up renewable energy as much as we could. I came into this job thinking "so, if we just build a crapload of wind turbines and solar panels, all our problems will be solved, right?" Well, not really. It turns out that solar panels work best in the middle of the Southwest in the desert, miles and miles from large cities. And wind turbines work best in the great plains, miles and miles from large cities. But this power is truly needed in places like New York City, LA, Chicago, etc. So what do we do? We can't just build a power source, we have to connect it to the folks who need power.

The problem we face is that it's not worth it for the grid operator to build hundreds of miles of high-capacity transmission lines to pick up a few measly megawatts here or there. In order to make it worth their while, a grid operator needs to get a significant pile of power from this very, very costly investment. When small groups say "Hey, we built twelve turbines in the middle of South Dakota! Hook us up to the grid!" the grid operator laughs in their face, as well they should. And if the grid operator isn't going to hook up the turbines, it's not worth it to build them in the first place.

One possible solution to kick-start the process is for one very bank of wind turbines or solar panels to all be built at once. The grid operator will build out to the middle of nowhere, giving way for smaller setups to be built nearby.

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you're probably the sort of person who thinks wind turbines are "totally lame."

More Thoughts

It turns out, actually living life gets in the way of writing a blog sometimes. I can't update the blog from work (I'm supposed to be... y'know... working) and when I get home, I like hanging out with my brother, Michael (who I'm living with) and just relaxing. I have lots to say, but I've consistently lacked the willpower to put it into words. I imagine this will only get more difficult when I go to Denmark in the fall.

One of my favorite things about EnerNOC so far has been the lateral nature of the company. Everyone is an expert in their own area, and has the collective trust of the company in that area. It's cooperative. While everyone technically has a boss, requests from the boss don't necessarily mean more than requests from a member of another group. When anyone makes a request, you're expected to do what you can. There's none of this "you're not my boss" that you might find at another company.

This setup is also evidenced by the fact that interns are trusted and given real work to do. I've only done one typical office intern job (I went on a coffee run before our first big event). Everything else I've done has been critical to the overall performance of the team. I've been making changes to the system since day 1. In most cases, every correct change I make is one more business that can participate in our demand response program, and every mistake I make is one company that gets left out. I know what's at stake, and I take their trust seriously.

That said, it's really a fun place to work. First of all, the NOC looks like the future.

I mean, look at that. The first three rows in the NOC have these huge three-screen monitors. I want one so bad.

Then there's the giant wall screen up front. It has eight sections, each of which has some piece of information about event readiness and likelihood. There's usually a weather report (events are much more likely on hot days). There's also an event likelihood calculator (next to the weather). As you can tell from all the green, event likelihood was low across the board that day. Which probably explains how someone had time to wander around taking pictures :-)

By contrast, us interns are in our own room in the corner of the NOC (it's just to the left of where the picture ends). Last summer, it was affectionately dubbed "the ICU," or "Intern Containment Unit." We lack triple-monitors, but we do get our own little space, which has been fun. We're all in our early-to-mid 20's, and we've got at least office-level friendship going. Everyone I work with is good-natured and dedicated, which isn't surprising given the nature of the company.

That's all I can think of to share. I'm toeing the line between giving lots of detail at the risk of boring/confusing everyone, and giving little detail at the risk of leaving you all wondering what the heck it is I'm actually talking about. The best way I can make this blog interesting, I think, is to answer your questions. Otherwise, I'm just going to ramble, and that seems like a waste. So ask me something about EnerNOC, or about demand response, or anything else. I'll try to answer in a somewhat entertaining way.

The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily the views of the company (EnerNOC, Inc). If you thought otherwise, you're probably an overzealous lawyer.