The Ponytail blog
Notes on energy, drift, and the buildings that waste it.
What we learn reading large campuses overnight — how buildings quietly drift off plan, what it costs, and how the forensics actually work.
5 min read
How a Faulty Meter Tripled Our Steam Reading
Steam use at our Central Dining Hall tripled in two years, and the meter had an airtight story for why. It was wrong. A whodunit about dead-end theories, two AI assistants arguing with each other, and the wrench that finally told the truth.
Jonathan Pierson
Case studySteamFault detection
8 min read
18 of 20 Sensors Were Reading Low, and We Almost Fixed the Wrong Thing
We pulled a 30-year-old steam distiller out of Garwood Hall to cut steam load. The steam went up instead. Chasing why ran through simultaneous heating and cooling in July, an AI that confidently misdiagnosed a room, and the discovery that eighteen of twenty zone sensors had been quietly reading low.
Jonathan Pierson
Case studySteamControls