31 Jan, 2010
Can't Pawn Tools
31 Jan, 2010
'Solar On A Stick'
31 Jan, 2010
Digital Lumens Raised $5M
31 Jan, 2010
Data Center: 27% Energy Cut
28 Jan, 2010
Green Training Projects
28 Jan, 2010
Pre-Wire Your New Home
What's going on here? The article offered an explanation, right at the very top:
High speed internet, on-demand movies, and a need for
both hundreds of live channels of content and most recently, dynamic
in-home media content to every TV is catching many a homeowner off
guard and causing a lot of extra wire retrofits
Make no mistake; trying to get wires to where you want them after walls are already finished can cost thousands of dollars and in some instances be nearly impossible. The best plan is to prepare during the building process, but even the up front process of thinking through every future option can be daunting. Luckily, there are a lot of great resources to help you through the whole process, and this guide is a good start.
The problem is that unless you are regularly keeping track of technology advancements, it would be difficult for you to predict and plan for what you will want or need 5 years from now. The people that seem like on-the-edge geeks are pioneering new technologies and methods and determining what will become mainstream. The truth is, you cannot possibly completely future-proof your home, but you can certainly plan the next 5 or 10 years, greatly increase the value of your home, and have a great time doing it.
28 Jan, 2010
Google To Sell Power (?)
Unlike the utility business (preferred place-of-residence for dinosaurs that didn't die 70 million years ago), Google is creative.
I am betting this news had 1,100 utility execs looking for brown underwear . . .
28 Jan, 2010
Wireless Locks
- - - - -
What’s Wrong with Mechanical Locks and Keys?
The fundamental problem with trying to control access with mechanical locks and keys is that the facilities professional can’t really control access:
- They have no way of knowing if and when a lock was opened.
- They don’t know if and when someone tried, but failed, to open a lock.
- Most mechanical keys can be copied.
- Most mechanical locks can be picked
It's from an article on Wireless Electronic Access Control. It's worth reading (and thinking about), even if you'll not get into this bizniz.
28 Jan, 2010
Energy Storage - Types
But there's more involved. Here are alternatives from a slide I tore out of a presentation. Slide heading: "Several types of Thermal Storage."
Current used in Industrial Market
Newer concepts
What's this all about? Solar and wind are NOT reliable suppliers of electricity. The wind blows, and blows hard; then it suddenly stops (almost without warning). The variance in solar energy generated can be steep, too, even in sunny places -- first, there are clouds (and pollution) decreasing the power generation; then, of course, the sun disappears at night. High pressure steam
Molten salt
Hot oil
Molten salt
Hot oil
Newer concepts
Solid media beds
Reversible chemical reactions
Porous castable ceramics
Reversible chemical reactions
Porous castable ceramics
So if your utility is going to get to 33% renewables -- as is mandated in California for 2020 -- you're going to lose reliability if you don't figure storage out in the next 10 years. Voila! That's what's happening now.
And we're not talking about a small thing. We're talking UTILITY-SCALE energy storage!!!
28 Jan, 2010
Death Of The Raised Floor?
Believe it or not, 2010 will toll the death knell for the raised floor.
As hot air rises, cool air ends up below the raised floor, where it isn’t doing
much good. In addition, raised floors simply can’t support the weight demands
placed on them by high-density racks. A 42u rack populated with 14 3u servers can weigh up to 1,000 pounds.
Raised floors are simply not efficient operationally. I had the experience many years ago of building a 10,000-foot data center n a large city. Several months after it was built, we began to have intermittent network outages. It took many man-hours to locate the problem: Rats were chewing through the insulation on cables run below the raised floor. Rats aside, additions, reconfigurations and troubleshooting of the cable plant are much easier on your staff when cables are in plain sight.
Raised floors are simply not efficient operationally. I had the experience many years ago of building a 10,000-foot data center n a large city. Several months after it was built, we began to have intermittent network outages. It took many man-hours to locate the problem: Rats were chewing through the insulation on cables run below the raised floor. Rats aside, additions, reconfigurations and troubleshooting of the cable plant are much easier on your staff when cables are in plain sight.
26 Jan, 2010
Energy Harvesting
Well, it's years later. EnOcean is HUGE HUGE HUGE.
If you've ignored Energy Harvesting, Wireless, and Next Generation Building Energy Management -- you need to read an article by that title, at AutomatedBuildings.com, from EnOcean's marketing manager.
Catch up. NOW!
26 Jan, 2010
Smaller, Modular, Green Homes
26 Jan, 2010
Housing, 2009
2008 housing starts: 905,500 total, 622,000 one-family.
2009 (subject to future revisions): 553,800 total, 443,500 one-family.
Lots of people (including the Natl Assn of Home Builders) think 2010 will be better, esp. in one-family construction. I'm not so sure . . . there are a lot of houses on the market (existing homes), and a lot of empty homes NOT on the market (held off by their owners, some of whom are banks).
For NAHB's official mid-October forecast on 2010 housing, see this TEDMAG blog (by yours truly).
26 Jan, 2010
Measuring Overhead Bends
26 Jan, 2010
MHC On '09 -- DOWN 26%
2009 saw a 33% decline in NONresidential building, which employs one heck of a lot more electricians than does Residential (down 31%). It also probably puts more electricians to work than Public ("nonbuilding") construction, down 9% -- that last category includes roads and bridges.
26 Jan, 2010
Emard Electric's Solar Project
That's what you're learn in this release submitted by PV Powered, which makes inverters. Emard bought them via WESCO Distribution. Some quotes:
“We are starting to see a new trend in the Solar Industry,” said Robert
Lopez of WESCO Distribution. “Electrical Contractors are looking to
work with their preferred vendors on products and services for the
solar market, and the value of our project management and design/assist
services make us of tremendous value to our customers.”
AND
“It was key for us to select system components that comply with the Buy
American Act,” said Abe Emard of Emard Electric. “PV Powered is one of
very few inverter suppliers that are US-based, so that got our
attention immediately. But after we learned more about the products and
sampled PV Powered’s high level of technical support, we were sold.”
23 Jan, 2010
Drawing A Blank
ThinkEco, which
showed off its modlet, an electronic outlet that can be controlled from
a Web-based application, allowing users to set schedules for whatever
is plugged into the outlet.
I went to www.thinkecoinc.com, and found nothing about the product.
23 Jan, 2010
Smaller, More-Efficient Homes
Here's the 2010 release.
A slice:
“Not surprisingly, we continue to see a ‘cents and sensibility’
approach when it comes to buying or improving a home, with practicality
and price being top priorities,” says Nusbaum. “Today’s homeowner is
also looking for a home that fits the entire family – from a
multi-tasking home office, to expanding storage space needs, to a
living room that can adapt to advancements in home entertainment and
technology.”
23 Jan, 2010
Backlash Against Clients
In the meantime, there's a blog from a magazine called Residential Design & Build which lists "pet peeves in the custom home market." A slice of it:
Another frequently mentioned pet peeve is a lack of knowledge about
good construction and design practices. Architects and builders who
don’t educate clients along these lines were called out several times.
HEY -- if the customer KNEW about construction, he wouldn't need YOU. It would have been better if this blog had never seen the light. The title says it all:
Clients are annoying.
OH YEAH? How annoying are ZERO clients?
23 Jan, 2010
CA Contractor Comes To Ohio
What's the draw? Utility rebate programs on lighting.
23 Jan, 2010
CE Pro Revamps Site
So it's only fair to note that the magazine has redesigned its site, changing a lot of stuff.
19 Jan, 2010
Lighting Dark Villages w/SOLAR
Plastic solar cells (integrated with batteries and LEDs) -- replacements for kerosene lamps in unlit villages? The "organic PVs" pictured below are "printed roll-to-roll." Think about this . . . no biggie to you, maybe, but a potential miracle for uncounted millions in Africa.
(More)
19 Jan, 2010
UEMPMEAN - Ugly Visual
Double-ugly, right?
19 Jan, 2010
Stacked AFCIs = Overheating Panelboards?
19 Jan, 2010
Modular & LEED
Energy and Atmosphere:Increasing energy costs and growing concern about energy availability and security are sure to keep the interest in energy conservation and renewable or alternative energy
sources in the forefront of the high performance green building
movement. Modular construction has a number of potential advantages –
it uses structural insulated panels (SIPS) that can produce relatively
high R-values, steel and aluminum stud frame construction that can
produce energy-efficient units, and high-performance windows that contribute to the pursuit of high-performance building envelopes.
19 Jan, 2010
PPPs
See the result here.
(yeah, I know this is off-topic -- but it DOES have something to do with construction)
19 Jan, 2010
Copper
I came down on Mr. Chanos's side. And I ended up with a two-part piece for TEDMAG's Special Report blog:
Part One
Part Two
18 Jan, 2010
Vibrations-to-Energy
Known as 'energy harvesting', the concept has been around for over a
decade, but researchers from the University of Bristol aim to make it
possible to make use of a much wider range of vibrations than is
currently possible.
It's hoped that within five years 'energy harvesting' could be powering many more of our devices from heart monitors to mobile phones.
That's from an article on Phys.org. More:
The team are exploring how vibrations caused by machines such as helicopters and trains could be used to produce power. Vibrations from household appliances and the movement of the human body could also be harnessed in this way.
Commercial energy-harvesting devices already exist which, for instance, use vibrations from industrial pumps to power sensors monitoring the pumps' condition.
"Vibration energy-harvesting devices use a spring with a mass on the end", says Dr Stephen Burrow, who is leading the project. "The mass and spring exploit a phenomenon called resonance to amplify small vibrations, enabling useful energy to be extracted. Even just a few milliwatts can power small electronic devices like a heart rate monitor or an engine temperature sensor, but it can also be used to recharge power-hungry devices like MP3 players or mobile phones."
18 Jan, 2010
Schneider Goes Solar
Of additional interest: FIVE IMPLEMENTATION TIPS, reprinted here:
Vincent
Throop, senior application engineer, North American Operating Division,
Schneider Electric, served as project manager for the installation. He
gave some friendly advice during the first hour of power:
1. Contact planning and zoning and local electric utility representatives first. Turns out this was the first such project in the area, so everyone was breaking new ground.
2. Produce renderings of the project early on to help educate all involved.
3. Timing: "While we started a year ago, depending on project size, we probably could have finished in four or five months, if we devoted a little more time to it."
4. Optimization versus complexity: While the 8-cell panels could follow the sun, these do not; to do so was not deemed worth the costs involved.
5. Find strong partners. Schneider Electric thanked many for help with the project, including electrical contractor, JC Power & Control Inc., www.jcpower.com.
1. Contact planning and zoning and local electric utility representatives first. Turns out this was the first such project in the area, so everyone was breaking new ground.
2. Produce renderings of the project early on to help educate all involved.
3. Timing: "While we started a year ago, depending on project size, we probably could have finished in four or five months, if we devoted a little more time to it."
4. Optimization versus complexity: While the 8-cell panels could follow the sun, these do not; to do so was not deemed worth the costs involved.
5. Find strong partners. Schneider Electric thanked many for help with the project, including electrical contractor, JC Power & Control Inc., www.jcpower.com.
18 Jan, 2010
Work Where You Live, Etc.
More than 34 million U.S. workers now telecommute at least part time, and some analysts predict that the number of teleworkers in the U.S. will reach 63 million by the year 2016 as corporations look for ways to reduce their operating expenses and carbon footprints.
Add in the fact that more than 14% of all U.S. households already contain a home-based business (and that’s according to Small Business Administration estimates prior to the downturn) and you’ve got yourself a pretty hefty case for flexible plans that can accommodate workstations, inventory storage, meeting space, and maybe even ground floor retail or studio space with exterior signage.
18 Jan, 2010
'Netflix of Batteries'
What? It is
a subscription-based battery service — a Netflix of batteries — where
customers can pick up a fully-charged battery on the way to work or
while shopping for groceries, and a few days later swap out the empty
battery for another charged one.
and
The company has built its first distribution center in rural Tanzania
and placed the location close to local bus and commuting routes. The
batteries are much smaller than a car battery, making them relatively
easy to transport to and from the distribution center. Customers are
used to carrying food and water over the same routes, so adding on a
battery isn’t too much of a stretch, explained Yang.
This might work!
17 Jan, 2010
Solar Module Disposal
Toxins potentially can be
released during the manufacturing process—putting workers at risk—and when
panels finally hit the scrap heap decades later.
I'm sure I don't want to breathe any of that stuff in, and I'm sure I want the workers (on the front end of the solar-module-making process) to be properly protected and monitored.
But let's put this in perspective. Not a gram of nuclear waste has EVER (ever ever ever) been properly disposed. We're talking about the stuff Enrico Fermi first experimented with, in the Manhattan Project, still in a "temporary" holding facility.
I know Grist is on the side of the angels. I know the folks there are tackling this before the anti-solar people (like maybe the coal proponents) get to it. Etc. Etc. Etc.
BUT STILL: Gimme a break!!!!!
17 Jan, 2010
Tool Tracking From The Truck
[after talking about all of the "wired" stuff they are pushing into vehicles these days]
If
you are a contractor or run a business where you and a crew use work
tools, there’s even a Ford truck with an RFID-enabled system from
DeWalt that tracks and manages all your tools and gear. Each tool has
an RFID tag. That lets the system alert you if something is missing so
that you don’t leave tools behind at work sites. Just imagine the
savings from not losing tools
17 Jan, 2010
Mistakes - II
That's why I was attracted to a headline, online from the Atlanta Biz Journal -- "Companies find energy savings in utility bills."
. . . but wait. The piece of it that was neat was this (I've boldfaced the words I really liked):
Loews Vanderbilt Hotel also turned to Revenue Source Group to find
ways to save money. The hotel has saved about $5,000 a year on waste
removal since its audit. The firm also found surcharges that no longer
applied on the hotel’s telephone bills and negotiated lower rates.
“Unless you have somebody in your organization that knows all of the fees and rate structures, you’ve got nothing to lose. It’s savings you wouldn’t have otherwise. You are crazy not to, if they find something, it’s just money in your pocket,” Loews controller Tory Peek says.
Peek wants Revenue Source Group to take a look at the hotel’s water bills, too.
Loews also has started using a third-party natural gas provider that saves the hotel thousands of dollars a year, he says.
17 Jan, 2010
Mistakes
Leafing through a presentation (which I can't find online) by John L. Fetters of Effective Lighting Solutions -- "Back to Basics: Lighting Audits" -- I came across a slide with this:
Heading: Mistake: Failure to Determine if Ballast is Magnetic or Electronic
Bullet -- Don't make assumptions (when see T8 lamps don't assume electronic ballasts)
Bullet -- Check it out
Bullet -- Recent audits found T8 fluorescent lamps on T12 magnetic ballasts and T12 lamps on T8 electronic ballasts.
Bullet -- Check it out
Bullet -- Recent audits found T8 fluorescent lamps on T12 magnetic ballasts and T12 lamps on T8 electronic ballasts.
As you might imagine, it's that final bullet that got me!
15 Jan, 2010
TIPS Is Tip-Top Article
I've written previously about Mr. Evans here (5 times, according to the Search feature). He's very good. Here's a tiny slice of that TIPS article -- an amazing sidebar, short and very potent:
How to use a checklist
Having been a pilot for many years and relying on checklists to save my life, I quickly learned there is an art to using one. To use a checklist properly requires that the person using it pretend they’re brain dead (which probably isn’t far from the truth). Each item must be read out loud with no preconception about the item, and actually checked to see if the item is there/on/loaded/etc. It is always better to use two people, one to read the item aloud, the other to check it is there.
15 Jan, 2010
Quanta Stock Touted By Fortune
The mag just came out with "The Best Stocks in 2010." There are 10 of them -- and Quanta Services is one of them.
I like Quanta. I've spoken with John Colson, The Boss there. I like him. I like the company.
Notes:
a. I won't invest in the company, because I might write about them. I know, it's a dumb rule. Still, it's a rule.
b. Without that rule, I would DEFINITELY buy the stock of Quanta (symbol PWR) --
c. . . . except now that FORTUNE thinks PWR is a buy, I'd . . . definitely, positively, think about changing my mind!
- - - - -
Here's a slice of the FORTUNE bit on Quanta --
Shares fell to $16 in February after utilities delayed spending amid the credit crisis and have since rebounded to $20.
But at 19 times forward earnings, the stock trades well below its five-year average of 27 times earnings, since investors still worry that Quanta's work might be delayed even longer. Analysts predict earnings per share will increase by 30% next year.
The long-term future looks even more promising. In addition to grid spending, which the Brattle Group, a research firm, estimates will total $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion between now and 2030, Quanta will prosper as its transmission lines carry electricity from renewable energy projects like wind and solar farms.
Buoyed by the government's stimulus loan guarantee program for renewable projects, Quanta expects such sales to nearly triple to $300 million in 2010.
CEO John Colson also figures Quanta's recent acquisition of Price Gregory, the country's largest gas pipeline builder, will drive profits in two to three years as natural gas in remote shale formations increasingly needs to be moved across the U.S.
"We haven't been as bullish on the natural-gas market as we are today," he says. "That's going to spur growth over the next several years."
But at 19 times forward earnings, the stock trades well below its five-year average of 27 times earnings, since investors still worry that Quanta's work might be delayed even longer. Analysts predict earnings per share will increase by 30% next year.
The long-term future looks even more promising. In addition to grid spending, which the Brattle Group, a research firm, estimates will total $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion between now and 2030, Quanta will prosper as its transmission lines carry electricity from renewable energy projects like wind and solar farms.
Buoyed by the government's stimulus loan guarantee program for renewable projects, Quanta expects such sales to nearly triple to $300 million in 2010.
CEO John Colson also figures Quanta's recent acquisition of Price Gregory, the country's largest gas pipeline builder, will drive profits in two to three years as natural gas in remote shale formations increasingly needs to be moved across the U.S.
"We haven't been as bullish on the natural-gas market as we are today," he says. "That's going to spur growth over the next several years."
15 Jan, 2010
Smart Grid & Smart Buildings
15 Jan, 2010
EcoBuild Coverage - 5 Posts
Intro to EcoBuild - Plus A Bit About 'GreenSpeak'
Energy Star for Buildings (Portfolio Manager, Plaques, etc.)
Green Stuff -- IGCC, SAVE & NZE
Bits & Pieces (But Not Leftovers) -- on keynote speakers (including the GSA guy), solar and Convia.14 Jan, 2010
Data Center Update
Another realization that finally occurred en masse was that many
previous assumptions about datacenters had been wrong. It had been
thought that you needed to keep your computer room downright chilly in
order to keep the systems in optimum condition -- cold enough to store
meat, in some cases. But Intel set up a datacenter in New Mexico using
only air cooling, and found the only problem it had doing so was dust.
Keeping the datacenter clean was another discovery. The Uptime Institute spent months examining various datacenters and found many of them were a mess. Air flow was blocked by dust or excessive cables. Companies didn't have a good inventory of what they had and often were running hardware that didn't even need to be turned on.
In some ways, it was reminiscent of the preparations for the Year 2000 that went on a decade ago. IT departments were forced to do complete and thorough inventories of what they had and made all kinds of discoveries. In the process, they were able to eliminate overlap, reduce redundancy and clean up their inventories from quite a bit of extraneous systems.
14 Jan, 2010
Contractor Provides 'Hiring Guide'
14 Jan, 2010
Elephant Newsletter
To see what the Trust has been doing with the money it gets, see the 61-page 2009 newsletter (PDF).
14 Jan, 2010
Solar Sign of the Times?
But late last year (reported the 12/29 Orlando Sentinel), the Orlando Utilities Commission requested bids on a large solar plant. It got responses "from 27 teams of bidders" -- an outcome described as "something of a supernova of interest."
Article.
14 Jan, 2010
Green Jobs Training
Release -- see the list of projects just below the seven paragraphs, and, if you want more, click on the link to the PDF (it's 26 pages, lots more info).
14 Jan, 2010
Geothermal & Earthquakes
I checked, and it's not April 1. I don't think this is a joke.
11 Jan, 2010
Employment Report - 2
CONSTRUCTION -- 4,380,000 employed in this industry in December. Comparisons:
November 2009 = 4,632,000 (i.e., down 5.8% in one month)
December 2008 = 5,137,000 (= down 14.7% vs. one year earlier)
December 2006 (best December in the 11 years 1999-2009) = 5,778,000 = 12/09 down 19.8% from peak
- - - - -
ELECTRICAL CONTRACTING -- 610,300 in November (niche numbers always one month behind).
That's down 10,500, or 1.69%, from October. It's down 104,100, or 14.6%, from November 2008.
Note that peak November employment in electrical contracting in the 11 years 1999-2009 came in 2001, at 781,200. That's a big number!
- - - - -
ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTING -- 137,100 employed in November, down 700 from October and down 13,500 (9%) from one year earlier.
Note that the 11-year chart thrown up by the database for Electrical Distributing includes 131 months (from 1/99 to 11/09). The 137,100 figure for November is actually THE WORST on the whole damn chart. Before July, the number of employees in this distribution niche hadn't previously been below 140K in the decade. The figure for November 1999 was 162,500 -- 18.5% higher than the recent (same-month) number.
- - - - -
What does it all mean? The EleBlog take on this is that numbers in electrical construction have held up better than they seem to have a right to. I'm not sure why!
11 Jan, 2010
Norris On Employment Numbers
Lost Decade: Reason to Expect Better.
At the end of 1999, the Labor Department counted 110 million private
sector jobs. The figure for the end of 2009, announced today and
subject to numerous revisions before we get a final figure, was 108.4
million.
That is a decline of 1.4 percent. During the same period the country’s population climbed by about 9.8 percent.
- - - - -
That drew responses; Norris replied to one of them in Lost Decade 2 (posted same day):
. . . at the end of the 1990s, the proportion of the working age population that was 55 to 64 — the people who would hit 65 in the decade just ended — was only 14.6 percent. The youngest of those people had been born in 1944, just before the baby boom.
Now the figure is 19.4 percent. That means nearly a fifth of the current work force will hit 65 over the next decade. That implies the demand for jobs will fall, barring immigration, and that the unemployment rate will also ease.
11 Jan, 2010
Employment Report - 1
Here's the most important paragraph of the various reports -- for me -- from The New York Times:
Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, forecasts that the unemployment rate will reach 10.8 percent by
October. The so-called underemployment rate — which counts people who
have given up looking for work and those who are working part time for
lack of full-time positions — now sits at 17.3 percent.
Why so impt? Zandi has gotten everything right about this housing-led economic cataclysm. He might not remain correct forever, but -- as they say in markets -- "the trend is your friend." Somehow, Zandi has been right when just about EVERYONE ELSE has been wrong.
Go with his read.
(More)
11 Jan, 2010
Foggy, Chance Of Plummet
EleBlog belief: The housing market in 2010 has an equal chance of going up (McGraw-Hill says by 30%) . . . as it does of going down (perhaps not by 30%, however).
Most interesting piece:
. . . it's really the Generation Y cohor -- with three times the population of Generation X -- that will foster in the biggest changes to the building industry, as these "echo" boomers begin to enter the workforce, create their own households,a nd bring their own separate demands to builders of home and apartments.
Yes, the guy really wrote the words "foster in."
11 Jan, 2010
Segway, Philips, Acquisition - July 09
Teletrol makes software and hardware to control lighting and other building energy-using systems at multiple sites from a central control platform. It has installations in more than 10,000 commercial and retail sites around the world.
Now it's part of Philips' lighting electronics group, adding to the group's stable of acquisitions. The Dutch electronics giant has spent $5.4 billion on buying various lighting and energy-related companies from 2005 to 2007, and earlier this year bought Australian lighting control company Dynalite.
and something on Kamen --
Kamen has worked with Philips on the past, recently asking the company to supply LEDs to North Dumpling Island, the island in Long Island Sound that Kamen owns and is setting up to be powered independently of the electricity grid with wind and solar power
. . . better late than never?
11 Jan, 2010
EC's Key Role In Lighting Job
It was J&R Industrial Wiring that approached the school district with an opportunity to provide a higher quality of lighting in its gymnasiums at a lower monthly cost by replacing its pulse-start metal halide ballasts with the award-winning DEMANDflex™ ballasts from Universal Lighting Technologies.
and
Jim Killion with J&R Industrial Wiring did the math for Silver Lake Regional High School and discovered the school district could save 32,400 kW/h—or about $600 per month—by installing 36 fixtures with two 3-lamp DEMANDflex T8 ballasts each in the high school gym
11 Jan, 2010
Green Tape
Dom's words:
"There's also lots of green tape. I think many of you are hearing the term "green tape" for the first time -- where environmentalists are stopping some of the progress . . . there's a very interesting case now . . . environmentalists are fighting wind towers because of bird migration and things like that, so there's a lot of things tied up there."
Can't provide a link, as this is off-line. I googled "green tape" and of the 1st 10 links, 8 of them were about . . . actual tape, colored green. The two links to "green tape" in the meaning Dom provides it above were to a Chamber of Commerce blog (the CofC folks are to the right of Attila the Hun, and he spent a lot of time making sure no one could possibly be meaner!) and the other from the Heritage Foundation (somewhere in between the CofC and Attila, kinda sorta).
07 Jan, 2010
Smart Meter Screw-up
- - - - -
A story from the Whig-Standard in Ontario, Canada goes into the travails of a family that received a $985 electric bill as the result of some sort of smart-meter malfunction.
Hey, that's for ONE MONTH. Here's the lead on the story:
The Kingston family feuding with Hydro One over high
electricity bills -- including one that reached a whopping $985.15 for
a single month -- has received a rebate of $63.93.
A letter from the publicly owned utility referred to the payment as a "gesture of good will."
"It's also kind of insulting," said Heather Wilkins. "I think if they were buying me off, it would be more than $63.93."
Wilkins and her husband, Dave, still suspect the smart meter that was installed on their house last spring gave inaccurate readings that led to their exorbitant bills.
What this proves: Utilities may be automating, but they still behave in the same old (Ty-Rex-like) way. It's hard to shake your DNA, and most power companies are, well, dinosaurs.Here are the (slim) details provided on the whopping error:
On Aug. 6, for example, from 11 a. m. to midnight, consumption was
recorded at 44.5 kilowatt hours. During one hour, from 11 p. m. to
midnight, the draw was nine kilowatt hours -- three times the base load
-- even though no one was in the house at the time because the family
was at their cottage.
Read the thing here. 07 Jan, 2010
China & Green
-- 1,950-word piece from the 12/16 Wall Street Journal. An interesting-to-consider small slice:
China's vast market and economies of scale are bringing down the
cost of solar and wind energy, as well as other environmentally
friendly technologies such as electric car batteries. That could help
address a major impediment to wide adoption of such technologies: They
need heavy subsidies to be economical.
The so-called China price -- the combination of cheap labor and capital that rewrote the rulebook on manufacturing -- is spreading to green technology. "The China price will move into the renewable-energy space, specifically for energy that relies on capital-intensive projects," says Jonathan Woetzel, a director in McKinsey & Co.'s China office.
AND
Green Giant: Beijing's crash program for clean energy
-- 7,000-word piece from the 12/21 New Yorker magazine. A really depressing sentence ends this one:
China is so big—and is growing so fast—that in 2006 it passed the United States to become the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. If China’s emissions keep climbing as they have for the past thirty years, the country will emit more of those gases in the next thirty years than the United States has in its entire history.
07 Jan, 2010
Pre-Fab Publication
Electri 21, the research foundation established like 18 or 19 years ago by NECA, just came out with a publication, Best Practices: Prefabrication for Electrical Contractors.
Click on that link for more information. You don't have to be a member to order the thing.
I've obtained a copy of the PDF, and I intend to review it HERE, in the next week or so.
07 Jan, 2010
Interesting Leftover From September
NECA is run by something called a "Board of Governors." This board, with representatives from each of the org's 120 chapters, votes on things once a year in an annual meeting timed to coincide with NECA's convention. In Seattle in September, they considered Ordinary Proposal #4.
Here's the concluding paragraph:
Therefore, be it RESOLVED that the National Electrical Contractors Association promotes and endorses revising the National Electrical Code on a five-year cycle rather than the existing three-year cycle.
I am told this resolution passed on a voice vote. What does it mean? Nothing, for the immediate future. But . . . it means something!
07 Jan, 2010
Slow
"This is as slow as I've seen it in 30 years" -- Wayne Brockett, owner of Crown Electric Co. (commercial electrical contractor) of Beaumont, Tex.
07 Jan, 2010
Solar Installer Feature
Mark Bauer is energized by the growing alternatives.
Staff as of June =15 -- including one electrical engineer, two electricians and technicians.
Bauer apparently is quite a character. Get this quote, in answer to the question: "Is solar energy really viable in Michigan?"
"If,
in fact, solar doesn't work (in Michigan) then I've sold people a lot
of systems that supposedly haven't been working for years
and years. I think if you came to take one of those systems down and told them that solar doesn't work in Michigan, you would
have an argument on your hands. Because we have people in this state right now that are spinning their meters backward every
day. It works."
(More)
and years. I think if you came to take one of those systems down and told them that solar doesn't work in Michigan, you would
have an argument on your hands. Because we have people in this state right now that are spinning their meters backward every
day. It works."
07 Jan, 2010
Lightning Rods Don't Get It All
Headline: "Lightning rods don't always intercept entire charge."
Interesting piece. Kind of short on details to back up the headline, tho.
05 Jan, 2010
Young Folks Living At Home
What's interesting there: Liz Shuler is the secretary-treasurer of the AFL-CIO. The interesting part for me is that she used to work at the highest level at the IBEW.
Her piece referred to a survey by "Working America" of workers age 18 to 34. I went looking for the survey document, and found it (48-page PDF).
- - - - -
What interested me was her single-line note that "one in three still lives at home with parents." I was hoping to find a break-out (how many 18 year olds still live home, how many 30-year-olds). That wasn't there.
What was (on page 15):
34% of those surveyed (18 to 34, remember) still live with one or both parents.
41% of those who did not graduate from college still do.
52% of those who make less than $30,000/year still do.
41% of those who did not graduate from college still do.
52% of those who make less than $30,000/year still do.
I know those ages 18-34 are not from my generation (I'm 56). But I still find it hard to envision a situation where there are SEVERAL people of an adult age -- some in their 60s, some in their 20s and even 30s -- living together. It would not have worked for me with my parents.
Note that this is NOT about young people taking their parents in when they are older (which is a different thing). This is about still living, in ages 18-19-20 and even 30-31-32-33, in the same situation -- and perhaps, even, the same exact room -- in which one was raised as a child.
For me, that's a Wow!
05 Jan, 2010
Nighttime Solar Power
05 Jan, 2010
Referals For Contractors
An 1,850-word article shares "13 ways to get referrals that reward."
#1 - reward testimonials
#6 - don't let them forget your face
#9 - cold, hard cash
#13 - "party time" (invite customers, trade contractors, and employees to a summer barbecue)
#6 - don't let them forget your face
#9 - cold, hard cash
#13 - "party time" (invite customers, trade contractors, and employees to a summer barbecue)
The guy who wrote it also blogged further on going beyond repeats & referrals.
05 Jan, 2010
Updating Chinese Wage Data
I found updated numbers in "The End of Chimerica," a 2009 paper from Niall Ferguson adn Moritz Schularick.
The data for 2008 show hourly Chinese wages in manufacturing of about $1.20 compared to $31,000 in the U.S.
That's 4%.
05 Jan, 2010
10 Year Investment Results
What $10,000 invested 12/31/1999 would be today across various investable thingies:
- S&P 500: $9,090
- Venture capital: $8,800 (for 1999 vintage funds)
- 10-year Treasuries: $18,000
- Raw materials: $13,803
- Gold: $37,852
05 Jan, 2010
Construction Spending - November Report
Interesting, actual spending (11/09 may yet be revised a bit) in the calendar months of November was down 13.0% from year to year.
Here are component totals for 11 months:
RESIDENTIAL (private) - 29.6%
NONRESIDENTIAL (private) - 10.7%
PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION = + 4.3%
NONRESIDENTIAL (private) - 10.7%
[worst subcategory = "Commercial" (a catch-all category), down 33.9%. Best niche = Manufacturing, up 26.2%]
PUBLIC CONSTRUCTION = + 4.3%
Note that POWER is the leading non-residential category, at $70.3B thru 11 months, up 12.2%. Manufacturing construction is now the 2nd-biggest non-residential category, at $68.98B thru 11 months. Next (3rd-largest) is that catch-all Commercial category (which is nearly two-thirds Retail) . . . at $50.2B.
04 Jan, 2010
Dark Sky Brouhaha Goes BIG
The 11/20 WSJ included an op-ed piece, Everything Is Deluminated, about the discussion and legislation in an Illinois town about keeping lights from polluting the sky. As is typical (I think) of the WSJ op-ed pieces, it's completely outrageous.
Keeping the sky dark (and reducing light pollution) is "a fashionable cause."
This is too much government regulation -- of course, if zillions of lumens of light (powered by who-knows-how-much wasted electrical energy) weren't spilling into the sky, it wouldn't be necessary, now would it?
"Letting people choose for themselves wouldn't win praise form the International Dark Sky Association." Excuse me, but haven't people BEEN choosing for themselves? And hasn't the result been an awful lot of wasted energy, spilling light into the sky.
This is too much government regulation -- of course, if zillions of lumens of light (powered by who-knows-how-much wasted electrical energy) weren't spilling into the sky, it wouldn't be necessary, now would it?
"Letting people choose for themselves wouldn't win praise form the International Dark Sky Association." Excuse me, but haven't people BEEN choosing for themselves? And hasn't the result been an awful lot of wasted energy, spilling light into the sky.
As is usually the case when I read a WSJ op-ed piece from start to finish, I came to the conclusion that the idiot who wrote the thing is . . . a big idiot. What sense does it make to use electricity to power lighting that illuminates . . . the sky?
- - - - -
Fortunately (so I feel that I didn't completely waste my time), there was this snippet:
As John Jakle notes in his book about America's illuminated landscape,
"City Lights," the need for well-lit streets was driven by the
automobile, which has a nasty habit of crashing in the dark. There were
early experiments with reducing the glow of streetlamps, but they were
not particularly successful. In 1931 Detroit was reeling from the
Depression and decided to save some municipal cash by unscrewing every
other streetlight bulb. The ratio of night to day roadkill more than
doubled, and Detroit had to crank all its lights up again.
a. I wasn't aware of the 1931 Detroit history. That's valuable and interesting.
b. Of course, even the idiot who wrote this wasn't making the case that streetlights have to spill light into the night sky. I think. But he was having fun writing about something that makes so much sense only an idiot would oppose it, so he went right on stepping all over Common Sense. For example: He included a tale about some stuff going on in Sedona, N.M., but -- from my reading long before this -- a lot of stuff goes on in Sedona that is a one-off (in a nation of thousands of towns and cities). It's a big SO WHAT YOU BLEEPING IDIOT.
c. The point attached to this was: People go out for walks and out on bicycles at night, so they need street lights that spill light up into the sky. I'm not sure I agree with that, either. The unspoken assumption here seems to be: We need to illuminate every country road (what the heck else do you think they have in Sedona?) so that people can exercise in the dark if they so desire.
- - - - -
Considering how little exercise Americans get as a group, it would be unwise to discourage people from night-time exercise. What gets lost (in this idiot's telling of the tale) is the fact that:
1 - people who go for in-the-dark walks (or runs, or bike rides) HAVE THE OBLIGATION to light themselves up. I have a day-glo vest and blinking lights (to attach to me) for when I go for such walks. I have two white sweatshirts. This is common sense, isn't it? I believe I learned this when I was 8 years old. That's 48 years ago. Has the news not yet reached the WSJ?
2 - build sidewalks. There are sidewalks for miles in my neighborhood. I have to share the street with cars only when I need to cross the avenues and side streets -- and I look both ways, blahblahblah. Is this beyond the ability of normal adults?
3 -- Perhaps people shouldn't talk walks alongside country roads in the dark where there are no sidewalks (and not a way to distance oneself from the roadway which cars must use). Perhaps this is a restriction on the freedom of such people; it seems a small price to pay for 308 million of us. I'm not sure how to square the need to waste energy to illuminate dark country roads for a small number of nighttime exercisers. Are you?
4 - cities can illuminate sidewalks with street lights that do not pollute the sky and eliminate or reduce the ability of humans and amateur astronomers to see the glories of the Universe. It can be done!
2 - build sidewalks. There are sidewalks for miles in my neighborhood. I have to share the street with cars only when I need to cross the avenues and side streets -- and I look both ways, blahblahblah. Is this beyond the ability of normal adults?
3 -- Perhaps people shouldn't talk walks alongside country roads in the dark where there are no sidewalks (and not a way to distance oneself from the roadway which cars must use). Perhaps this is a restriction on the freedom of such people; it seems a small price to pay for 308 million of us. I'm not sure how to square the need to waste energy to illuminate dark country roads for a small number of nighttime exercisers. Are you?
4 - cities can illuminate sidewalks with street lights that do not pollute the sky and eliminate or reduce the ability of humans and amateur astronomers to see the glories of the Universe. It can be done!
04 Jan, 2010
'Glitter-sized' Solar PV
. . . tiny glitter-sized photovoltaic cells that could revolutionize the way solar energy is collected and used.
The tiny cells could turn a person into a walking solar battery charger if they were fastened to flexible substrates molded around unusual shapes, such as clothing.
The solar particles, fabricated of crystalline silicon, hold the potential for a variety of new applications. They are expected eventually to be less expensive and have greater efficiencies than current photovoltaic collectors that are pieced together with 6-inch- square solar wafers.
04 Jan, 2010
EE For DCs
Energy Efficient Data Centers: A Close-Coupled Row Solution
It's a 9-page PDF, but the article is much shorter. The thing is reprinted from ASHRAE's magazine, and space (empty space) is left for a bunch of advertising that appeared in the original.
04 Jan, 2010
Prefab Houses
6 Prefab Houses That Could Change Home Building -- here's the description that went with one of them:
What if a prefab home could save you money every month or give you
independence from the local utility? Prefab timberframe manufacturer
Bensonwood Homes in Walpole, N.H., says it has come up a collection of
homes that do just that. Unity Collection, the company says, is the
first engineered net-zero homes capable of producing as much energy as
they consume.
Designed for efficiency, the house gets its annual energy requirements from sunlight, wind, or geothermal. The key to this system is a highly efficient and tight building envelope. Walls are R-40, the roof is R-67, and the slab is rated at R-20. A heat recovery ventilator will bring in fresh air, triple-glazed windows will help conserve energy, and Energy Star appliances will save water and energy.
“A
Bensonwood home is comparable in cost to high-quality construction
going on in the area where the home is being built, if that
high-quality conventional construction is built with the same
durability and comparable insulation in our timber frame homes,” the
company says. “However, because Bensonwood home designs and estimates
are highly accurate, our clients enjoy the benefit of having
predictable costs with very few surprises.”
04 Jan, 2010
Energy Storage Graphic
It uses the term EROI -- "energy return on investment." This is sometimes elongated to EROEI -- energy return on ENERGY invested.
Another term (this one was new to me) was EIRR = "energy internal rate of return."
And then there's "round-trip efficiency." Konrad offered a graphic (below) on RTE, with this explanation:
Neither hydrogen nor batteries will replace the current storable fuels
without a further penalty to EROI. Whenever you store electricity, a
certain percentage of the energy will be lost. The percent that remains is
called the round-trip efficiency of the technology, shown on the vertical axis
of the graph below, taken from my earlier comparison of energy storage technologies.
Round trip efficiency (RTE) for energy storage technologies is equivalent to EROI for fuels: it is the ratio of the energy you put in to the energy you get out. You can see from the chart, most battery technologies cluster around a 75% RTE. Hence, if you store electricity from an EROI 20 source in a battery to drive your electric vehicle, the electricity that actually comes out of the battery will only have an EROI of 20 times the RTE of the battery, or 15. Furthermore, since batteries decay over time, some of the energy used to create the battery should also be included in the EROI calculation, leading to an overall EROI lower than 15.
The round trip efficiency of hydrogen, when made with electrolyzers and used in a fuel cell, is below 50%, meaning that, barring huge technological breakthroughs, any hoped-for hydrogen economgy would have to run with an EROI from energy sources less than half of those shown.
Taking all of this together, I think it's reasonable to assume that any future sustainable economy will run on energy sources with a combined EROI of less than 15, quite possibly much less.
04 Jan, 2010
Surge Protection - Myth?
The Myth of Whole-House Surge Protection.
Basis of the claim: "a service entrance surge protector can provide some protection from the 20 percent of surges originating outside a house, but not the 80 percent of surges which originate within a house."
I thought I already knew that, but this article might make good review reading anyway.
04 Jan, 2010
TalkingPlug
Zerofootprint has introduced the TalkingPlug, a small apparatus that
plugs into a regular electrical duplex receptacle outlet and enables
two-way communication via the Internet.
and
Each TalkingPlug electrical outlet contains energy measurement
instruments, on-off relays, appliance identification tags, and wireless
networking technology. Every TalkingPlug outlet serves as a wireless
communication node on a building energy network, and these nodes send
appliance-specific energy consumption data to a local gateway for data
collection and storage.
