30 Jul, 2009
On My Other Blog . . .
I'm excited by the challenge. What's that? The idea of doing a blog over here (on electrical contracting) and a blog over there (for electrical distributors).
While the blog software/formatting isn't yet set-up on the site, the first "blog version" posted earlier this week. I'm pretty happy with it, but then, I wrote it. Maybe you'll like it? There's data on electrical contractor employment, electrical distributor employment, and the U-6 unemployment rate (which is going up, now nearly 17%).
Please take a look!
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30 Jul, 2009
How To Avoid An Appraisal Update
The complicated part is how prefab fits in. The article seems to say -- build modular, it's faster.
The exact interface between this idea (which isn't exactly news) and the Freddie Mac issue kinda eludes me, but here it is. I never said I was all that smart.
Maybe you can figure it out!!!
30 Jul, 2009
Ignore The Electrical Stuff
Here's a case in point -- a feature from Builder magazine, "10 things you must put in your next home." Are any of them about energy efficiency, lighting, home networking, home automation, or such? How about an EnOcean wireless light switch? How about The Clapper?
No.
30 Jul, 2009
Selective Coordination
As Littelfuse makes fuses, the article as written is . . . well, about - fuses!
30 Jul, 2009
Dedicated Equipment Space
The requirement most often missed is dedicated equipment space (NEC
110.26(F)). It states that the space equaling the width and depth of
the equipment from the floor to a height of 6 ft above the unit must be
clear of any work foreign to the electrical installation (see Figure
2). This means that only equipment dedicated to the electrical system
can be installed in this area. As such, no cable tray, conduit, or
other IT infrastructure or mechanical piping can be installed in this
space.
30 Jul, 2009
AARP & Electrical Meters
29 Jul, 2009
IES Stock -- On The Move!!!
Above, find a past-30-days stock-price chart for IESC, the stock of Integrated Electrical Services -- created on www.bigcharts.com. IES is the largest "pure play" electrical contractor (EMCOR Group is bigger, but has other operaitons).
Apparently, IESC has run up by better than 50% in the past month. In the same period, the S&P 500 average is up 5.7%.
What does this mean? I looked for news, and found only that the company will announce quarterly earnings/sales/etc. on Aug. 10. Perhaps someone knows something -- something good?
All else that I know is that Tontine Partners owns a rather big slug of IESC stock -- and has said it might want to get rid of some or all of it. Could that be a catalyst for someone or other thinking there's going to be a takeover?
29 Jul, 2009
Execs Hog Pay
That explains a lot, doesn't it?
And: Is it really surprising that the guys (and gals) who get to decide who-gets-paid-what allocate a big piece of the pie to themselves? Is it, really?
This, folks, is why unions sprang from the ground in this country many decades ago. I do not predict a recurrence. But if you want to look at why the average American is so angry, it is this fact . . . not necessarily the fact itself (i.e., people do not seem to be angry with their bosses, generally speaking) -- but the consequences of the non-executive worker bees getting a progressively smaller piece of the pie.
Obama is accused of being a socialist, by some. For all I know, he might be. For all I can tell, he might be taking the U.S. on a socialist path (after all, we now have a sort-of socialism for the wealthy executives who run very-big U.S. corporations, financial and otherwise, don't we?).
Here's the problem for those accusing the guy of this: Socialism might actually become welcome in this country, in all but name.
29 Jul, 2009
Electrical Demand To Drop 2%
Mish is not an energy analyst. He writes about financial stuff. I've read his stuff, on and off, for years.
As he notes: Coal consumption is down 5.2% this year, "but it expected to rise only 1.6% in 2010."
29 Jul, 2009
Reed's Non-Residential Numbers
Perhaps also of interest, here are RCD's numbers for the $ value of construction starts in the year's first half:
Residential -- DOWN 49.3%
Non-residential Building -- DOWN 27.5%
Heavy Engineering -- DOWN 7.7%
TOTAL -- down 31.6%
Non-residential Building -- DOWN 27.5%
Heavy Engineering -- DOWN 7.7%
TOTAL -- down 31.6%
That's not very far from McGraw-Hill Construction's assessment, which was (a few posts back) down 36% for total construction start $ values in 2009's first six months.
28 Jul, 2009
Rescuing Street Elephants
It doesn't have to be this way.
28 Jul, 2009
COMPLEX: U.K. Electrician Search
Type 'electrician' into the national database of qualifications and you'll get a list of 84 accredited qualifications. These are offered by 11 different awarding bodies, in turn drawing from 292 different occupational standards under the heading of 'electrical trades'. These standards have been developed by 13 different standard-setting bodies or Sector Skills Councils.
So far, so traceable. But then we turn to funding, inspection and auditing; a conservative estimate is of a further 30 organisations involved here. In total, this means potentially more than 50 different bodies to design, fund, assure and develop the competent changing of a light bulb.
So far, so traceable. But then we turn to funding, inspection and auditing; a conservative estimate is of a further 30 organisations involved here. In total, this means potentially more than 50 different bodies to design, fund, assure and develop the competent changing of a light bulb.
28 Jul, 2009
Solar's Future + Workforce Needs
Here's the piece on field installer needs:
On the integrator front, Swanson recounted SunPower’s accelerated
ability to deploy systems at a clip well up the GW-scale—or at least
mondo-megawatt-scale—learning curve. He said the company’s team in
Spain installed about 180 MW of utility-scale PV there last year,
proving their ability to install 1-2MW/day in the field. Much of that
improved velocity has to do with the company’s development of
factory-manufactured, integrated systems optimized for rapid
deployment.
If we run those numbers on a per-annum basis, one team of a few hundred trained installers has the chops to put up more than 700MW of ground-mounted PV in a year (realistically, the numbers wouldn't add up the same for rooftop installations). Multiply that out to at least several teams per firm and then to scores of enterprises, and the notion of dozens if not hundreds of gigawatts of PV getting installed worldwide on an annual basis becomes credible—with the usual caveats of financing, smart and enhanced production, proper policy, solid training, and the like.
A straight extrapolation to 500GW per annum would mean a workforce increase into the millions, in just 20 years. Although the recruitment and training implications of such explosive growth boggle the noggin, Swanson factors in a sizeable discounting in his estimates, seeing more like a million or so employed in the solar sector—a not-insubstantial global headcount.
If we run those numbers on a per-annum basis, one team of a few hundred trained installers has the chops to put up more than 700MW of ground-mounted PV in a year (realistically, the numbers wouldn't add up the same for rooftop installations). Multiply that out to at least several teams per firm and then to scores of enterprises, and the notion of dozens if not hundreds of gigawatts of PV getting installed worldwide on an annual basis becomes credible—with the usual caveats of financing, smart and enhanced production, proper policy, solid training, and the like.
A straight extrapolation to 500GW per annum would mean a workforce increase into the millions, in just 20 years. Although the recruitment and training implications of such explosive growth boggle the noggin, Swanson factors in a sizeable discounting in his estimates, seeing more like a million or so employed in the solar sector—a not-insubstantial global headcount.
28 Jul, 2009
MHC's June Construction Data
That puts the "Dodge Index" of new construction starts at 82 for June, down from 87 in May. The index is arranged so that "100" = construction activity in the year 2000.
There's also this: The half-year UNadjusted data. It's noteworthy to me that the decline in Nonresidential is starting to equal (in percentage terms) the drop in Residential.
YEAR-TO-DATE CONSTRUCTION STARTS
Unadjusted Totals, In Millions of Dollars
| 6 Mo. 2009 | 6 Mo. 2008 | % Change | |
| Nonresidential Building | $79,135 | $134,130 | -41 |
| Residential Building | 50,516 | 93,468 | -46 |
| Nonbuilding Construction | 65,792 | 78,012 | -16 |
| Total Construction | $195,443 | $305,610 | -36 |
28 Jul, 2009
Debt Sales
However, the US government isn’t quite ready for high inflation. It has
USD 11.4 trillion in outstanding debt, and this is growing by over USD
6 billion per day.
The average maturity of the federal debt is only four years and, hence, a quarter needs refinancing every year.
With USD 2 trillion net financing for 2009, the federal government needs to raise about USD 10 billion per day.
The average maturity of the federal debt is only four years and, hence, a quarter needs refinancing every year.
With USD 2 trillion net financing for 2009, the federal government needs to raise about USD 10 billion per day.
24 Jul, 2009
Direct Payments For Renewables
Here's a February DOE article on the thing, which is part of the Stimulus.
The grants are also available for renewable energy facilities that
would normally earn a business energy credit of 10%-30%, including
systems using fuel cells, solar energy, small wind turbines, geothermal
energy, microturbines, and combined heat and power (CHP) technologies.
To earn a grant, the facility must be placed in service in 2009 or
2010, or construction must begin in either of those years and must be
completed prior to the termination of the PTC. For facilities that
would normally earn a business tax credit, construction must be
completed prior to 2017.
And here's a July 9 DoE release on the $3 billion available.
. . . the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Energy
today announced an estimated $3 billion for the development of
renewable energy projects around the country and made available the
guidance businesses will need to submit a successful application.
Funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery
Act), the program will provide direct payments in lieu of tax credits
in support of an estimated 5,000 bio-mass, solar, wind, and other types
of renewable energy production facilities.
24 Jul, 2009
Slow Stimulus - Part Of The Why
But here's something I know to be true: A big piece of the money ($244B, or 31%) went into tax credits and tax cuts). Here's a blow-by-blow description from The Reason Foundation (which, admittedly, is biased against the thing).
Short of mailing checks to the taxpayers (as the Bush Administration did, twice) -- or dropping $100 bills out of helicopters, as Ben Bernanke once jokingly suggested -- it apparently takes time to get government money "put to work."
24 Jul, 2009
Deeply Entrenched Downturn
Summary: After three months of holding steady, the ongoing slowdown in business conditions at architecture firms accelerated again in June. The Architecture Billings Index (ABI) score fell to 37.7, its lowest point since February, indicating that the downturn may be more deeply entrenched than anticipated.
It has now been 18 months since the ABI has reported a score above 50. (ABI scores above 50 indicate growth; a score below 50 indicates decline.) On the other hand, the index of inquiries into new projects had a score of 53.8 this month, marking the fourth consecutive month that growth has been reported. While this is an encouraging sign, business will continue to be tough until these inquiries tu
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24 Jul, 2009
Smarter Plugs
John La Grou unveils an ingenious new technology that will smarten up
the electrical outlets in our homes, using microprocessors and RFID
tags. The invention, Safeplug, promises to prevent deadly accidents
like house fires -- and to conserve energy.
Hat tip: Mike Holt!24 Jul, 2009
Plug-In 2009 In 3 Weeks
24 Jul, 2009
EMCOR NY Region $$$
Of interest: EMCOR Group's electrical sales in the area are given as $440 million in 2008. In that company's 2008 annual report, electrical construction revenues are given as $1.7 billion. Therefore, one-fourth (25.88%, to be precise) of EMCOR's electrical revenues came from the NY metro area.
On the mechanical side, it's almost $477M out of $2.475B, or 19.27%.
22 Jul, 2009
Electrical Construction & Smart Grid
“The Obama administration has made the smart grid a high priority, and we have the technology to make it a reality,” Johnston said. “But the technology requires a new level of coordination between systems on both the customer and utility ends of the service point.”
Functionally, “service point” refers to “the junction where a utility’s wiring ends and a customer’s wiring begins,” Johnston said. In a smart grid, not only will a customer’s power usage be recorded, but that information will be communicated back to the power generation and transmission facilities in real time. This data will then allow the utility to “shed load” when demand for power is low and step it up when demand increases.
“It’s a true demand response system,” Johnston said. “The good news is that the highway is already built – meaning we have a linked system of power generation, transmission, and distribution. With the smart grid, we’re going to be adding instrumentation such as sensors, relays and other technologies to communicate what’s going on and automatically modify what’s going out based on that information.”
22 Jul, 2009
Energy Intensity
USA + EU 4.6% of world's population, 25.9% of GDP, using 20.5% of its energy.
European Union 7.5% of world's population, 31.1% of GDP, using 15.9% of its energy.
China + India 37.1% of world's population, 8.1% of GDP, using 19.7% of its energy.
European Union 7.5% of world's population, 31.1% of GDP, using 15.9% of its energy.
China + India 37.1% of world's population, 8.1% of GDP, using 19.7% of its energy.
Whether you "believe" in global warming or are a skeptic, this is NOT good. Source of the data was "various US/EU sources" and it was all dated to 2006.
22 Jul, 2009
Ticking Time Bomb
Commercial real estate is, it says here, a Ticking Time Bomb. David Bodamer, editor-in-chief of Retail Traffic magazine (and one terrific blogger), gets to the nub of the thing. I bolded a key phrase, which (if you're not already aware of it), you're going to hear a lot more about in the coming months:
One question: How can commercial real estate be a “ticking time bomb” when we’re already more than two years into the sector’s decline?
This testimony is occurring as a wave of new data hits us that shows that commercial real estate has already been hit very, very hard. We got the June same-store sales data today. Sales came in down between 4.3 percent and 5.1 percent, depending on whose numbers you look at.
Reis also released new numbers on shopping center and regional mall vacancies showing vacancies have hit 17-year highs. A report from Real Capital Analytics shows that commercial real estate worth $108 billion is now in default, foreclosure or bankruptcy. Isn’t the correction playing out? What exactly does the industry need?
The real problem at hand is the volume of refinancing that needs to be done in the coming years in the face of the fact that the securitization machine–which had accounted for up to 40 percent of annual commercial real estate financing by 2006 and 2007–is completely shut down.
Other sources of financing–commercial banks, life insurance companies, etc.–are still out there. They have tightened underwriting standards for sure and loan sizes are dramatically smaller than in the past. But they are out there. Moreover, there are government programs in place to address this–namely, the TALF and the PPIP.
In fact, today there were more announcements about PPIP that should supposedly get the program moving. (To be fair, though, there are major doubts that the PPIP will ever work.)
This testimony is occurring as a wave of new data hits us that shows that commercial real estate has already been hit very, very hard. We got the June same-store sales data today. Sales came in down between 4.3 percent and 5.1 percent, depending on whose numbers you look at.
Reis also released new numbers on shopping center and regional mall vacancies showing vacancies have hit 17-year highs. A report from Real Capital Analytics shows that commercial real estate worth $108 billion is now in default, foreclosure or bankruptcy. Isn’t the correction playing out? What exactly does the industry need?
The real problem at hand is the volume of refinancing that needs to be done in the coming years in the face of the fact that the securitization machine–which had accounted for up to 40 percent of annual commercial real estate financing by 2006 and 2007–is completely shut down.
Other sources of financing–commercial banks, life insurance companies, etc.–are still out there. They have tightened underwriting standards for sure and loan sizes are dramatically smaller than in the past. But they are out there. Moreover, there are government programs in place to address this–namely, the TALF and the PPIP.
In fact, today there were more announcements about PPIP that should supposedly get the program moving. (To be fair, though, there are major doubts that the PPIP will ever work.)
22 Jul, 2009
The Disabled, Counted
41.2 million people with "some level." That equals 15% of the civilian noninstitutionalized population ("noninstitutionalized" means not in a medical facility or in a prison).
6% of children 5 to 15
12% of people 16 to 64
41R% of those 65+
12% of people 16 to 64
41R% of those 65+
Of those 41.2M, 11 million "need personal assistance with everyday activiites." 3.3M age 15+ are in a wheelchair, with 10.2M needing to use "a cane, crutches, or walker" to get around.
Blind or "unable to see printed words at all" = 1.8 million of those age 15+
Deafness = 1.0 million of those 15+
- - - - -
16.1 million people "who have a mental or emotional illness that interferes with daily activities = 7% of the population 15+.
13.3 million people age 16-64 with a medical condition "that makes it difficult to find a job or remain employed."
46% of those 21-64 who said they had some type of disability worked in the past year anyway. That includes 31% of those classified as having a severe disability.
Poverty: 9% of those without a disability live below the poverty line. For those with a disability, it's 12%.
22 Jul, 2009
IES Exec Talks
Unfortunately for those of us who like things easy, the Q-and-A is spread over 6 web pages of the BF site. To my way of working (and thinking), this makes it very hard to read.
Guba is part of the team put in place by Mike Caliel, the guy in charge these days at IES. Here's a piece of what he had to say about what the group found at the company upon arrival:
I'll give you a summary of what happened. When we started we had 27
fully autonomous business units that had never been integrated; we had
never had an integration strategy, and we had business leaders who
pretty much set their own agendas. We had localized reporting that
resulted in little transparency, so it was very difficult to understand
what was going on in the business.
We had controllers in each of the 27 companies who were backward-looking and who tended to be scorekeepers. There wasn't a lot of capacity for forecasting or understanding KPIs. We had some control weaknesses, and a lot of those resulted from personnel issues and problematic processes and systems.
Finance was historically aligned to local presidents and not to the finance function within IES, yet it had very little in the way of business partnership relationships with these presidents. From a market standpoint, business development was purely localized and opportunistic. So our role was to come in and develop a strategy that could tackle these problems and restructure the company.
Guba provides a lot more detail, of course (4300 words' worth!). Here's what he said in answer to a Q about "change management" issues [I bolded a key sentence at the end] that resulted from the wholesale revamp the new management pursued:
The big challenge for us was that people in the business thought
that this had never been done before, that it couldn't be done, and
that it would break the business. There was major concern that the key
leaders would leave and take all the business with them because they
had all the relationships. So there was a huge risk that we would lose
the key players and damage the business.
We worked through it openly. We had a high degree of transparency
when we made the decision to eliminate the controller jobs at the local
company levels and consolidate them centrally. There was a whole change
management process to go through to treat people fairly and communicate
what we were going to do and how we were going to operate as people's
roles changed.
Of course not everyone accepted the new direction we were taking, so we parted ways when necessary as amicably as possible. And we were able to actually prove that many of the folks didn't have as much of a stranglehold on the business, markets, and customers as we were led to believe.
20 Jul, 2009
Good News On Housing
20 Jul, 2009
VIDEO: Stray Voltage
20 Jul, 2009
Bogus Baloney
20 Jul, 2009
Electrical Podcasts
Smart Grid
Energy Efficiency
Inside the Electroindustry
Electric Minute
Energy Efficiency
Inside the Electroindustry
Electric Minute
20 Jul, 2009
$800 To Change Toilet Seat
500 pounds = more than $800. What's going on here? "The Home Office contracts work to a firm which has regional 'hubs' . . . " -- so a plumber goes from Birmingham to Norwich (and back) just to replace a toilet seat.
And for a cost of "at least pounds 250" ($400 or more), "an electrician drove 200 miles from Newmarket to Birmingham to mend a switch."
Why not use a local service? It's not part of the plan. According to the article, "window cleaners are also criss-crossing the country, staying overnight in hotels."
20 Jul, 2009
Back
20 Jul, 2009
Nonresidential Non-recovery
You need to see it (click on the words above). In addition to presenting the consensus, it allows you to get at any single source's 2009-2010 forecast by "rolling over" (with your mouse) the name of the source -- McGraw-Hill, FMI, Economy.com, Reed, etc.
The gist:
2009 = nonresidential construction spending to finish down 16%. That augurs a pretty rotten 2nd half.
2010 = some moderation in the decline, so the year's decline comes in at -12%. That's not such wonderful news.
2010 = some moderation in the decline, so the year's decline comes in at -12%. That's not such wonderful news.
Of the various sources, Reed Construction Data shows the most moderate declines. FMI (which is the home of the construction industry's leading consulting firm) has 2010 actually worse than 2009.
