EleBlog

02 Sep, 2010

A USA Today article (8/23) resulted from someone reading the GM "red herring" documents on its IPO and finding "some interesting nuggets" -- including this big old boulder:

24 Aug, 2010

From a presentation from AWEA's John Dunlop, a senior project engineer: Some perspective on the size of a BIG wind machine (and why they are so big)


Note that 93 meters = 305 feet.

- - - -

On the bottom of the slide with this info, Dunlop noted this:

10 Aug, 2010

Recent stories from the NY Times demonstrating the "elementality" (if you will) of Electricity:

A Benchmark of Progress, Electrical Grid Fails Iraqis

Many areas had electrical power under Saddam Hussein. We've been running the place since 2003 and yet, according to this article, "Baghdad, the capital, had five hours of electricity a day in July."

America Goes Dark

Headline on an op-ed piece from Paul Krugman, which started this way:

23 Jul, 2010

I was at the beach recently (which .splains the big gap in postings here -- although previous gaps have happened when I was NOT on vacation!). I got to catch up on some reading I had put aside. It's my habit to chop articles out of newspapers (like the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, and others), put 'em in a pile, and "catch up" all in one swell foop.

What this does for me: Sometimes I get back to the article a few weeks later, and it no longer seems relevant. Or: I've obtained the same information from some other source. And: When I sit town to tackle that pile, I have a few hours (spread, at the beach, over a few days) of Really Interesting Reading ahead of me!

- - - - -

Anyway, one item in the pile was an article from Page D4 of the 4-27-10 WSJ. Headline: "Encouraging Business To Turn Off The Lights."

I circled a section. I have now read it four times. I'm going to re-type it here (I'm labeling each statement for reference):


- - - - -

I swear, this was in an article in a newspaper aimed at big business. Let's examine the facts of the sitch:

(a) This is the best case against efficiency of the three. It really IS a pain-in-the-butt for store managers to figure out how to schedule things so they can go dark at night. A pain, yes. But it's not impossible. Frankly, I see the local Sears + Kmart stores here in northern Virginia, and it looks like there would be NO PROBLEM finding times when you could shoot off a cannon down each of the aisles and not hit shoppers (this is also true in the Target, but not at all at the Walmart).

Good management will find a solution to the problem. I am aware that historically AND recently, the words "good management" might not necessarily apply to the people at the top of Sears/Kmart. THIS IS NOT A PROBLEM THAT CANNOT BE SOLVED.

In other words: It might be difficult to figure out. BUT IT CAN BE FIGURED OUT.

- - -

(b) Motion detectors malfunction? Sure. And you know what -- workers call in sick. Cars get flat tires. Someone's kid plays in the aisle and there's a mess of broken glass and strawberry jelly for someone to clean up on Aisle 6. Life does seem to come with problems embedded within it.

It's pretty easy to replace a defective anything. What this article says (in between the lines) is

- it's too hard for the store's (or building's) maintenance people to notice a problem
- it's too hard for the store's manager or assistant manager to report a problem
- it's too hard to replace a motion sensor.

This is not just poppycock, it's pathetic. I don't know if the person who wrote the article go this from folks interviewed for the story, or if the writer made it all up. Replacing a motion sensor which is not performing is a problem? Really?

- -

(c) I'm not sure I can comment without using Nasty Language about the escalator one. The problem is that people are leaving the escalators ON in totally empty shopping malls and stores. THINK ABOUT THAT. Think about how idiotic it is.

Think about the main job of the manager -- to RUN THE PLACE. The manager might not personally turn the escalators off, but he will find a guy/gal who will be responsible for doing that every night. If the designated person can't do something that simple, the manager should, quite simply, FIRE HIM/HER.


And if you've got a chain of stores in which managers are too busy to get the escalators turned off when the stores/malls are all closed -- don't just fire the guys. Have them all put on a bus. Take the bus to a cliff. Run the bus OFF the cliff.

23 Jul, 2010

Will the dogs eat the dog food?

That's the question -- when it comes to Electric Vehicles. Will thousands, tens-of-thousands, and even hundreds-of-thousands of everyday Americans purchase plug-in electric vehicles (PEVs) or even plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs?)

A Technology Review article on EVs, dated 7/21, asks.

The U.S. DoE believes demand will average 500,000 per year, it says, by 2014. But an consulting type, quoted in the article, thinks it's going to be closer to 100,000/year by that time.

From the article's writer: "If demand is too low, many of these new factories [the ones making batteries for the EVs] may need to shut down -- or rely on the government to keep running."

21 Jun, 2010

It's a story about small modular nuclear reactors.

It says we would have small ones, only 25 mW of power (instead of 1,200 mW mega-sized power plants).

I am actually IN FAVOR of distributed generation. It's a long discussion, but that's what Edison had in mind (it appears) -- and it would have been better for everybody. For one thing, if you had a power plant on the next block, you'd be really, really interested in the pollutants emitted as a result of combustion (now wouldn't you???).

But the idea of small nukes gives me the willies. Here's what I envision (without actually knowing anything):

1. Small nuclear power plants in a number of locations, vulnerable to theft of nuclear material by terrorists.

OR

2. No theft by terrorists, because we pay a fortune to have these mini-plants fiercely guarded by numerous security and military people (and equipment) on a 7 x 24 x 366 basis.

#1 is a nightmare. #2 is extremely costly. I pick Door #3 -- sitting home in the dark, freezing.

19 Jun, 2010

I ran into Micro-Grid and microgrids 2x yesterday.

15 Jun, 2010

"A Statistical Analysis of How Many Relief Wells Are Need' -- to stop up BP's massive catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

One problem (I want to remember to get back to this) is that most of us don't have the Mathematics to understand probability -- or articles like this one. I've skimmed this one once, plan to read it at leisure later. The conclusion (made in 2473 words) from the author is this -- I have boldfaced the words that sent a chill up my spine:

Even if this model is a good one, the probabilities for relief well success are not known with any degree of confidence. I have chosen parameters which are consistent with predictions of when the well could be killed (August), the approximate probability of success, and time needed to regroup and try again after a swing and a miss. But the results suggest that, barring the loss of one or more of the current wells, additional wells will not significantly affect the time before the blowout is quenched. Readers are invited to download the spreadsheet used for this analysis, change the assumptions to those which you find more defensible, and offer up the results for further discussion.

In spite of that, Many will argue for at least one more well anyway, and I would probably fall into that camp. Wells are drilled all the time based on the chance for a big payout, and then never go into production. Hopefully another won't be needed, but the risk of not capping the well as soon as possible should be obvious to BP, and waiting until circumstances force the issue of another well will not go over well. In retrospect, they should have looked at the calendar (with the upcoming stormy season approaching), considered yet another unthinkable scenario regarding relief well success, and planned accordingly. In lieu of that happening several weeks ago, the time is now for BP to go above and beyond what they think is required. And with the deepwater drilling moratorium in place, many rigs are looking for something to do.

15 Jun, 2010

Recent posts to NECA's Energy Solutions blog include:

'Want This Car? First You Need An Electrician' -- from yours truly. Includes some interesting stuff from Oregon not posted here.

'Six Ideas That Will Change Your Building's Energy Profile' -- the 3rd of NECA's 4 Electrical Design Library monographs for 2010. I didn't write it; I'm the managing editor of the EDL series this year. (I didn't post these paragraphs, by the way).

'Stimulus Funds Earmarked To Green Government Facilities' -- links to a 3-part series from Building Operating Management magazine.

14 Jun, 2010

Most people think contractors make a bundle from change orders. But they don't. For one thing, they don't include in the change order all of the costs involved in managing, supervising, and coordinating the change.

Let's put that aside. Julie Jacobson of CE Pro magazine penned an article after reading a book -- A Simple Guide To Turning A Profit as  A Contractor.

Julie's headline: "Get Paid Up Front for Change Orders."

This sounds very, very good. This one is worth a quick click, a read, and maybe even the most potent approach -- a print-out-and-re-read-a-few-times treatment.

13 Jun, 2010

Everybody has an agenda. Kerry Stockpole, of the Printing & Graphics Assn. MidAtlantic, obviously is PRO printed material.

But I read a piece in the June issue of GreenBuilder magazine -- a Q-and-A with him -- in which he, maybe, made some sense. Here's a slice:

10 Jun, 2010

From the last few paragraphs of a GreenTechMedia.com report. You might have read the thing and missed this:

Meanwhile, in Taiwan, GCE Clean Energy unveiled a vertical wind turbine shaped like a satellite (see picture). Vertical turbines have been around for a number of years but the continuing momentum in the wind industry is giving them a lift, so to speak. Wind Harvest International, for instance, wants to place vertical turbines between the multi-megawatt behemoths in wind farms to harvest un-exploited wind in those locations. VCs have also begun to put money into wind firms specializing in novel turbines or components.

GCE will make 2,000 of the turbines in the first year of production and scale up to 20,000 annually the following year. Sizes will range from two to ten kilowatts. There seem to be a lot of external parts on this thing, which could result in maintenance issues, so who knows. Still, it is an interesting design.

18 May, 2010

Miniature nuclear plants.

I picture each of these "refrigerator-sized" nukes surrounded by 55 armed guards, each working a 24 x 7 shift.

27 Apr, 2010

. . . sure, there are like 1.8 billion people (out of 6.6B) on this planet living without electricity.

But even here in the U.S., electrification continues. Consider the $1.23B project -- recommended after 10 years of study -- to electrify the railroad from San Francisco to San Jose.

26 Apr, 2010

There is so much LEGAL crap in construction. I don't pay much attention to it NOT because it's not important -- it most certainly IS -- but because it is disheartening to read about all of the ways someone who is doing a good job can end up coated with tar.

Here's a sample piece: Written Notice Requirements: Legitimate Protection or Legalistic Trap?

23 Apr, 2010

The AGC (in this press release) says we need to increase the police presence on highway and transit construction sites. Why? Because drivers DO NOT slow down (as they are spozed to do, it's posted) -- and DO kill workers.

Few of these workers are electricians, but I don't think that matters.

14 Apr, 2010

From IEEE Spectrum's website:

Second, at a time the world is emerging from a recession that almost turned into a great depression, people are looking for reasons to put jobs and prosperity ahead of potentially costly carbon reduction measures. No wonder prospects for U.S. climate legislation are now being declared dead, despite Obama's huge health care victory. And no wonder oil companies are spearheading a California ballot initiative to suspend implementation of its 2006 climate law until until state unemployment drops below 5.5 percent for four consecutive quarters (from above 12 percent at present).

If the initiative wins the support of most California voters--and why wouldn't it?--that will further cement the state's growing reputation for being absolutely ungovernable. Will it also show that serious government action on climate is unachievable?

Here's a shorthand way of saying all of that: YOU CAN'T PUT THE TOOTHPASTE BACK INTO THE TUBE. 

13 Apr, 2010

I am a big reader of the website Prudent Bear. I am bearish on the stock market and economy -- I remain bearish, still. If you're investing in stocks for the long term, I think you are making a HUGE mistake. Especially if you're putting money in right now.

Let's put all of that aside.

Recently, an opinion piece -- The Answer Is Not Blowing In The Wind -- appeared there. It's against wind power. A slice:

From a biological point of view, wind power is merely a dirty parasite that has latched onto the body of the green movement. We've seen these parasites before in the form of Enron, CDOs and derivatives – favored products of Wall Street.  To keep taxpayer money flowing into wind power, the green-wash must be maintained.  

A few notes:


It might be worth reading through this critical piece, even if you are -- as I remain -- PRO-wind.

05 Apr, 2010

 . . . on TheStreet.com, which I would classify as "Not Very Reliable Source of Information." Here's the (almost breathless . . . ?) lead paragraph of the 653-word dingbat:


Want to read the rest?

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10688568/bloom-energy-next-boom-in-energy.html

29 Mar, 2010

"No amount of sequestration makes coal 'clean'" says the headline on a Grist.org post. It's ostensibly "addressed" to the NY Times columnist Tom Friedman AND the very rich venture capitalist Vinod Khosla -- who replied to Grist.org.

http://www.grist.org/article/2010-03-08-vinod-khosla-tom-friedman-no-amount-sequestration-coal-clean/

The "idea" of CCS is to "capture" the carbon emissions generated by burning carbon in power plants. Then you inject the stuff into the ground, where it supposedly stays forever. I am NOT making this up, read up about the thing.

But the Grist.org article basically says: Even if CCS is 100% effective -- which is a joke, by the way -- coal still sucks.

Burning coal is also horrific. It leaves behind enormous quantities of heavy metal-laden coal ash, often in uncovered impoundments, from which ash drifts onto local communities. (Some coal ash is used in concrete too, but that doesn't make it clean either.) In fact, efforts in recent decades to scrub air pollutants out of smokestacks in response to Clean Air Act requirements have led to more coal ash, as pollutants are effectively transferred from the air to the ash, where they are far less strictly regulated.

You can also read Khosla's response at the link above. Based on what I think I know about CCS, he's full of stuff. But again, even if CCS works, his answer to what's above, and the substance of the Grist.org article, just does not work (if the idea is to reduce coal's damage to the environment).

29 Mar, 2010

California CCS Coalition -- CCS = carbon capture and storage. It's new.

http://www.environmental-expert.com/resulteachpressrelease.aspx?cid=28518&codi=156566

Read the thing, but keep this in mind: IT DOES NOT WORK, it doesn't make sense, and it especially doesn't make economic sense. And read the next item (above).

25 Mar, 2010

Above find the original headline on a 2/6/10 New Scientist article.

Electricity without wires?

Long-distance ground-to-ground wireless power transmission would require expensive infrastructure, however, and with concerns over the safety of transmitting it via high-power microwaves, the idea has been met with trepidation.

While we won't be seeing a wireless power grid any time soon, the idea of beaming power on a smaller scale is rapidly gaining momentum. That is largely because, with wireless communication, like Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and ever-shrinking circuits, power cables are now the only limit to becoming truly portable. "The move was inevitable once wireless communication became popular," says David Graham, a co-founder of Powerbeam in San Jose, California.

15 Mar, 2010

I didn't get a lot out of these two articles, but you might:

Electrical Construction of a Wind Farm

and

Wind Turbine Design: Lighting & electrical service.

11 Mar, 2010

Something I haven't thought about -- the energy wasted in electric utility transmission & distribution. But PUF (Public Utilities Fortnightly) ran a piece on this in its 2/10 issue, and offers free access to a 6-page PDF.

Among the things in there:


Also claimed in the piece: Getting T&D to lose less might be "the most economical energy savings" we could capture.

11 Mar, 2010

Writing in the Washington Post -- an article that's been regurgitated all over the web, from what I can see -- a guy who was director of The Smart Grid Initiative at General Electric says green jobs are a bunch of stuff. A lengthy piece:


As the EleBlog's proprietor is a contrarian, you might expect me to DISagree with this. Instead, I am going to reserve an opinion . . . and say this: I have for some time had my suspicions about the motives of utilities in embracing smart meters so quickly (and so enthusiastically). I thought it was about eliminating jobs. When you automate anything, you reduce jobs -- that's one reason why U.S. manufacturing, which hasn't really fallen off the deep end, generates so few work opportunities today.

The Smart Grid is about automating the grid; the grid is a dinosaur. You can lament the loss of jobs (as above) . . . or you can realize that automation had to come some time.

Well, it's here.

 (More)

12 Feb, 2010

An association executive bylined a Plant Engineering article about a "new kind of skilled worker" needed. From the piece, an interesting perspective (which, I guess, should have bee obvious, maybe?):


AND


AND

07 Feb, 2010

That's the title of an article in the Fall 2009 issue of the Journal of Building Information Modeling (known as JBIM to its friends).

You have to download the 44-page PDF of the issue, and look (at the very least) at pages 28-29.

02 Feb, 2010

. . . and while we're on the subject of medical-slash-electrical, CSE magazine posted a piece, 1,448 words + an illo -- Selective coordination of breakers in hospitals.

The first paragraph here:


. . . which might lead you to ask, WHY THE HECK ARE ALL OF THESE STRANGERS TRYING TO SCARE THE DICKENS OUT OF ME? It is Halloween or something?

02 Feb, 2010

Not suitable for medical use - electrical safety testing under attack . . . is one heck of a looooong article on the IAEI website. Among other quotes:

1. Can computer and non-certified equipment in hospitals kill patients?

2. What is leakage current and how does it directly affect the human body?

3. Why is certain equipment not suitable for medical use? 

Not counting the 17 reference, the article is 5,650 words long (I kid you not). And yet: If you go anywhere near healthcare installations, or if you think you might ever be in a hospital, you certainly should read through this.

I am NOT paid by IAEI. To give you a flavor for what you would miss if you do not hit that link above and spend some time with this, here's the amazingly horrible-to-think-about lead on the piece:

- - - - -

You’re on the operating table, the surgery is almost over. The procedure has gone well. The doctors and nurses are walking in liquid on the floor covered with antiseptic, your blood, and other fluids.

As your doctor is making the final repairs, a nurse is at the computer typing in some data; then she turns to assist the doctor, steadying herself with one hand on the computer monitor.

As she touches the doctor, the faulty PC sends its stray current through both of them and directly into your heart. They feel almost nothing, but you are especially vulnerable and in a few seconds, it’s too late, the damage has been done.

18 Jan, 2010

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."

17 Jan, 2010

I have long found the idea of Saving Money By Reading Your Energy Bill to be extremely attractive. Of course, what my wife and I use here isn't all that big (or complicated). But for any commercial building, this idea is (I think) a MUST.

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):

“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.

15 Jan, 2010

HomeToys.com recently used its web stats to name the "Most Popular eMagazine Articles of 2009" on its site -- and the 2/09 "Job Site TIPS" article by Grayson Evans was one of them.

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.

07 Jan, 2010

World's Top Polluter Emerges as Green-Technology Leader

-- 1,950-word piece from the 12/16 Wall Street Journal. An interesting-to-consider small slice:

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

From The Reading (Pa.) Eagle:

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

From Professional Remodeler --

An 1,850-word article shares "13 ways to get referrals that reward."


The guy who wrote it also blogged further on going beyond repeats & referrals.

04 Jan, 2010

From CE Pro:

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.

24 Dec, 2009

I am beginning to fall in a deep state of something resembling "love" with the writing (on the IAEI blog) of one Greg Smith. I've never met him. But I can read, and you should read this blog post -- on an inspection at a window-blind manufacturing plant -- from which I snip the following:

What he didn’t realize was that the maintenance man on shift was standing right behind him. “Maintenance people have families too,” was the maintenance man’s response. The shift supervisor was embarrassed and quickly left the area, leaving us with the maintenance guy to work on correcting the rest of the items on the issues report.

“It’s not what you don’t know, it’s what you ‘know’ that ain’t so.” A recurring problem in the world of product safety concerns people who want to make decisions about safety who are actually ignorant of the subject. People and organizations who have no business making decisions about electrical safety need to be exposed and their ulterior motives revealed. Check back for the next entry.

The bolding is from Smith, not me. Yes, "love" is NOT too strong a word.

17 Dec, 2009

If you're not, you're missing the boat -- so says Stan Shook, writing for Electrical Contractor magazine. He writes the Estimating column in each month's issue.

Of course, one sponsor of this site (at right) is McCormick Systems . . . but even if you don't buy what McCormick has to sell, you should get into computerized estimating.

Incidentally: The story "on page 58" that Stan references in his column is this roundup of what software suppliers (McCormick and its competitors) have on offer.

15 Dec, 2009

Lots of electricians decide they want to be contractors. Many times, this IS NOT a bad decision. But there are differences between a guy who owns a company and a guy who does what a company owner asks.

One of the differences is that a contractor has to know what a Balance Sheet is, what's on it, and why it matters.

Along those lines, Nation's Building News -- the weekly published by the home builders -- recently ran a 1,279-word article, Your Balance Sheet Can Point You in the Right Direction.

It's worth your time.

15 Dec, 2009

The more I learn about Electric Vehicles (and I did go to the PlugIn2009 conference this past August, which -- OK, OK, OK -- does NOT make me an expert!!!) --- the more I get discouraged. At least for the short-term prospects.

In preparation for the big Copenhagen climate change conference (a nightmare, by the way), the New York Times ran a few articles> One of them was about Denmark's ambitious plans for EVs. This is from the article:

Mr. Agassi, a press-smart Israeli-American entrepreneur who was formerly a top executive at the software giant S.A.P., has cast his company’s efforts in moral terms, because of the large contribution that gasoline and diesel cars make to global warming. But so far, the results are falling short of the rhetoric.

In January 2009, Mr. Agassi promised that Denmark would have 100,000 charging spots in place and several thousand cars on the road by 2010. But with that deadline approaching, no Better Place cars are on the road and only 55 charging spots are ready.

According to Better Place, 2011 has always been the target for its mass debut, and that has not slipped. The company plans a road test of electric cars during the climate conference.

In addition to the charge points, Better Place’s vision calls for a network of stations where a robotic device could replace a battery in less time than it takes to fill a tank of gas.

These switching stations are needed because batteries have a limited range of about 100 miles, and recharging takes up to five hours, so changing batteries en route would make long journeys more convenient.

Consumers would buy the cars but get batteries from Better Place and pay a fee for the miles they drive, relying on the charging stations for local driving and the switching stations for longer trips.

But even local supporters of Better Place worry that the switching stations, which could cost as much as $1 million each to build, are impractical, largely because the stations may need to stock a wide range of batteries to accommodate cars from different manufacturers.

Let's add up what's in just this "snip" from the NYT story -- 

1. Denmark won't even come close to the goals for 2010.

2. Plans for switching stations are "impractical" (if not pie-in-the-sky crazy).

3. There are 55 charging spots slated to be ready by the end of this year, not 100,000. Not even 100. In other words, not even 1/10th of 1% of what was envisioned.

Jeepers creepers!!!

07 Dec, 2009

I didn't create the headline on this item -- Greg Smith, blogging over at the IAEI Magazine site, did. Here's a snippet from his diatribe (which is wonderful -- you really ought to click over and read the thing):

The experts included professional engineers, electrical inspectors / NEC Code experts, electrical contractors, testing laboratory engineers and other knowledgeable individuals.

The ignorant-about-electrical-safety side included Chamber of Commerce spokespeople, a manufacturer facility manager, and an economic development director. Their “Code expert” was a man who invented a way to get cat urine out of carpet.

When the electrical safety experts stood up to testify, the attorney for the manufacturing facility could only try to sidetrack the discussion with attempts to suppress important technical information.

It was fascinating and disgusting to see the amoral tactics used by the attorney, to see the “end justifying the means.”

In short, the question is: Why can't people do the right thing? And the answer is . . . because we're not as honest as, say, chimps, elephants, or mole rats.

15 Oct, 2009

I had promised to post a lot of stuff here about Electric Vehicles, but I was OBE (Overtaken By Events). I apologize.

Here's something I came across in the IEEE Spectrum magazine -- an issue about which I had heard at the PlugIn2009 event I attended in August: ELECTRIC VEHICLES ARE TOO DAMN QUIET.

No combustion engine. No noise. That's actually a good thing, probably (less noise in our environment, right?). Except for this: Cars travel in streets. People walk across streets. Many people of a certain age are used to hearing cars approach, and then hustling to avoid being hit.

With EVs on the road, a car of significant size could "happen" upon you, and hit you, without any audible warning.

Headline on the Spectrum story: "Making Electric and Hybrid Cars Audible." It might seem strange, but it's actually important!

06 Oct, 2009

I'm passing this article along NOT because I have ever confined space work (ever), but because I know electrical people DO. It's from Electric Light + Power, and the headline is: "Controlling & Removing Static Electricity During Confined Space Entry Ventilation."

Yes, I know, the headline is riveting. As noted, I'm ignorant about the subject, but I think I could provide a better headline:

HOW TO GET THE STATIC OUT
[confined space entry air procedures]

...OK, that's not great, either, but I did it in 22 seconds. Someone at EL&P needs to realize that great words (and even great pictures) need a great topper!!!

The article actually is BETTER, with photos and step-by-step "do it right the first time" instructions on Conductive Saddle Vent Set-Up.

25 Jun, 2009

The April issue of WIRED magazine put the grid on the cover. I know this comes a couple of months late, but if you didn't see it, and you don't get the magazine (and most people certainly do NOT read the thing and do NOT receive it) -- see the thing here. 

13 Jun, 2009

I've heard at various times recently (from contractors) that they are now finding 12 to 20 bidders competing with them for jobs on which they once encountered only 3 to 5. In such situations, of course, you feel like you might be wasting time going in. Then you feel like a chump if you end up winning!

Cases in point: "grab bag" notes in The Times-Union of Albany, NY --

5/20 -- John Coyne Electrical Contractors (East Greenbush) was low bidder on electrical contract for laundry facilities at the Brookwood Secure Center. There were 10 electrical contract bidders, four on the HVAC work, and three on the plumbing.

6/2 -- Phoenix Electricians (Cairo) was low at $19,447 on "the electricall portion of a contract to replace boilers" at a residential center in Ulster County. Bidders: 11.

10 Jun, 2009

What do you get for 16 tons of coal, an old song asked. More recently, a Utilipoint exec answered the question in a column, with some interesting data:

10 Jun, 2009

An AP report from late last month notes that Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) thinks we should build 100 nuclear power plants in the next 20 years.

I actually have had similar, more-radical thoughts. Just in case coal really IS calling global warming, it's dumb to build a single new coal plant. If we're going to retire coal plants as they age, we're going to need to replace them. If we replace them with plants powered with natural gas, we're going to cause the price of that commodity to soar.

Nuclear can be the answer. It's non-polluting (potentially). We need to solve the nuclear waste disposal problem -- and I think we can. We need to solve the problem of non-standardized power plants -- and that's easily done.

For several years now, I've envisioned nuclear power as the "transition" electricity generating source, the thing that gets us from where we are now to where we're going to be (solar, wind, fuel cells, you-name-it -- all operating on a unified national "Smart Grid").

Here's the thing: My vision (and Alexander's) is EXPENSIVE. To do nuclear power the right way, you'd have to make the plants a lot more expensive (and they already are more expensive now compared with the 104 commercial nukes now in operation). If you did disposal right, add MORE costs.

So what? That's the cost of a bridge to the future.

01 Jun, 2009

Here's an interesting (long, so I broke it up) paragraph on the ROI of the Smart Grid, embedded in a report on a utility industry meeting:

14 Apr, 2009

Recently, TEDMAG posted three articles I wrote on energy/green issues from the NFM+T conference + show, held in Baltimore. You can find them here -- the 3/26, 4/2, and 4/9 columns.

I think I did a pretty good job. There's a lot of stuff in those 4,500 (total) words, a lot of ground covered, some photos, some slides from presentations, etc.

One sliver of the info was on hand dryers and paper towels,  at the bottom of the 1st piece. I'm pretty sure you don't care a lot about this (unless you are a facility manager who has wandered over here). This info was presented in a "green purchasing" session at the NFM+T conference; I wrote it up because it presented a way of thinking about the subject, which is hot-hot-hot.

IRONY: Somehow, in the normal course of doing business, I tripped across an item oin Cleanlink.com. It's a write-up of a study on what's "more hygenic" in bathroom hand-cleaning -- paper towels or electric hand dryers.

Well, the "green purchasing" angle might favor hand dryers, but the study shows "paper towels are clearly superior to electric hand dryers."

11 Apr, 2009

A guest post on the "Into the Wind" blog makes an important point:


To be honest, previously I had not given this any thought at all.

07 Apr, 2009

That attack on the hotel in India (11/08, Mumbai) still has hotel executives and their security people talking, according to an article posted to MSNBC.com. I found these paragraphs noteworthy:

In extreme cases, hotels may limit lobby access to registered guests and require key cards for once-open doors — a measure Hilton and Marriott have instituted at their Jakarta properties.

But until the industry makes dramatic changes, says Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, guests must be increasingly self-reliant. "You need to take ownership of your trip. You have the right to get on the phone and ask questions of the hotel. And if you're on a tour, you have the right to ask them of your tour operator."

29 Mar, 2009

A "guest opinion" piece in the March/April issue of EnergyBiz magazine was written by Dr. Charles Gay, who is the chief honcho at the solar group of Applied Materials. You can read it (PDF) here. After reading it, this piece stuck in my head:


In other words: We can increase solar production (and Dr. Gay's company would make money). We can't keep saying "it can't do it" when it's just possible that it can.
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23 Mar, 2009

In a recent post, I noted the trade magazines that were pulling back (to electronic-only status, which may be a stop along the way to death). I ran across another this weekend, Financial Week. It was a print publication AND a website. Now, it's nothing. It's too bad: It was an interesting read. 

16 Mar, 2009

This blog post (on the Energy Matters blog) outlines $50B in energy spending in the Stimulus legislation. A slice:

15 Mar, 2009

Here's what Gregory Kenny, president/CEO of General Cable, had to saw (in a 2/11 conference call with Wall Street analysts, one of whom was named Celeste) about WIND POWER -- some relevant and interesting stuff:

- - - - -

I think the bigger, the big driver for us Celeste is really the... I guess is 29 states or so that now have green mandates. And again Obama, the 20% target for 2025 you begin to look at if indeed we go do that and we do it through solar and wind.

We've been building 5,000 megawatts to 8,300 megawatts a year in wind. And in order to get to that kind of number, you need to go to 12,000 to 18,000 per year. And with the stimulus goal, it does have is some language around $8 billion for renewable loan guarantees and also $6.5 billion to build new transmission systems. Just to scale that again we don't know precisely, but we think roughly transmission spend in the U.S. is about $10 billion a year, and that's the entire project from land write-aways to towers to labor to cable and some of the pole line hardware and other items and cable might be 5% of that $10 billion.

So when he says or when the Senate Bill for example says $6.5 billion again we think that will, that's a big number could be two-thirds of a year. But the much bigger numbers are tied to what needs to be done and there is a bit of number of reports including one out in the Wall Street Journal this earlier this week, the number is a $100 billion plus kinds of numbers.

So I think this will help hope for our demand, we saw 2009 as a slower year because of some of the financing vehicles having dried up. Lehman was active in that GE and we saw that as a slower year, 2009 falling back to sort of 2006 levels. This could help hold it at 2008 levels on terms of win.

Transmission as we said was very slow in the first half of '08. It began to pick up in the fourth quarter. This will help may be enable some projects to get financed obviously its way more complicated in that as you need write-aways and there's hearings and other things and FERC is really not exercise it's eminent domain powers that came from the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

But net, net it's important I think it could help what might have been a weaker 2009, relative to 2008 in wind and may accelerate some of the transmission. But we're really playing for the green mandates and again we look at headlines that everyday there are alternative projects, some funded some unfunded, some talked about, but they are big numbers.

But to go to 20% green in the U.S. will put big demand on our undersea medium voltage cable plant that we're going into in Germany and that just won some wind farm orders there and clearly will help our medium voltage business, the transmission were well prepared for that.

Again, last year was a disappointment, we talked about hundreds of billions of work to be done in transmission for a first world grid and it's really only happened a tiny bit meaning we have just, in the last couple of years begun to pick up spending, saw a slowdown in our way and this may help.

So I think this language may be helps '09 and '10 which might have been tougher years, to sort of hold at '07, '08 levels but I don't think it's the big catalyst which is really so far 29 states that have green mandates.

02 Mar, 2009

Lots of people will tell you that they've not used their high-school math -- ever -- and that it was a waste of time. NONE of them are electricians. See this article (from IAEI's magazine -- that's the electrical inspector's group) titled, quite simply, "PV Math."

It's about "new systems voltage calculations that may be required by the [National Electrical] Code specific to PV [photovoltaic] systems."

13 Feb, 2009

Dave Brown has written for me (articles for Rexel's POWER OUTLET magazine). He's written for others. He's got a good head on his shoulders and (in my experience) can explain things in such a way that everyone can understand them -- clearly.

He's apparently writing a multi-part series of articles for Construction Business Owner on "technology for the construction contractor." Here's Part One. A very relevant slice:

I couldn't get along with the magazine's website (which means I ran out of patience) looking for Part Two. But I did find a place where Dave is blogging on the site. One of the topics tackled (at least twice) is how a "technician" can move into project management.

Good stuff!

15 Jan, 2009

TEGG is a network of electrical contractors (see site here). A recent article about FacilityOne, an org that is spreading its wings, carried a headline about its launching of a subsidiary in Dubai. But your intrepid EleBlogger read through that and on, and found these paragraphs (entire item here):

Meanwhile, the relationship with Allen & Shariff and other partners has led to significant growth in the United States, said Lynn Stetson, vice president of partner development for FacilityOne.

This year, the company has signed two Trane Co. dealers, Harshaw Trane in Louisville and Tampa Bay Trane in Florida, and the corporate office of Pittsburgh-based TEGG, which maintains a network of about 170 electrical contractors.

Two TEGG service providers, Louisville-based Comstock Brothers and California-based Bass Electric, now are FacilityOne distributors and agreements are in the works with another five TEGG providers.

Mike Comstock, general manager of Comstock Brothers, said company officials formed a wholly owned subsidiary, The Comstock Group LLC, about six months ago to market FacilityOne and related services.

“We were extremely impressed with FacilityOne,” Comstock said. “We saw that as a hell of a sales tool for our company.”

It complements the electrical diagnostic testing and preventative maintenance serv­ices the company already was marketing and gives customers an “in-depth picture” of their electrical systems, Comstock said.

The FacilityOne software and Comstock Group subsidiary also gives company officials an opportunity to branch into other sectors, such as heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems, fire alarms and energy management.

Conservative estimates call for at least $200,000 in FacilityOne sales in 2009, Comstock said. But the greater payoff will be about $800,000 in the sale of additional services to FacilityOne clients.

“I’m as optimistic about this product as anything I’ve ever seen,” Comstock said.

12 Jan, 2009

Jon Takiff, a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News, tackled the KVAR Energy Controller and the Black & Decker Power Monitor in a column on 10/8/08. It's an interesting chance for electrical folks to read what a newspaper guy thinks about the kinds of products we think about every day. Takiff's take:

08 Jan, 2009

An article on electric distribution nitty-gritty in The New Yorker? Yes, in the 9/25/06 issue. Essentially, the article slams the Bush Administration for inaction on energy issues, using transformer regulations as a point of departure. Before we all get around to political posturing, read this, from the article's 2nd paragraph:


EleBlog take: A pox on both their houses!

06 Jan, 2009

"How to use percentage of completion accounting" is the title of this article from Professional Builder (the #2 home-building industry magazine). I have to admit, I've heard about percentage-of-completion accounting in the construction industry forever, but I've never read a short, simple article that deals with it.

Worth your time.

31 Dec, 2008

Is there such a thing as whole-house surge protection? A CE Pro article argues not, as in --

21 Dec, 2008

An 11/23 AP story on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette site offers this interesting perspective (in the 15th paragraph) on coal-fired power plants:

The Department of Energy had forecast earlier this decade that 36,000 megawatts of new coal-fueled power supply -- enough to power an estimated 36 million homes -- would come online by 2008. Instead, only about 5,000 megawatts of supply were built, or enough for about 5 million homes.

In the last two years, 76 coal plant proposals have been abandoned or postponed, according to the advocacy group Source Watch. In 2007 alone, that amounted to more than $45 billion in shelved projects, the group claims.

16 Dec, 2008

As I think I've written here a few times, BATTERIES are the key to the future. Solar power works better if you can store it (i.e., electrons generated when the sun shines are stored to be used later) and this goes quadruple for WIND.

According to this 9/30 item in the New York Times (which I believe you can access without a password), Warren Buffett had taken an almost-10% stake in a Chinese battery manufacturer.

14 Dec, 2008

I've been "around" the construction industry since 1979, more or less. I can't tell you how many presentations I've sat through, and how many articles I have read in magazines, AND how many I might have edited myself, on the importance of documents in the construction claims process.

Much of the stuff I've edited and/or read and/or listened-to has been about electronic instead of paper documents.

But recently I came across an article written for LAWYERS -- from Canada. Headline: "The paper trail: successful construction claims often rely on thorough documentation."

Here's how the article concludes. The piece is well worth reading!

14 Dec, 2008

NECA posted a 726-word write-up on "How Obama's Presidency Could Impact NECA's Legislative Agenda" to its website -- where the public can see it. Among other things, the Obama administration:

03 Dec, 2008

"The Glass Stampede" is a 7,000-word opus from New York magazine on architecture in the city of New York. There are 54 items about specific buildings (with photos). It's reproduced online WITH the photos.

I've not read it all yet, but my "skim" produced some interesting stuff:

FACT:

In the past fifteen fat years, more than 76,000 new buildings have gone up, more than 44,000 were razed, another 83,000 were radically renovated—a rate of change that evokes those time-lapse nature films in which flowers spring up and wither in a matter of seconds.

FANCY:

Leaping across Houston Street, AvalonBay leveled McGurk’s, a rickety five-story dive that in the 1890s employed whores so desperate that the place came to be known as Suicide Hall. The glass block that went up instead—Avalon Bowery Place—might not oppress its residents quite that much, but its aggressive blandness has a way of chipping at the soul.

03 Dec, 2008

One focus in what I've tried to write about the "Green" residential construction movement is that there is too much of an emphasis on NEW construction (which is going to make up a miniscule % of the total homes in any given year, or any given 5-year period) . . . and NOT ENOUGH on existing homes.

Confirmation for this point of view comes from a letter to the editor printed in the 11/17/08 Nation's Building News:

By our early estimates, more than 50% of the total energy used in these homes is being wasted. That’s more than $135,000 a year that is lost paying for wasted electricity and natural gas.

This does not include the cost of the carbon dioxide and other pollutants that the utility is discharging into the environment for this wasted energy. Pensacola's electricity is created by coal.

26 Nov, 2008

An article on the site of Builder magazine (the #1 home building publication) talks about how builders can profit by using Twitter.

That’s the allure of Twitter to Pulte, which is experimenting with the approach with its Chicago Del Webb and Pulte brand offerings. “How else can you speak to so many people for so few dollars?” asks Chris Naatz, vice president of sales and marketing for Pulte Homes in Illinois, who is working with the DC Interactive Group n Elgin, Ill., on Twitter and other social media outreach such as Facebook, blogs, and more. “It allows us to do targeted messages to buyers who like bike paths or want a playground in their community—narrow niches that we would otherwise miss” with traditional media because running an ad aimed at small numbers of people would not be cost-effective.

It also helps builders educate their buyers about the housing market in general and their product offerings in particular. Pulte, for example, recently posted tweets about the economy (“The Fed cut a key short-term interest rate by a half percentage point today. Find out what it means for you.”) as well as Pulte-specific information (“Take a look at this newly constructed, 1,981 sq. ft., 3-bedroom, end-unit townhome in North Chicagoland”). Meritage Homes and Lennar often post updates about sales specials or promotions happening in various markets.

If you click over, be sure to page to the bottom, a list of Twitters to Watch and "other housing-related Twitter users."

14 Nov, 2008

According to a KC Biz Journal article (9/8/08), Wachter Corp. (Lenaxa), an electrical contractor (with $124M in 2007 revenue), began in 1/08 to use BIM. This is noteworthy. Wachter says it has:


AND

04 Nov, 2008

Peter C. Fusaro is an opinionated guy in the utility industry -- which is why I like to read what he writes. That doesn't mean I know for sure that he knows what he's talking about!!! In a recent (10/8/08) column, "Green: The Rise of A New Asset Class" -- he said this, among other things:

NOTE: "ITC" = investment tax credit (federal), extended for 8 years in the same legislation that created the $700B bailout fund.

Fusaro also references "the need for $2 trillion in energy and water infrastructure" in the piece. It's short (not necessarily sweet) -- worth your time.

03 Nov, 2008

Someone named Fred Pearce is writing "Greenwash" columns these days for The Guardian newspaper (of the U.K.) -- which has been around since 1821! Two columns have posted so far, both of which have relevance to any EleBlog visitors:  

On clean coal:

On green electricity:


Pearce's comments are specific to Britain, which is appropriate, of course. But they are sharp and, in the EleBlog's judgment, mostly correct. I provided the link above to the "Pearce" page on the Guardian site - so, if you are of a mind, you can go back and follow what this fellow has to say in the future.

02 Nov, 2008

You probably assume we don't use wood to generate electricity. I did, until I read this Associated Press piece -- from which this astounding paragraph comes:

01 Nov, 2008

I've written previously about the use of technology to improve quality of life for older folks (I hope to live long enough to be even older than I am now, which explains my avid interest!).

An article on the National Real Estate Investor magazine site talks about what's going on at the MIT AgeLab and the U. of Southern California. Among other stuff in here:


There's also stuff about a smart spoon, a smart shirt, and a robot that interacts with senior housing residents.

03 Oct, 2008

From a 9/17 post, here:

And my very astute friend Jeffrey Saut at Raymond James (who has been spot on about energy and who has become more bullish of late) pointed out something very interesting yesterday. Evidently China – the previous “buyer at the margin,” the force that kept sopping up all supply for so long, which contributed to the big rise in energy before – has been pretty much out of the energy markets for a couple of months.

The reason: pollution concerns during the Olympics and the Paralympics (the games for those with disabilities.) Many factories and industries were shut down and idled during that period so as to improve air quality during a time of so many visitors and so much world attention being focused on China. (We know China is image-conscious. Just ask the little girl who was not considered pretty enough to sign the anthem live and was replaced by a more attractive lip-syncher.)

The Paralympics end on September 17, and this means that China may very soon reopen manufacturing and transport – particularly so since there is a massive earthquake rebuilding to be done. And they could well be back in the energy market as buyers almost immediately – like on the 18th. The implications for the energy commodities are positive and a psychology shift in those markets could quickly spill over to the beaten up stocks of the energy companies.

You might find the entire post of interest. I am a regular reader (free e-mail subscription) of InvestmentPostcards.com. 

Please note: I've been making the same contention about China, and did at first in an 8/15 post here.

25 Sep, 2008

Kim Crossman of Portland Energy Conservation Inc. presented "Best Practices & Pitfalls" on combined heat & power (CHP) for commercial buildings -- 4/23, at the National Conf. on Building Commissioning. Proceedings here.

[I didn't attend the event, I just ended up obtaining the presentation and leafing thru it]

If you don't know what CHP is 00



OK. With that as background, here's the "realistic turnkey pricing ranges" for CHP plants, as given by Crossman a few months ago:


From the bottom of the same slide that offered those numbers:

19 Sep, 2008

This past summer, TEDMAG.com posted a column in which I noted that we need to NOT drill for oil off our shores. The reason is NOT environmental concerns, but an eye to the future. Here's a part of the thing:


To my surprise (and, no doubt, having ZERO connection with what I wrote) -- someone else feels the same way. Here's the first three paragraphs of an op-ed from The Boston Globe by Jed Horne:

Drilling will be an environmental disaster, foes warn - something we know a thing or two about here in Louisiana. And even when it comes on line it won't make a whit of difference in the price at the pump. Maybe so, the pro-drilling crowd replies, but there's an important psychology in pushing jack-up rigs into waters off Florida and California and maybe even New England. It will spook speculators into a sell-off.

All true, perhaps - and utterly irrelevant. The real reason to retain the ban is not that drilling is too messy or that the oil won't be valuable enough to make a difference at the gas pump. It's that it's entirely too valuable. Too valuable to squander on an economy as wasteful as ours.

Yep.

19 Sep, 2008

With this week's crazy gyrations in stock markets (and other markets), you might want to give investment decisions a wide berth for a while. But sooner or later, you might become interested in investing some $ in Alternative Energy.

ETFzone.com has put together a short article on exchange-traded funds that focus on the alternative energy sector. I think ETFs might be a viable alternative for your money. Take a look!

[Note: I'm not sure whether you'll have to Register to see that page, but if you do -- well, it's free]

22 Jun, 2008

You'll read lots (and lots) about how great things are in Dubai. There are articles about islands reclaimed from the sea, tall buildings, major investments in green construction, and on and on. We're being left behind, I keep hearing. I've heard this in presentations, seen slides, blah-blah-blahblahblah.

But -- without looking for it -- I stumbled across a 6/12 post from Al-Bawaba. Here's the headline: Electrical fires a real cause for concern in UAE.

UAE = United Arab Emirates.

The lead:


And:


And


EleBlog take: The U.S. needs to work harder and smarter, no question. But I'm not sure the common person in Dubai is ahead of the game. What the heck is salt-water-based grounding, anyway?

NOTE: While looking for the article online (I had printed it off a Nexis database search), I found an earlier story that shook me up: Nearly 70% of UAE residents at risk of electrical fires.

20 Jun, 2008

Consulting-Specifying Engineer magazine (April) included a 1,500-word panel discussion on Power grid problems. I'm not sure you can wrap this up in only 1,500 words, but this was interesting reading. One exchange:

19 Jun, 2008

Construction contractors who want to stay on the cutting edge of technology need to read what's  posted (for free) at AECbytes.com. I recently journeyed over there and printed out a few documents. Here's what they are and why I'll read them (and why you might) . . . and there well might be other stuff at the site that I missed, or that might interest you more:


Yes, it's a lot of reading. But once I've done it, I'll know a heck of a lot more than I do know about where BIM and other construction technologies are going. No, it's not as informative to read this stuff as to attend the events themselves; but then, as noted -- you can't be everywhere!

03 Jun, 2008

As you might have read, I have converted -- I am now a Peak Oil Believer.

Along these lines, several months ago I began a (paid) subscription to Oil & Gas Journal. It's a wonderful magazine. It's an industry magazine. I wanted to subscribe (and read it) so I could get a perspective OTHER THAN what I can get from the Peak Oil enthusiasts. You can get some pretty interesting (and thought-provoking) stuff from www.theoildrum.com.

    Incidentally, folks familiar with that website reference it as "TOD" .......which reminds me of one of my employers, TED Magazine!

- - - - -

Having said that bit, I was interested to find a short column on p72 of O&GJ (6/2/08 issue) by the editor, Bob Tippee, with the headline: Yes, the world's running out of oil; what's new? Apparently, he first posted it online 5/23/08.

Here's a bit of what Tippee had to say:


He continued (excerpting here):


And he ended as follows:


- - - - -

EleBlog take:

a. It's actually ENcouraging to see someone with Tippee's place in the world being . . . reasonable!

b. No one (not even the folks on TOD) says that oil production is near an end. The reasonable position put forward by Peak Oil enthusiasts and believers is pretty simple: We've found all or most of the easy-to-find, easy-to-harvest crude oil on the planet Earth. We aren't about to run out. But we're going to have a lot of trouble meeting escalating demand (especially if the Indians and Chinese all want to drive cars -- and why shouldn't they?). The next few hundred million barrels we find and harvest are going to be a LOT more expensive for end-users than the ones we consumed earlier this decade.

c. My personal belief is that we in the U.S. should start treating crude oil as a scarce resource. That means shifting as much of our transportation system to non-oil-consuming methods (water, rail, biofuels, electric vehicles, you-name-it). It means treating the crude we have not yet pulled out of the ground (in Alaska and in the waters off of our coasts) as something we want to PRESERVE, not consume willy-nilly.

. . . so endeth the sermon.

20 May, 2008

From Buildings magazine: 6 Steps for Evaluating Water-Damaged Electrical Equipment. 

20 May, 2008

A Nation's Building News article provides a run-down of electronic systems contractors who work for home builders -- high-end EScs, custom-home ESCs, electrical contractors, security dealers, and more.

I'm not sure I agree with every word of this, but if you're in the electrical contracting business, this relatively short article is worth a read . . . and a think!

16 May, 2008

Wireless Babysitting Aids Weld Monitoring, Management -- that's the headline on a ControlDesign.com article that includes the graphic below. The story is about monitoring VITAL welds in oil, gas, petrochem, and other process plants. Here's a sliver:






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16 May, 2008

A blog item provides details from a utility industry study about how power consumption could be reduced more than assumed. Find the blog here. Interesting paragraph:

There's a lot to think about there!

07 May, 2008

From the Jan 6, 2008 issue of The Sunday Business Post, Ireland's financial, political, and economic newspaper:

"A shortage of qualified engineers -- and no indication that numbers are improving -- will severly hamper Ireland's progress on renewable energy projects . . the government's aim for one-third of Ireland's electricity to come form renewable sources by 2020 could face a major hurdle: A lack of engineers to carry out the projects."


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06 May, 2008

Consulting-Specifying Engineer ran an article from Generac, NEC and standby gensets, in April. The piece includes the following questions (with answers):

01 May, 2008

Stumbled across a story in the 3/13 U.S. News & World Report. Check out this paragraph (which I've chopped up for readability's sake):


Read the rest of A Worker Shortage In The Nuclear Industry -- here.

14 Apr, 2008

From Construction Business Owner -- a checklist with 8 items. 

03 Apr, 2008

DG = distributed generation. A 2,147-world piece on the Consulting-Specifying Engineer site, from the mag's 12/07 issue, takes on the subject. The article begins with a really stupid quote from a Pittsburgh PE -- which makes me wonder whether there was an agenda here.

I don't think there was, based on my knowledge of the magazine and its staff -- but the 2nd paragraph quote essentially says that "the prototypical co-generation plan" is "uneconomical for all but very special situations."

This is idiotic. A DG installation offers:


Paragraph 4 of the piece quotes a Flack + Kurtz executive saying "cogen makes a great deal of sense" in New York. Apparently, engineers in NYC are not quite as dumb as those in Pittsburgh.

Still, I wonder at the placement of that subversive up-front quote. First, it's wrong -- demonstrably wrong; much of the rest of the article reads like a refutation of the Pittsburgh engineer's nutty remark.

Second, it seems to undermine the premise; why print 2,000 words on the outlook for DG if you want to pull the rug out from under it before the reader gets to word #100?

I know, I know -- journalists are supposed to present "both sides" of the story. But there aren't two sides to EVERY story. For example: Planet Earth is ROUND; you don't have to quote the Flat Earthers when writing about it!

06 Feb, 2008

Knowledge@Wharton is a free public information service from the Wharton School at the U. of Penn. You have to register to see what's there. Back in July, the site posted 'Quality Fade': China's Great Business Challenge -- yes, back in July. I'm still getting caught up on my reading. The opinion piece comes from Paul Midler of China Advantage.

Here's an eye-opening section:

What is maddening to importers is that quality fade often occurs in the last place an importer thinks to check. One American company had been importing a line of health and beauty care products for over a year when the cardboard boxes that held its product suddenly started collapsing under their own weight. There was no logical explanation for the collapse except quality fade, and the supplier in this case blamed sub-suppliers for replacing an acceptable cardboard box with ones that were inferior.

04 Feb, 2008

I'm reading a book about The Panic of 1907. There actually WAS a market panic in 1907 -- a huge one. It was one of a series of panics in U.S. and global markets over a 100-year period.

In 1907, according to what I've read and heard, things only settled down when J.P. Morgan (and his friends) stepped in. The earth shook. People in power freaked out. They discovered, in this panic, that the world relied for its economic stability on the good will of a small group of powerful men.

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.com (note that I am NOT associated with that site in any way).

The point: My reading in the book is where it gets into copper (for reasons not directly associated with electricity). I read last night that the price of copper fell from 24 cents a pound to 18 cents at one point in 1907.

Thus, I now know the price of copper in 1907. I'm using 24 cents. I used the BLS inflation calculator to do some math. Here's what I did:


That means that copper, even at today's $3.27/pound -- even at the $4.00 pound it came close to hitting in May 2006 -- was still, on an inflation-adjusted basis, nowhere near the 1907 price.

[If I set the 1913 price to 18 cents, it would come out to $3.77 in 2007's money.]

EleBlog take: TWO POINTS

1. A 100-year investment in copper got one NOWHERE. So much for the buy-and-hold theory, eh? Obviously, it does not apply to commodities. The time to buy copper (in perfect hindsight) was 2001, when the price was 65 cents. At today's $3.27, you'd be holding onto a 5-bagger right now.

2. A side note: The crash and panic of 1907 led to the formation of the Federal Reserve Board. I have often read about this; I bought the book so I could "read up" on the specifics. What I've read (in snippets in various articles) in the past was:

-- Morgan bailed out the world in 1907.

-- People in economic and politics circles started to think about this. Their thought was:

. . . what if there is no person like J.P. Morgan around next time?

. . . what if we can't find J.P. Morgan, or a person like him, the next time? Worldwide communication was still horrible back then.

. . . what if J.P. Morgan, or the next person like him, wants to extract a price next time (as in, I'll save the world if you make me King).

-- As a result, six years later, the U.S. government took its first-ever socialistic step . . . with the formation of the Fed. At least, that's how the story goes. Others (conspiracy theorists) say formation of the Fed actually just formalized the concentration of power (that in 1907 was unorganized and concentrated on just the one man).

Of course, I don't know any of #2 for a fact. I've just read references to it in short articles. That's why I'm reading the book!

FOR NOW, let's stick with this one concrete fact: If copper tops $5.03 per pound, it will be higher in 2008 (or whenever) that it was at the highs of 1907.

01 Feb, 2008

My friend Paul Rosenberg has brought his Electrical Foreman's Handbook back into print. It's worth a look -- and maybe a purchase.

28 Jan, 2008

A release posted early this year to PR Newswire -- on behalf of a relatively small CT electrical contractor -- contains several interesting nuggets. First, here's an early slice:


What's important here -- to me -- is that, like a typical EC firm, PowerHouse was led into a neat side business by something other than a management decision or market research. The key: "Listening to their clients."

Now, here's the interesting (to me) part:


EleBlog points to ponder:

1. PowerHouse is a small contractor -- issuing a press release. This link takes you to a Reuters pick-up of the PR Newswire item.

2. Generators are a neat sideline business, but even for PowerHouse -- which, remember, issued a release -- this is maybe 50 sales in 2008.

3. The "poor health reasons" is a savvy note. Homeowner health needs are going to be dictating more work for contractors of all types, including electricals.

4. Finally, there's the "generator monitoring auto dialer unit" offering mentioned in the last paragraph quoted above. That's a simple technological item -- a neat thing for a contractor to offer, and not just for generators.

22 Jan, 2008

EISA, the energy law signed into force in December, mandates the U.S. car-and-truck fleet to achieve 35 miles per gallon by the year 2020.

Jerry Flint is a columnist for Forbes magazine. I've been bypassing the political and ignorant crap in the front of this magazine and reading him for years -- perhaps decades, at this point. He's usually right about stuff.

Here's Jerry on the new law: "It won't happen." Among other things in the column, he points out that the 2008 Honda Accord "has poorer fuel economy than last year's model, and Honda is Mr. Green. That new hybrid system on the GM Chevy Tahoe SUV probably adds $10,000 to the cost (and 400 pounds) and gets it up to 20mpg."

There's more. I don't think Flint is necessarily a dinosaur (like the guy names Forbes who writes a column in the front of the magazine). He's talking about practical realities. I prefer to hear about that than fantasies . . . don't you?

18 Dec, 2007

EleBlog carries a few ads, but no one pays for the blog entries here. So this one sounds a bit commercial (and is, I guess). But you really ought to know about EnOcean.

15 Dec, 2007

"10 Ideas for Coping with Rising Construction Costs." -- from School Construction News.

12 Dec, 2007

I wasn't aware that Plant Engineering magazine has had a long-runnin series on "The Art of Protecting Electrical Systems." The mag is up to Part 14 (!!!). The link at left takes you to that article, which is titled "Single-Phase Short Circuit Calculations: A Step-by-Step Guide."

Notes:

a. The article printed out at 13 pages on my computer. I use smaller type, as I still (for some reason) still have excellent vision (my hearing has gone to hell, tho).

b. If you get to the bottom of the thing, there are links to the previous 13 installments in this series.

12 Dec, 2007

Trying to catch up on the information flow in the past few days, I ended up scanning (I did not say "reading") the printed issues of Transmission & Distribution World, Public Power, EnergyBiz, and Utility/T&D AUtomation & Engineering. So while The EleBlog isn't dedicated to the utility business, here's a bit of stuff that caught my eye:

Xcel Switches to Soy-Based Transformers -- beginning in '08, Xcel Energy will use "renewable soy-based dielectric coolant in all new single-phase transformers." The coolant is from Cooper Power System. This is a "green" thing, kinda. But unlike so much of the "green" stuff these days, the movement in the direction of soy-based coolant didn't start yesterday.

IEEE PES Launches Career Website to Address Critical Worker Shortage -- http://www.PES-Careers.org.

Comment: It's not bad, but I prefer http://www.ElectrifyingCareers.com. Of course, I've been involved in the latter since its inception.

"Chronology" of the AEP Wyoming-Jackson Ferry 765 kV transmission line -- this is a one-third-page box sidebar in a feature. It took American Electric Power 16 years to get this project from announcement to fruition. It's important to remember that this is a typical experience in the business of rebuilding and fortifying the U.S. electrical grid. The story doesn't say that but it makes the point just the same.

"Plug-In Partners Get Plugged In" -- yet another article about the PHEV (plug-in hybrid electrical vehicle). A 3-page article. There is a lot of agitating in the electric utility business these days about PHEVs. I don't see it elsewhere; I guess we will sooner or later. The beauty of PHEVs for the utes is:

a. PHEVs can plug in to a "normal" wall outlet to recharge. When I was last acquainted with this concept, the word was we'd have to build (and bring power to) millions of recharging stations.

b. The utilities get to sell power in the downtime -- night. That's very efficient for them (or rather, it makes their operations a lot more efficient).

There are hurdles. You are probably thinking -- "why buy a PHEV, when the Toyota Prius is a hybrid that doesn't need to be plugged in." That's a reasonable question. According to the article, "in mass production, Toyota could sell a plug-in version [of the Prius] for $3,000 more." Why pay the premium? According to a genius quoted in the article, his converted Prius got 48 miles per gallon as a non-PHEV hybridg. Then he converted it, and he said it gets "over 100 mpg of gasoline" thanks to the electric recharge.

What does the electricity cost? A guy quoted claims he need a recharge of 3 to 5 kWh in the day and the same at night. He claims the cost is $7 per month where he lives.

02 Nov, 2007

One session at last month's NECA Convention was about "Supervisory Skills for New Managers," led by Robert G. Mitchell of Integrated Management Group (www.img-training.com) in St. Louis. I didn't attend his session, but I've got his presentation. Here are his "top 10 mistakes of new supervisors in the electrical industry:


I'm not sure what's "Electrical" about any of that. It seems that any new supervisor (including, say, an editor or publisher) could make most of those mistakes. I can't remember doing anything illegal, but I'm sure that -- in my time -- I've probably done almost all of the first nine.

22 Oct, 2007

I'm not sure what to make of this one. Stuff happens in laboratories all of the time; sometimes you never hear of it again. The source of this item is Harvard U., and it's not April 1 -- so therefore, maybe this is real.

Harvard chemists have built a new wire out of photosensitive materials that is hundreds of times smaller than a human hair. The wire not only carries electricity to be used in vanishingly small circuits, but generates power as well.

OK -- don't get too excited. If you read on (Nanowire generates its own electricity) deeper into the piece, you get to this:

A cheap nanoscale power source broadens the potential applications of such nanoscale devices. Though the tiny photovoltaic cells can generate enough electricity to power a similarly tiny circuit, Lieber said they’re not yet efficient enough to have applications on the scale of commercial power generation.

Commercial solar cells, he said, have efficiencies around 20 percent, compared with 3.4 percent for his nano-solar cells. One avenue of future research, Lieber said, will be to explore ways to boost efficiency of the nanowire photovoltaics. If they can reach 10 to 15 percent, he said, their lower cost of production — they can be made from relatively inexpensive materials and don’t require clean rooms to produce — may make them useful in larger-scale applications.

I did some prowling around the net and found another article -- linked from the Harvard web site -- that has a photo of a coaxial nanowire. Is this what the future looks like? We should be so lucky!

The photocredit on the Chemical & Engineering News site went to a Harvard source. Here's the caption that ran with that photo:

Layered Look A coaxial nanowire has a single-crystal p-type core (pink) surrounded by nanocrystalline intrinsic (yellow) and n-type (blue) layers and is topped with SiO₂ (green), as shown in this artificial-color scanning electron micrograph.

 (More)

19 Oct, 2007

A 749-word Plant Services magazine article that seems to have come from Square D talks about how a Florida facility worked "to mitigate the potential of an arcing fault incident." Geez, the headline -- Arc flash on the run -- says it so much better, doesn't it? From the piece:

16 Oct, 2007

I just recently stumbled across a 42-page document, Developments in Design and Construction Law. It was posted to a blog devoted to Real Estate/Construction Law. It's from the Construction Law Subsection of the LA County Bar Association. I don't know how relevant this stuff will be to you; on the other hand, it's free.

08 Oct, 2007

Frank Bisbee's September "Heard On The Street" column -- at Wireville.com -- included the text of my August E-biz column for TED magazine. It's a short piece that combines three items -- comments from a key distributor executive, a short summary of an article on Wesco Distribution and a key tech decision, and a look at the relationship between Building Information Modeling (BIM) and green.

I am always gratified when Frank chooses to add something I've written to his monthly "HOTS" industry round-up. Re-reading the August column, I found that I liked it -- which is NOT usually the case when I read something written weeks or months earlier (by me).

NOTE: Stuff in TED magazine's print edition is easily accessible online -- free. But you have to register (it's not difficuit) at TEDMAG.com. What's different about the August E-biz column is that Frank chose to get permission from the mag to post the thing on his site . . . making it easier for you to "see" it (without registering at TEDMAG).

07 Oct, 2007

A piece ran last month on the Inman news service -- "When must landlord update electrical outlets?" If you read down in the thing, it also asks "how many phone jacks must the landlord provide?" It's aimed at residential renters.

28 Sep, 2007

The Fayetteville Observer is the oldest continually published newspaper in NC, having started back in 1816. There's a feature in the thing, "CHeers and Jeers," which includes (in the 9/27 edition) numerous items of praise (and boos) contributed by members of the public. I stumbled across it because of this one, from Deborah King:

They were working a roadside job in Jacksonville when the funeral procession of my 102-year-old grandmother passed by. They stopped their work, took off their hats, and stood quietly while everyone drove past.

Even my 19-year-old son took notice of their act of respect and commented about how impressed he was.

In this day and time, it is very seldom that cars even slow down for funeral processions, so my family would like to acknowledge these workers for bringing a bright moment to a sad time. In turn, our hats are off to you!

It's easy to forget this: People appreciate the little things.

20 Sep, 2007

There's a "secret" Flight Simulator buried inside Google Earth, according to TechCrunch.

06 Sep, 2007

I have a bad habit of scanning things that I "might" want to read . . . they "might" be interesting. It's a bad thing, because I am -- literally -- always behind in my reading. And I fall further behind every single day.

However, sometimes it pays off. This is both good and bad. It's good, because I find interesting stuff (intersting to ME, anyway). It's bad, because it encourages me to continue to add stuff to the pile of reading . . .

Here's an example. The National Petroleum Council, which advises the Secretary of Energy, just came out with a "global oil and gas study" (mid-July). It's thick, hundreds of pages, and it's total BS. The 300-odd people who put it together didn't have the collective courage (or call it something else if you like) to speak plainly about the coming Peak Oil problem.

However, I found (in the Executive Summary) a really interesting little sidebar or fact sheet that someone managed to get in there. Here it is. It's amazing reading!

- - - - -

Energy Systems Scale and Timeline

The scale of the world energy system and the time required to make significant
changes, both on the demand and on the supply sides, are frequently
underestimated. A few examples:

• The world currently uses about 86 million barrels per day of oil—40,000
gallons every second.

• New, large oil discoveries can take 15-20 years from exploration until
production actually begins, and production can continue for 50 years or more.

• A major new oil platform can cost billions and take a decade or more to
complete. The Hibernia platform off the east coast of Canada cost $5 billion,
took 19 years from discovery to production, and produces only 0.2 percent of
world oil demand. The Thunder Horse platform in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico
cost $4 billion, is not yet operating eight years after discovery, and has a
capacity of 0.3 percent of world oil demand.

• A new average-sized U.S. refinery (120,000 barrels per day of crude oil
distillation capacity) would cost $3 billion or more and would increase U.S.
refining capacity less than 1 percent.

• The United States has about 200,000 miles of oil and about 280,000 miles
of natural gas pipeline, built up over the last century.

• It can take over two decades for a newly commercialized technology to be
broadly applied in the vehicle fleet actually on the road—examples include
fuel injection and front-wheel drive.

• Buildings typically last for decades. Many of the attributes that affect energy
consumption are costly and difficult to retrofit after initial installation, for
example wall thickness, insulation, structural tightness, and windows.

• Commercializing new technology in the oil and gas market takes an average
of 16 years to progress from concept to widespread commercial adoption.

 (More)

30 Aug, 2007

GHG = a new acronym for me. It means Greenhouse Gases. According to an article in the Financial Times -- I can't provide a link, you need to subscribe (which I do) to see it online -- "GHG reductions will cost $200 billion a year by 2030." This estimate comes from the Framework Convention on Climate Change, a unit of the U.N.

Yes, that's a lot of money. And since the estimate comes from the U.N., and no one in the U.S. would trust the U.N. to get an empty Coke can to a recycling bin, it might be an underestimate, for all we know. Depending on your perspective, $200B is a whole lot of money . . . or, compared with having billions of people gag on the ambient air (see China right now) or move to high ground (in the event global warming is real, and ocean levels rise) . . . $200B is a bargain.

Here's the question, not asked in the article: Do humans have the common sense to spend this amount of money to take a precautionary action to do what they can to preserve the world's future?

30 Aug, 2007

Here's the text of a press release from AWCI (www.awci.org). I've bold-faced the sentence of note -- one out of every seven workers in construction is not a citizen, it says.

Impact of Immigration and the Construction Industry Significant
New Research Outlines Need to Continue
to Utilize Immigrants in Construction Industry

[Falls Church, VA] The latest publication in the Foundation of the Wall and Ceiling Industry’s
Foundation Research Series, Immigration and Construction, reports on the vital role— as
approximately 20 percent of the workforce— immigrants workers play in the construction
industry and the need to maintain current work force levels in the industry.

The industry has exploded in the last two decades and while there has been a slight
decline recently in the residential market, owners and contractors have had to work to
stay competitive. Part of this costeffective business strategy has included the use of
immigrant labor— legal and illegal. In the last two decades, 36.2 million immigrants
arriving in the United States from 1985 and 2005, primarily unskilled labor from Latin
America.

“With the attempted immigration reform legislation stalled at the national level, and with
states and localities creating their own laws in its absence, there was a need to educate
members of our industry in a balanced, factual and researchoriented
manner,” says Steven A. Etkin, executive vice president of the Foundation. “Immigration and
Construction was published to assist our community in examining the role of
immigration in our industry.”

Today, companies in the costruction industry struggle to find available, affortable
employees. Today, it is estimated that approximately 14 percent of the construction work
force is undocumented. Between 2002 and 2012, unskilled laborers are expected to
account for 84 percent of the total projected employment growth. Vice President Mikel
Poellinger, president of Poellinger Inc. in La Crosse, Wisc. says, “Immigration and
Construction provides our industry with the background information they need to get
involved in the immigration debate. Our industry needs immigrant workers, and we also
need to be able to work with everyone legally.”

10 Aug, 2007

I stumble across a number of things, and I actually read them. I found a "Department of Defense Bloggers Roundtable" transcript (from 6/9) -- more than 4,000 words. The host for the event was Col. Michael Moon, director, electrical sector development, Gulf Region division, Army Corps of Engineers.

Interestingly enough, the transcript is available here.

I recommend reading it; it's kind of interesting (and our government and military should be praised for holding such roundtables, and publishing the transcript!). Here's a piece that contained information I didn't know:

• as of 3/03, Iraq "was receiving about 4 to 8 hours of power a day" -- with "the lion's share" going to Baghdad, which had 16-24 hours a day of electrical power.

• After our invasion was successfully concluded; "75% of Iraq automatically was receiving twice as much power as they did before." But not Baghdad -- "they saw the reduction."

• Goal today: "to provide 10 to 12 hours of power daily throughout the country."

If you add this up, it means people in Iraq's largest city are probably going to remain unhappy -- with the U.S. military and/or the current civilian government of Iraq -- for quite some time. Our "goal" is 10-12 hours a day of electricity throughout the country, which includes Baghdad; these people can remember 16-24 hours a day of power in the Saddam days.

- - - - -

An additional quote from Col. Moon that I really appreciated: "You know, as much as we hate the bureaucracy in America, boy, I've really learned that it gets stuff done, it actually works. And the problem is there is absolutely no bureaucracy [in Iraq]."



 (More)

10 Aug, 2007

An article in a June issue of The Washington Post noted that there are only 1,145 public gas stations that offer E85 (the motor fuel that's 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline). There are 167,000 retail gas outlets in the country. The article notes "many drivers don't even know their recent-model flexible fuel cars can handle E85."

All changes takes time. This one, too.

06 Aug, 2007

Somehow, my attention was called recently to the annual report of Virco, a domestic furniture manufacturer. I'm not going to be investing in stocks for quite some time (I haven't, really, since 1988, unless you count precious metals and water stocks). I leafed through the report, and came cross this info, from page 6 of the Virco Mfg. 2006 report:

- - - - -

"At the low point of our revenue decline in early 2003, we made a careful comparison of our own domestically manufactured furniture with similar products sourced offshore. We had been doing business in China for over 10 years, giving us a factual basis for comparison. We also studied larger-scale distributors, such as Wal-Mart and Lowe's, which we felt represented the state-of-the-art in global sourcing.

"We concluded that a counter-intuitive economic boundary existed, below which the benefits of cheap labor were offset by higher freight costs. We called this boundry the 'price/cube threshold.' It became the basis of our long-term decision to keep our domestic factories open, even as conventional wisdom argued for the closure of one or both of them.

"The price/cube threshold was also the day-to-day dividing line between what we imported and what we made ourselves. Continuous monitoring of both absolute and relative costs over the intervening years confirmed that raw materials were escalating evenly in both markets, but offshore labor plus freight was climbing faster than domestic labor alone.

"For the following reasons, we believe this trend is likely to continue:

• Wage rates in coastal China increased approximately 20% in 2006.

• Labor shortages in China are now creating occasional supply chain disruptions.

• Deferred environmental clean-up costs -- estimated by the World Bank at 8-12% of China's GDP -- are not factored into current pricing.

• Upward valuation of China's currency may increase the cost of exports.

• Ocean freight and port costs are likely to rise."

- - - - -

That's one (not particular recent) perspective. To that, you can add the recent developments -- toy recalls, food export problems, dogfood contamination. One can't say that there's cause to believe that U.S. manufacturing will make a comeback -- and that maybe the electrical construction industry will net some engagements to restore old abandoned factories for 2008-2009 re-starts . . . but we can hope, and keep an eye on it.

27 Jul, 2007

That's the approximate weight that a U.S. military man carries around -- just the weight of batteries and chargers -- according to the DoD. The military wants to cut the weight, and its offering a prize for "wearable power innovations." Here's the lead on the item:

23 Jul, 2007

No, this item isn't about economic growth in India. It's not about the food at Minerva, the wonderful Indian restaurant (yes, I know the name throws you off) that's around the corner from my house.

No -- it's about heat. According to a Voice of America print clip from 6/12, the temperature was running around 50 degrees (Celsius) in northern India in early June. More than 100 deaths were attributed to the heat.


...of course, this is the Bush Administration. You can read that short clip (which is reproduced without alteration) and wonder how the heck AC units are "running around the clock" in an area in which the power supply is OUT 15 hours a day. 'Splain it to me.

Leaving that idiocy aside, I wanted to note that 50 degrees C = 122 degrees F.

23 Jul, 2007

I ran across a Boston Globe clip that says "3Com Founder Takes the Reins at GreenFuel." It came to my attention because I am invested (in a very minor way) in the stock of 3Com.

[Just so's you know that I'm not talking up the stock, COMS (the stock symbol) is the only one of my investments that I re-evaluate every week. I think the investment was a terrible mistake. Sure, I'm ahead a few bux right now -- but that's right now. I never count "gains" in investments until I sell them. And right now I'm afraid to sell COMS (there are rumors about a takeover) . . . and I'm afraid to keep it. Thank the goddess Fortuna that I didn't buy a lot!]

Here's the reason this is here:

11 Jun, 2007

Jack Keough, the old brains at Industrial Distribution magazine, has a blog. He posts irregularly -- but brilliantly. Some recent samples:

On Generation Y:

"Also, Generation Yers have not had the same relationship with their parents as previous generations. Chester says they only have three to five minutes of face-to-face, meaningful dialogue with their parents each day, while they spend five to seven hours in front of their computers, socializing with their friends.

"He tells employers not to pander to them “but to understand who they are and where they’re coming from.” Some of these new employees have higher expectations than the previous generation, for example. They’re more questioning of their bosses and want to engage in productive work from Day 1."

See "Generation Yers: A new employment problem."

And from "Myths about China & U.S. Manufacturing:"

"Based on all the articles you’ve read about manufacturing fleeing overseas, what percentage of products would you guess are still manufactured in the United States and Canada compared to the total world gross domestic product? Would you guess 10 percent, 15 percent? You’d be wrong."

01 Jun, 2007

Every once in a while I come across news on electrical work in Iraq. The States News Service (5/2) noted that the Army Corps of Engineers is rebuilding the electrical distribution network in Fallujah. This struck me as optimistic on several levels -- putting substations in place while dodging bullets can't be any fun.

Here's a quote from a USACE fellow: "One of the city's two existing 33 kV substations is being rebuilt and two brand new 33 kV substations added to ensure Fallujah has a reliable, stable system." The guys are also rehabbing a 132 kV substation (replacing 2 of 3 transformers, it says).

I wonder if that's the first time in the 21st century that someone has applied the words "reliable" and "stable" to Fallujah?

20 May, 2007

Heck of a headline, ain't it? It comes from reading a blog (from 2/27) -- "How IT Is Putting Your Out Of Business," from Christopher Koch. He blogs for CIO.com. I have read this several times since first stumbling over it, and it's good. Here's the assertion:


"Hackett" (first name Greg) got into a Q-and-A with Koch. Here's a bit of that:

KOCH: So you think IT really has improved productivity across all industries?

HACKETT: Oh I think it’s definitely proven. But then I also found that SG&A [Sales, General and Administration—essentially the costs of running a business] has gone up by 40 percent—canceling out the gains in COGS. And what’s driven SG&A overall has been a little bit of regulatory costs, but primarily IT costs. IT cost is the fastest growing cost in a corporation today.

Wanna read the rest? You definitely should! CLICK HERE.

16 May, 2007

I occasionally browse over to James Howard Kunstler's blog. He wrote a book, The Long Emergency, which I almost enjoyed. The guy is a natural blogger -- he rants like a champion. This is better online than it is in print . . . and better short than long.

His 4/30 entry is right on, in my opinion. Here's the (long-ish) part that I like -- and a link to it (CLICK HERE -- see the 4/30 piece). This is a heck of a read!

= = = = =

But it brings me to my theme for today, which is how I traveled yesterday to Saratoga's neighboring town to south, Ballston Spa (the county seat), one of a hundred decrepitating little Main Street burgs in upstate New York, and how it seemed to be visibly rotting into the ground to an extent that even I, after decades of laborious landscape pathology studies, found rather shocking.

Spring comes late up here. I was down in Georgia back in February and the daffodils there were already gone by, for goodness sake. But up here, they had barely sprouted as of the last week in April. The landscape (and townscape) had a horrible sort of laid bare look -- like an old person in the intensive care unit getting a sponge bath in bed. The ground itself looked scrofulous, with vast quantities of plastic flotsam littering the roadside swales, and tatters of windblown plastic supermarket bags hanging off the sumac bushes, and no foliage yet to hide any of it.

But it was the buildings that really got me. You have to wonder: have Americans forgotten how to build dignified houses, or are we simply not dignified people anymore? Virtually every building put up after 1950 looked terrible and many of them were rotting into the ground. Most of them are little more than elaborate packing crates with a few doo-dads screwed on -- exactly the kind of buildings, by the way, that Venturi and Scott Brown celebrated in their writings. They called them "decorated sheds," the vernacular expression of the mainstream American soul.

The design failures of these things might be attributed to a loss of knowledge and a lack of attention to details, but I think a deeper explanation has to do with the diminishing returns of technology. We've never had more awesome power tools for workers in the building trades. We have compound miter saws, electric spline joiners, laser-guided tape measures, and many other nifty innovations, and we've never seen, in the aggregate, worse work done by so many carpenters. For most of them, apparently, getting a plain one-by-four door-surround to meet at a 45-degree miter without a quarter-inch gap is asking too much. In other words, we now have amazing tools and no skill. What you wonder is whether the latter is a function of the former. Is the work so bad because we expect the tools to have all the skill?

Another issue is the choice of materials. As you march down the decades from the 1950s, the materials-of-choice for finishing the exterior are more and more materials not found in nature. Aluminum siding was a big favorite for a while -- and you can always spot it because of the dents below the three-foot high level, where the lawnmower has shot stones at the panels for decades. After the 1980s, there is a distinct acceleration in the use of vinyl for practically everything. The vinyl clapboards, soffits, window-surrounds, et cetera, are often little more than stapled onto the house. And naturally they begin to sag and pull apart instantly. After twenty-odd years of that you end up with a house that looks like a birthday present wrapped by a five-year-old.

Another thing you get is a fantastic accumulation of automobile exhaust in the zone starting about four feet under the eves. The pathetic slobs who live in these buildings never wash this patina of grime off their houses -- because the vinyl cladding was sold to them as being "maintenance-free."

At this time of year, before the shrubs leaf out, you can see that each house is surrounded by an asteroid belt of discarded effluvia -- plastic children's toys, broken appliances, odds-and-ends of sporting equipment, all oxidizing, polymerizing, and delaminating under the remorseless ultraviolet light. Likewise, the things that have come to be attached to the houses -- the entrance porticoes and decks built out of chemicalized lumber (which has not been painted in twenty-seven years) -- these things are also, finally, coming apart, torquing out of plumb, disintegrating, in short yielding to all the disordering forces of entropy.

Paradoxically, the buildings which tend to be in better condition are the historic ones, the ones built before modular-snap-together materials existed, the ones made of materials found in nature, the ones built with non-electric hand tools. They manage to resist the natural ravages of time. Their roofs were designed to bear snow loads and to shed water in a way that protected the rest of the structure. The materials never promised to be maintenance-free, so the owners and caretakers naturally perform the required routine repairs. They stand there as reminders that our notion of progress-through-technology is a slippery thing.

Poor little Ballston Spa. The whole town is rotting into the ground and the folks who live there are either too poor, too addled on methadrine, too busy buying plasma TVs, too greedy strip-mining their buildings for Section-8 rentals, or too conditioned by failure and disappointment to take care of their property. It's a self-reinforcing feedback loop, of course, and it's happening all over the nation. We've succeeded in building too many things that aren't worth caring about, and the end result is that we now live in a land where nothing is taken care of.

14 May, 2007

I love it when politicians talk about “a big tent” when referencing their parties. In a country with only two political parties, how obvious is this?

The question for the environmentalists – and those concerned with saving energy (which I hope includes electrical people) – is whether or not to jump on the “green” bandwagon.

Mark me down as skeptical.

I ran across an article, in exploring the Grist.org Web site, that’s subheaded: “With big biz jumping on the green bandwagon, should activists cheer or jeer?” The article includes this winning sentence:

“Sustainable living has gone from granola fringe to glossy fashion.”

I think that’s exactly right. As a contrarian, that makes me extremely suspicious. Read the article (CLICK HERE). It’s a “think” piece from the perspective of the enviros. Even if you aren’t one of ‘em, you might learn something (who knows?).

According to the author, the greens have to move away from “either/or” thinking toward a “both/and” mentality.

Put me down for a wait-and-see attitude.

14 May, 2007

Somehow, I ran across a December post on Gildertech.com – home of George Gilder. He’s a right-wing mainstay, the guy who invented the word “telecosm” . . . and remembered (at least by me) as wildly bullish on technology. He gave subscribers to his various publications NO HINT that the end was coming.

I assume that’s because he did not see what was coming in 1999-2000-2001. Yet he was celebrated (before and, I guess, after) as some kind of visionary.

A visionary with a damn limited field of vision, we'll say.

If this sounds bitter, it’s NOT because I am. I did not believe Gilder for a moment. I have read him for years – even subscribing to some of his newsletters from time to time (and they are expensive!) – to use him and the people with whom he is allied as Contrary Indicators.

In other words, if Gilder says the sky is blue, I expect to see Bright Green when I look up. And I am never disappointed!

See a December post from Gilder on the energy crisis (CLICK HERE). Here’s my favorite part:

“The only reason for an energy crisis is the callousness of greens toward the environment, which they are willing to waste and deface with extravagant frivols such as windmills, which cannot possibly fuel the economy.”

This man is an idiot. He refers in his post to “the green hatred of nuclear.” Fact is, I’m a tree hugger AND pro-nuke. So are a lot of other environmentalists. He's been wrong, he's wrong now, and he'll be wrong in the future.

Got another definition of "idiot" handy?

10 May, 2007

I've heard a bit about energy harvesting. This is an idea whose time has come. 

The example I've heard about (a few times) -- to power a wireless sensor on a wall, include an energy harvesting mechanism. Whenever the wall vibrates (i.e., someone slams a door), the power generated by that vibration would be stored by the device (for use later).

Here's another one: Grab the energy wasted when you take a walk. From the item:

"When a person takes a step, a large amount of energy is given and taken away . . . Harnessing that energy has become more viable with piezoelectric polymers materials with molecules grouped as orderly crystals that produce an electrical voltage when pressure is applied."

Likely? Stupid? I don't know. But DARPA -- the defense agency that funded development of the Internet, you'll remember -- has kicked in $50K to help the researcher who is going after this. CLICK HERE for more.

10 May, 2007

Yes, I know there's plenty of bad on the evening news from this war. I'm anti-war, but this is NOT an anti-war item. It's from a 4/29 New York Times article -- headline: "Inspectors Find Rebuilt Projects Crumbling in Iraq."

Here's the slice I chocked on:

"At the airport, crucially important for the functioning of the country, inspectors found that while $11.8 million had been spent on new electrical generators, $8.6 million worth were no longer functioning."

There's also this: When inspectors wanted to inspect a padlocked medical incinerator at a maternity hospital in Erbil -- the burner is described as "expensive" -- no one at the hospital could supply a key. Here's what the inspectors did find: "Medical waste, including syringes, used bandages, and empty drug vials, were clogging the sewage system and probably contaminating the water system. The newly built water purification system was not functioning either."

Forgot had bad things were under Saddam (perhaps this bad or worse). The United States of America has taken responsibility for this stuff.

We can do better.

10 May, 2007

can't ignore these nine, according to CIO.com. The Apple iPhone is one of them; so is "consumer web apps." CLICK HERE

04 May, 2007

Here's something I found in a Houston Business Journal article, on the company Peabody Energy Corp. (of St. Louis) -- stock symbol BTU:

"Peabody's coal alone fuels more than 10% of the nation's electricity."

03 May, 2007

I've had this lying around for a while -- an excerpt from a 1/3/07 column in the Philadelphia Inquirer by a guy (Andrew Cassel) unknown to me. It's good stuff:

03 May, 2007

From a Government Accountability Office report, Key Challenges Remain for Developing and Deploying Advanced Energy Technologies to Meet Future Needs:


When they write the history of this era, historians will blink in disbelief at this. But the explanation is pretty clear: We had 12 years of Reagan-Bush, 8 years of a weak Clinton, followed by GW Bush. The idea was to shrink the government and cut taxes.

You can't shrink the government without shrinking SOMETHING. So we cut R&D into everything -- not just alternative energy, but nukes and fossil fuel too!

And then we ran out and installed more air conditioning, bought more computers and consumer electronics, purchased SUVs by the boatload, and drove more and more miles every year. Are we stupid, or what?

14 Apr, 2007

The US Army Corps of Engineers is building a new 132 kV overhead power line between the Nasiriyah power station and the Ash Shatra substation. "Projects of this kind will lower the incidence of power outages and help modernize the electrical power system," says a project engineer. See the story here.

14 Apr, 2007

How much power-plant building is going on in India? I found a 4/12 item on Indo-Asian News Service. Check out the facts (plucked from the 600-word article:
AND: Check out this quote: "In view of the high ash content of Indian coal, the annual generation of fly ash is currently about 112 million tonnes (1 tonne = 2,205 pounds) and may double by 2017."

12 Apr, 2007

While sorting through a massive bunch of stuff I had ignored, I ran across these two articles:

Innovation Lacking in New U.S. Commercial Buildings -- from National Real Estate Investor (posted 6/29/06). CLICK HERE.

Innovations from the Giants 300 -- from Building Design & Construction (from the July 2006 issue). The 300 are the big companies as honored by BD&C. CLICK HERE.
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12 Apr, 2007

I saved an article (no longer freely accessible) from the Houston Chronicle on "the engineering gap." It noted the many speakers and articles that point out the "fact" that China graduates a lot more engineers than the U.S., and that our innovation is headed down the drain, etc.

I'm not saying our educational system is good. However, I thought it suspicious that China was graduating 600,000 folks with engineering degrees each year. I know there are 1.3B Chinese! I just found the number hard to accept. The fact that the "gap" was heralded by FORTUNE magazine also smelled to me. That's the magazine that ranked Enron as the 7th most admired company . . . just before Enron blew up and its many nasty and illegal escapades came to light.

As a sidelight: You'd think such a publication would permanently retire the "most admired" annual rankings after such a destructive event . . . but, no.

Duke University researchers published "Framing the Engineering Outsourcing Debate" in 12/05. Upon close examination, the numbers are:


Elsewhere, I've read that some of the engineering graduates in China and India are auto mechanics. I'm not kidding. I wish I could find the where on that, but it's not at my fingertips; and I don't know if there are such folks included in China's 351K.

However, I did find the 12-page Duke report -- CLICK HERE to download it.

11 Apr, 2007

I just stumbled across this, apparently a regular feature of SeekingAlpha.com -- the Housing Bubble and Real Estate Market Tracker. There are summaries, with links, of more than 35 housing/real estate-related stories. CLICK HERE to see it.

Here at the EleBlog, we're big fans of "the investment biker," Jimmy Rogers. Many folks don't know that Rogers was, originally, a partner with George Soros. Here's the item on Rogers & housing:

05 Apr, 2007

Jim Jubak is one of my favorite financial columnists. Unlike the "bearish" folks that I read regularly, he's "balanced" in his outlook. He's got a good mind, writes about interesting stuff, and is a good writer to boot. In a recent piece, "Build Your Inflation Hedge With Infrastructure," he threw out some facts about India and China that seemed worth regurgitating:


According to Jubak, inflation in India is running at 6% in the economy as a whole, but 11% in food. Why? "Much of the country's soaring rate of inflation in food rices is self-inflicted. Somewhere between 30% and 40% of the country's crops rot in the fields or spoil in transit because of the country's creaky infrastructure. There simply isn't any way to get the food to market in time. What does make it through the supply chain is subject to huge markups at each stage of the process, because getting food from warehouse to distribution center to retail store to consumer is so time-consuming and cumbersome."

EleBlog take: Despite this apparent inability to feed its people at economic prices, India is out-competing the U.S. for relatively good jobs.

05 Apr, 2007

I received an e-mail from someone who shall remain nameless disputing, mildly, my increasing conviction that the "peak oil" hypothesis is REAL. I don't blame anyone for disagreeing, as:


Lined up on the other side of the fence are some hard facts:


I don't expect anyone to become a believer instantly. The interesting part of this (for me) is that what the "peak oil" advocates are saying we should do dovetails precisely with my natural tree-hugging instincts. Simmons, in a TV interview, said this: "The best new oil basin we will ever find is the one called 'conservation'."

Think about that! Our post-peak-oil future isn't dismal -- it's well within our control. Assuming peak oil is here (and if the hypothesis is correct, the peak either already has occurred, is coming this decade, or will be here by 2025-2030) . . . conserving scarce resources just makes sense. So, by the way, does buying a bit heap of OIH (stock symbol for an oil ETF) and socking it away for a long-term investment.

Assuming you're still reading, there are two things you might think about and do.

THINK: According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, "alternative technologies will displace just 4% of projected U.S. consumption by 2015" (from a report in The Wall Street Journal). GAO isn't all-seeing and all-knowing, but that's a good guess from people who have no dog in this fight. What if they're right? Optimistically, the "something" that will come along clearly will come along after 2015. On the other hand, maybe whatever it is will take a lot longer, and we're not (collectively) making the right decisions.

DO: There's a "peak oil" Web site, The Oil Drum. You might go there if you want to examine the entire issue. But here's a short-cut: The site recently posted two TV clips (from CNBC) and two audio files. The TV clips feature Matthew Simmons and T. Boone Pickens. One of the audio clips is a 60-minute thing featuring James Howard Kunstler, author of the book The Long Emergency. CLICK HERE to go to the page.

27 Mar, 2007

Jim Pinto, who has an amazing brain, has noted his "picks" for the Top Automation Technologies of 2007. They are:


See his newsletter by clicking here. You'll find Jim's "e-news" informative, stimulating, and perhaps even irritating. You can subscribe free; just poke around the site.

18 Mar, 2007

As a writer for TED magazine (= "The Electrical Distributor") and its Web site, TEDMAG.com, I've devoted a lot of attention to the private equity backers of companies that are gobbling up electrical and other industrial distributors. Heck, it would appear that a combo of private equity companies may well be the ultimate buyer of Home Depot Supply -- which had $12 billion in 2006 sales!

But as there's so much low-cost money around these days (if you're a qualified borrower), the private equity people are everywhere. The point was driven home for me -- and maybe will be for you -- by a 1,381-word article on the ZweigWhite site, "Private Equity and the AEC Industry."

AEC = architecture, engineering, and construction.

ZweigWhite - a leading consulting and information-publishing firm.

Find the article by CLICKING HERE.

18 Mar, 2007

12 paragraphs into a 3/6 New York Times story, "Trials of Nuclear Rebuilding" -- datelined from Finland -- was this paragraph, which contains info I didn't have about global nuclear power:

"There are 435 nuclear reactors in operation world-wide, but most were built in the 1960s and 1970s. Finland last constructed a nuclear plant in the late 1970s, and Areva NP, the Areva-lead joint venture at Olkiluoto [Finland], hasn't been a lead contractor since the 1980s.

"Excluding Olkiluoto, 29 reactors are currently being built, mainly in Asia, but all are using old designs that Western European and U.S. nuclear-safety regulators won't allow."

I highlighted that last phrase. Doesn't it give you the chills?

15 Mar, 2007

In doing some research, I stumbled across a report in the 10/06 issue of Hydrocarbon Processing (no, I'm not a regular reader!) carrying info on a projection from the ARC Advsory Group.

"The worldwide market for wireless technology in manufacturing is expected to grow an average 26%/year over the next five years." That will take it from $325.7 million in 2005 to more than $1 billion by 2010.

I know most electrical contractors didn't get into the business after looking at the wide world of opportunities -- most contractors started out as electricians. But you don't have to have an MBA to see that there's opportunity here, especially if you're in an area where manufacturing is still being done. Here's a piece of the rest of the HP article:

"A major factor favoring greater deployment of wireless technologies in manufacturing is the ability of wireless applications to enable new and better ways of operating manufacturing plants Process manufacturing stands to feel the greatest impact. Field operations within a process plant are a classic case of the need for more information that can only be delivered wirelessly

" . . . millions of field devices are installed at great cost in process manufacturing facilities. However, because most are not digitally enabled, their ability to share process and maintenance information is extremely limited. This presents a huge opportunity for wireless technology, which can be used to enable these 'stranded' assets to the benefit of operations, maintenance, and business systems across the enterprise."

13 Mar, 2007

I've been catching up on my reading. I recently read "back issues" of the weekly Credit Bubble Bulletin, by Doug Noland (you can CLICK HERE to see the archive). I recommend this without hesitation -- it's free and it's informative. I never miss a single issue.

Along with financial info and credit-market news you won't find anyplace else (at least not for FREE), Noland -- a person I do not know, by the way -- provides a roundup of key news you might otherwise miss. A sample is this quote from a 2/7 Bloomberg news item:

"China, the world's biggest energy user after the U.S>, plans to increase power generating capacity by 15% this year to meet rising demand . . . the nation will add 95 gigawatts of capacity by the end of 2007 . . . the nation had a 4th straight year of power shortage(s) last year, when consumption peaked in summer. The nation's total installed capacity increased by 20% in 2006 to 622 gigawatts."

OK -- so China added more than 100 gW in 2006 and is going to add another 95 mW this year. That means from 2005 to 2007, the Middle Kingdom will have gone from around 515 gW to 715 gW. WOW!

Hey - 95 gW = 95,000 megawatts. That's 95 power plants of 1,000 mW each, which is a big power station. This is impressive! But it's also depressing, if you think "man" causes global warming . . . as much of China's power is generated via the use of Coal.

06 Mar, 2007

I have been talking about this for several years: As a middle class emerges -- and grows -- in India and China, we're going to have BIG problems. It's happening. And we are. A Toronto Star article (from 2/28) talks about this -- CLICK HERE to get to it; I apologize in advance if it's not still online.

The gist is in the subhed: "Demand exploding in India, China for air conditioners that use chemicals being banned here."

Some sample quotes:

• From a resident of Mumbai -- "All my friends have air conditioners now. Ten years ago, no one did."

• In China, ownership soared to 87.2 air conditioners per 100 urban households in September [2006], from 24.4 seven years earlier." This does not take into account that country's huge non-urban population!

• "China . . . is stepping up exports to the United States of air conditioners using [HCFC-22]." Note that production of this substance is banned in most industrial countries by 2020. The U.S. has banned domestic production as of 2010.

• Net-net: "The emissions of things like HCFC-22 -- we had thought they were sufficiently in control," according to a scientist. WRONG.

06 Mar, 2007

The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) has identified the "10 cutting-edge innovations that point the way to a sustainable future for the American home." I read the item (on GreenerBuildings.com) over several times, because only one of them is -- vaguely -- about electrical, datacom, or home networking/automation stuff. No mention of lighting (people in the future won't read, so for what do they need light, anyway?).

Here's the article.

02 Mar, 2007

I don't think I've previous written about Electrochromic Windows. Beyond the obvious fact (you've got to Plug In Your Windows?) that they consume electrical energy, they offer a great potential return on that energy consumption . . . energy savings and comfort. An article posted to Buildings.com (click here to see it) talks about these "windows of the future" -- and offers useful illustrations of "a five-layer electrochromic coating."

Maybe you don't want to read up on this, but you're gonna enjoy looking at the pictures!

27 Feb, 2007

I tend to like writing that makes me think, and I aspire to that (I know, I'm not there yet). A recent blog entry on CIO.com -- "What Happened to That Whole Hoteling Concept?" -- fit the bill. My reaction was -- yeah, I forgot that, what did happen?

Here's the link.

Quote: " . . . the buzz seems to have subsided. Or died altogether." The blogger doesn't claim to have the answer. There are a couple of responses that add fuel to the fire.

Why this is relevant here: I had been convinced that office buildings -- which certainly are the sources of a lot of work for electrical contractors (new ones and tenant improvement work in existing buildings) -- were going to be on the decline. That is to say, there would be FEWER office buildings built new over time -- a gradual dimunition of the breed. We've got more than enough existing office buildings in the places where most people work.

Could be I was wrong. Hoteling was one of (several) trends that I saw reducing the need for office space.

In this case, Joe = Wrong = Good for the industry!

22 Feb, 2007

77% of construction and building firms had problems with skills shortages in 2006, according to a survey by the Chartered Institute of Building (which is a British institution) – as reported on www.PersonnelToday.com, which noted that "the most common reason given by respondents for the skills shortages was that the industry was not attractive enough to potential recruits.”

From Michael Brown, a CIOB official: “It is relatively easy to import migrant workers at craft or supervisory levels locally, from Eastern Europe, but considerably more difficult to recruit senior managers.”

EleBlog take: I believe that the U.S. will soon resort to heavy imports of trained electricians from Eastern Europe, to cope with our skilled electrical worker shortage. This was done in the 1998-2001 boom (I wrote about it back then). I think it's going to happen again -- and it will be much bigger this time.

20 Feb, 2007

"Breathe New Life Into Aging Electrical Switchgear" is the headline Plant Engineering magazine slapped on a 2,140-word feature from Square D Services. The article delves into options for replacing/retrofitting existing (obsolte) gear. CLICK HERE to see it.

17 Feb, 2007

More than half the housing units started in New Jersey in 2005-06 "have excluded children," according to Nation's Building News (a publication of the NAHB). Read about "vasectomy housing" by CLICKING HERE.

17 Feb, 2007

You'll want to read a blog entry on Construction.com from someone named Don Fornes -- "Keeping an Eye on Construction Webcam Technology." He claims they can reduce delays. Especially impressive is the quote from a guy who notes that contractors who tried ONE webcam soon went company-wide with the idea. CLICK HERE to see it.

17 Feb, 2007

Finding qualified people is tough in Industrial Distribution, too, according to Jack Keough, who blogs for the magazine Industrial Distribution. CLICK HERE.

05 Feb, 2007

Siemon has rolled out pre-terminated copper and fiber optic trunking cable assembles. CLICK HERE.

Southwire has rolled out "FlatWire Ready" low-voltage lighting. It's interesting. See www.flatwire.tv.

04 Feb, 2007

Jim Olszytnski is the Editor of Supply House Times, a magazine serving plumbing and other distributors. (Find the magazine here: www.supplyht.com.

Here's what he wrote in his January editorial, using information from NAED:

- - - - -

Customers want it NOW!

The National Association of Electrical Distributors Education & Research Foundation recently published a research report: “Value-Added: Assessing Service Offerings of Electrical Distributors.” According to NAED, the highest ranked new services customers would most like to see were:

• Same-day delivery, 86%.
• Emergency delivery within two hours, 73%.
• Immediate credit on warranties/returns, 71%.
• Early-morning delivery, 70%.

Everything else finished way back of this pack.

“Same day…two hours…immediate…early morning” — customers don’t seem to regard patience as much of a virtue nowadays. Seems that any distributor not looking at ways to speed up services is in danger of being lapped by the swiftest competitors.

04 Feb, 2007

Network Computing put this together. If you're in the market for one of these, you might give this a read. CLICK HERE.
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17 Jan, 2007

I've contended for a while that the end-game of electrical construction e-business will be the day when contractors (and their project managers, engineers, etc.) give electricians handheld computers. I should write more about that here some time!

For the moment, take a look at this article from ConstrucTech magazine (you might need to register to see it -- I think it's FREE). The piece is about AirToolz, which offers a handheld tool for use by field superintendents -- enabling management to keep an eye on what's going on on the job site.

17 Jan, 2007

I ran across an 11/27 article in Inside F.E.R.C., which I think is a newsletter from McGraw-Hill, headlined: "Labor Shortage, Resources Dominate Infrastructure Debate As Energy Demand Surges." It's a 3,174-word article; you have to pay $4.95 to see it -- and I'm NOT selling it (use this link if you wanna pay).

Among other stuff in the article:


DISCLAIMER: When I worked as Publisher of Electrical Contractor magazine (1990-98), Dan Walter was my boss for much of that time.

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17 Jan, 2007

Maybe you've seen this factolito before. I had not. So it woke me up. It's the 5th paragraph of a Dec. 30 article from the Rocky Mountain News (headline: "Colorado's Electricity Infrastructure Needs Jump-Start On Expansions").

Here's paragraph #5:

"Standing alone, the five leading Internet search engines will consume 5 gigawatts of electricity in 2006. That equates to the amount of electricity needed to run the city of Las Vegas."

Wow!

15 Jan, 2007

A CNNMoney.com story (1/4) points out that there is, already, a skilled worker shortage in the U.S. "Companies [are] indicating they can't exploit market opportunity because they can't find people with the right skills," says a Deloitte Consulting guy quoted in the piece -- which you can find here.

Along the same lines, see "Lack of Human Capital Is Becoming Serious Issue," on Hospitality.net -- click here.
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15 Jan, 2007

NECA & IBEW have issued a press release on the worker shortage in the electrical industry. I think the shortage is here, now. See the release by clicking here. DISCLAIMER: I work for the NECA-IBEW joint marketing co-operative that issued that release.

Self-pat on the back: I made a number of presentations (and wrote articles) in the 2000-2004 period that predicted a worker shortage would hit. The time frame I projected was 2007-2010. I don't expect to see a parade in my honor! It's just nice to be right occasionally . . .
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15 Jan, 2007

You might have seen this someplace earlier, but if not, this lead paragraph from a 12/25 item will fascinate you:


Read the rest here.

10 Jan, 2007

Plant Engineering magazine's 12/06 issue presented a report on a paper presented by folks from Ferraz Shawmut. Title: "Effects of Insulating Barriers in Arc Flash Testing." If electrical safety is a concern to you, you'll want to click here and read the thing.

28 Dec, 2006

I've been hearing whispers and shouts (both) that power plant construction is going to take off soon. This is a good thing for the country, but a bad (or at least indifferent) thing for the electrical industry. If a lot of power plants are built at one time, the shortage of skilled electricians is going to get A LOT WORSE.

In wandering through the Buildings Data Book (a Dept. of Energy publication), I came across this note:

Total electricity sales in the U.S. are projected to increase at an average rate of 1.9% according to the AEO 2005, from 3,481 billion kilowatthours in 2003 to 5,220 billion kilowatthours in 2025. With growing demand and the projected retirement of 43 gigawatts of inefficient or older technology, generation capacity is projected to increase significantly. To meet future electricity demand a total of 229 power plants will have to go on line by 2010, 751 by 2020, and 1102 by 2025.

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28 Dec, 2006

The Chicago Board of Trade's build is more than 76 years old. It's recently undergone a major renovation -- featuring "10 feeds form 7 different ComEd substations." See story here.

28 Dec, 2006

Chain Store Age is a monthly magazine that serves readers in retailing. Obviously, from the name, we're talking about national and regional chains. Note that I once worked (for 4.5 months) for a no-longer-extant spin-off publication, Chain Store Age-Supermarkets. That was in 1979.

I receive the publication for a variety of reasons. It's an excellent trade magazine. There are some areas in common (not many) between what chain-store retailers do and what electrical distributors (guys and gals for whom I write) do every day. Plus, I like to take a look at the advertising in CSA . . . the electrically oriented stuff.

Because the "mid-December" issue's cover was "Retailers Embrace Green - Sustainability Gains Momentum," I thought I'd take you through the issue. The ads below are all full-page ads (unless otherwise indicated). I omitted one heck of a lot of construction ads; there was a statistical feature on "Big Builders," which drew in those companies. I also omitted HVAC-only ads.

Inside Front Cover (page 2) -- an ad from Rogers Electric of GA (www.lrogerselectric.com).

Page 3 -- ad for Emerson Climate Technologies ("it's time for Intelligent Store")

Page 4 -- Generac Power Systems ("no power, no customers, no revenue")

Page 8 -- ABCO Facility Maintenance (lighting maintenance is among 14 services listed)

Page 13 -- MC Sign Co. (includes "lighting repair & retrofits" among services listed)

Page 27 -- LightStat ad ("simple energy management")

Page 28 -- ImageCare Maintenance Services ("your experts in signage, lighting & disaster recovery")

Page 29 -- FI Companies, facilities services -- doesn't say electrical/lighting, but it's a poor ad. They meant to!

Page 30 -- half-page ad for Genesis Facility Management. (six bullets -- #6 is "plumbing & electrical")

page 31 -- Academy Fire Protection ("fire alarms, fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers")

page 33 -- Johnson Controls/York ("York's National Accounts Group") -- most know that JC uses ECs as subs.

page 63 -- SES ("we don't make signs, we make them bigger")

page 64 -- Universal Electric Corp. -- Starline Track Busway ad ("improving the way retailers design electrical outlets")

page 65 -- NEST International -- ("your complete facility solution for" . . . electrical services, fire safety compliance, HVAC listed among 20 specifics)

page 68 -- City Lighting Products -- ("our lighting designers transform stores into shopping experiences")

page 69 -- Retail Service Solutions -- (bullet #2 of 3 = "electromechanical" - bullet #3 = "lgithing management")

page 72 -- Calico Building Services -- (copy indicates they do electrical)

page 73 -- Eaton/Cutler-Hammer -- ("are you ready for the next power outage")

page 75 -- First Service Networks -- facilities management co. Lists HVAC, Pluming, Electrical, Refrigeration as 1st 4 of 13 services.

page 81 -- Prenova, energy process management solutiosn ("there's finally a way to predict and prevent energy-related asset failure")

8-page insert - Tarrant Lighting -- ("it's here! the fixture heralded as the next great thing in retail lighting has arrived")

page 96 -- Southwest Signs

page 99 -- Colite International -- ("signature LEDs")

4-page insert -- Barlo Signs International

page 107 -- GE Lighting ad ("green is green")

page 111 -- Facility Solutions Group ("around the clock lighting and electrical service")

page 117 -- North american Signs

page 120 -- National Sign Systems

page 131 -- US Signs

# # #

20 Dec, 2006

From the 11/10 Times-Picayne newspaper (of New Orleans) comes a story about too few applicants for trainee programs.

"Officials with Louisiana community colleges and trade unions with appenticeship programs that benefit from the federal financing say they have many more openings than applicants -- a situation they blame on the continued shortage of viable housing in the New Orleans area . . . 'We have people calling from as far away as Maryland and as close as Mississippi who want to go through the training . . . But the problem is that they have nowhere to live'." [the direct quote is from Lauren King, dean of workforce development at Louisiana Technical College's Region I.

LA Tech "has secured federal financing to train 700 people for consturction jobs, but so far has trained only 19, with an additional 50 now attending classes."

Note: This story didn't run in November 2005, just weeks after Katrina. This story appeared just a few weeks ago -- 14+ months after the hurricane.

16 Dec, 2006

Construction Today magazine did not put the 892-word story online (so there's no link here!), but the November issue contained a profile of "teamwork specialists" at Cherry City Electric (Salem, Ore.). Among other interesting stuff:

• CCE "says it has earned a 96% client retetion rate."

• 50 out of 120 projects the company works on in a typical year are design/buld.

• The company says it spends more than $1 million annually in safety and training. "That trianing saves both us and our customers that [amount] many times over," GM Ray Ellis told the magazine.

An interesting sidelight touched on the use of 3-D design by CCE and Total Mechanical on the construction of a 5-story courthouse for the U.S. government. The General Services Administration (the gummint's real estate arm) oversaw the construction. According to a quote from GSA, the coordination "at the subcontractor level -- allowed the team to really see what was in the tight spaces before [the building] was built . . . administrative levels had les sthan two feet of space between the ceiling and post-tensions slab. In this narrow space, there are [variable air volume] boxes and ducts, heating and chilled water piping, plumbing, conduits, cable trays, l ighting, and security control devices."

Thanks to the 3-D design, GSA said, "the stakeholders in the MEP disciplines [had to] provide accurate shop drawings early in the process."

Note: MEP = mechanical, electrical, plumbing.

17 Oct, 2006

I printed out a 9/22 report on the demise of Amaranth, the hedge fund, from Bloomberg.com. I read it only recently, which puts me behind. This is one of the most frightening short pieces I've ever read, and not because the hedge fund in question blew up!

1. It mentions something called Spacs. Read the item for a definition of this crap.

2. It refers to something called a Start. Another thing that needs 'splaining.

3. There is a regurgitation of a quote in the item, from something writer Susan Antilla posted a year earlier: "There is a lot of private equity and hedge fund capital out there having a tough time finding a home. Too much money chasing too few deals."

That's the way the whole financial world feels to me at this time. Maybe it's true? Find the article here.

17 Oct, 2006

McGraw-Hill Construction offers a Blog that tends to consist of longer think pieces. I try to check it out regularly, to see what's up. Here are two items I thought of note to electrical construction folks. Get to the blog by clicking here.

a. Excel: As Good As It Gets For Preconstruction Management? (from 10/10 -- right on top of the blog right now). From the blogger:

"I just finished a report on preconstruction management software and decided to share some of my finding in a post here at ENR.com . . . What was most amazing to me is how many construction firms perform takeoff and estimating in Microsoft Excel® (about 60%), rather than using a packaged application designed specifically for takeoff and estimating."

b. Foremen Who Don't Know How To Manage -- page down to the 9/22 entry. I especially like this (the blogger quoted an author):

“There are a million things that new foremen need to learn and yet for the most part we, as an industry, essentially set up for failure, the very people we depend on to build the work, make the money and hopefully not kill someone in the process,” says Raef. “True, most of these lessons are eventually learned over time and admittedly, some of the hardest lessons learned are those that are least forgotten. The problem is, when we take this default approach to teaching first-time foremen how to be a boss, we create hours of needless confrontation, turf battles of biblical proportions and imprint poor attitudes and egos that take a lifetime to change.”

10 Oct, 2006

A story in last Saturday’s Washington Post (10/1) caught my wife’s eye – “Electrical Surge Fries Appliances in Hundreds of Arlington Homes.” Arlington is a Virginia suburb of D.C.

What happened? Pike Electric, in the employ of Dominion Virginia Power, “allowed two power lines to touch. The contact sent a rush of power into as many of 600 homes.” Even appliances that weren’t in use were fried.

No one appears to have been hurt. The story made the first page of that day’s “Metro” section primarily because Dominion did such a miserable job of customer relations. Here’s a paragraph from near the story’s bottom:

“Pike officials said yesterday that they are still waiting for reports to come in from adjustors and have not determined how reimbursement will be handled. They said that it is the first time such an incident has occurred, so they do not have a policy on how to proceed."

10 Oct, 2006

“The Media Room of Your Dreams,” from Business Week (9/27). Online version includes a slide show(!) – see bottom of Web page. 1,102 words.

“6 Steps to Finding The Right Generator,” from Building Operating Management (9/06). Sidebar with links to orgs that offer generator code requirements. 1,714 words.

“Lower Temperatures, Increased Ventilation Boost Student Performance” – headline on a release on ASHRAE research. “Lowering the temperature and increasing ventilation in classrooms increases student performance by 10% to 20%.” Beats heck out of more studying!

“Whirlpool Automates Energy Management,” from Energy & Power Management, (9/06). Disclaimer: I am a columnist for E&PM. 2,233 words. The piece is a “three-fer” – talks about data centers, automation, and energy management.

“Data Center Criticality Levels,” – also from E&PM, 9/06; same disclaimer as above applies. This piece proposed a new classification system for “critical facilities.” 1,862 words

10 Oct, 2006

Ken Silverstein of EnergyBiz Insider offered a piece with the headline above (9/25 – click here to see it). Note: You might have to register (free) to get there.

Among other things, the article says:

•             Coal is 5 cents per kilowatt hour;
•             Natural gas is now priced at 6-8 cents/kWh;
•             Wind energy is at 4-7 cents/kWh.

And:

•             “Wind's predictability is a selling point.”

Renewable Energy Access isn’t a blog, per se, but there are 18 reader comments following the article. The piece printed out on 8 pieces of paper, of which 2.33 are Silverstein’s piece, and close to 5 are comments.

10 Oct, 2006

According to a note in the 9/9/06 issue of The Economist:

“The United States is the world’s biggest producer of green-house gases, though not for long.

“Every year, China is building power-generating capacity almost equivalent to Britain’s entire stock, almost all of it burning coal – the dirtiest fuel.

“It will shortly overtake America, and India is not far behind.”

I’m not (yet) a hard-core believer in global warming. I have friends who argue that global warming is not necessarily caused by human beings.

I sure hope they are correct!

02 Oct, 2006

Saw the 9/27 USA Today while on the road. Here's the lead on a page 3A item:

"At least seven men in five states have been fatally electrocuted since July while hacking through power lines to steal wire made of copper, which has been commanding near-record prices, police say."

This is nuts. Read the piece here.

28 Sep, 2006

I get confused when people use the term “eco-friendly.” Isn’t everybody friendly to the economy, for chrissake? And doesn’t economy, which stems from the Greek word “oikos,” have a better claim on “eco” than . . . ecology?

In any case, a Greenbiz.com item (see it here) reported on a Mortgage Lenders Network survey item. The bit that caught my eye:

“a larger percentage of Americans ages 45-54 would prefer to work in an eco-friendly building vs. their less eco-minded counterparts ages 25-34 (74% vs. 62%).”

Up until I read that, I had no reason to believe that the folks 25-34 were a bunch of miserable heathen.

24 Sep, 2006

Engineering Inc.'s Sept-Oct issue included a one-page "Marketwatch" column, "The Changing Face & Impact of U.S. Manufacturing." I wrote it. See it here.

22 Sep, 2006

"We feel we have to take responsibility to look at the most cost and energy and power-efficient technologies that we can . . . An Idling PC uses about $100 annually in wasted power. And as you look, even chips in idle mode . . . they still use a significant amount of power as compared to when they are just trucking along."

That quote is from Scott McNealy, the huge brie at Sun. A new product from his company used "about a third the energy" of predecessors. "WHen you look at driving a thousand-CPU data center, you can save a half-million dollars annually just in power and cooling."

Note that the item from which this comes (see it by clicking here) quotes Hector Ruiz of AMD: "In the past 12 months, I've met with quite a few CIOs in this business, and there wasn't one who didn't say performance-per-watt was at the top of the list of priorities."

Here's another interesting quote (from AMD's CTO): "A watt at the system level is about 3 watts at the meter, once you pay for cooling and distribution."

As I hope this item proves, electricity is really important to people who operate data centers. It's an amazing opportunity for electrical contractors who can respond with ideas (and perhaps by teaming with HVAC contractors, who perhaps can be creative insolving the problem of cooling these places).

22 Sep, 2006

I've been intrigued with the huge oil field discovered in the GOM (Gulf of Mexico) by Chevron. It seems to put the kibosh on the "peak oil" theory -- a theory I was starting to believe. Keep in mind that, for me, this is not academic; I write a 6-times-yearly energy commodities column for Energy & Power Management magazine.

To sum up: When this thing was announced, I stopped reading "Twlight In The Desert," the peak-oil Exhibit A book by Matthew Simmons. I was about to write my November column for E&PM on the book. Instead, I shifted gears and ended up with a neat column headlined, "Disregard All Forecasts."

I'm not familiar with the Web site Energy Bulletin, but on 9/6 it provided an 8-point post, "Clarification of the Huge Chevron Gulf Oil Discovery." Assuming for a moment that the facts in here are true, you ought to read it (click here).

One fact of which I was aware, and it's regurgitated here, is that the range of the discovery has been given as 3B to 15B barrels of oil. The first point puts that in perspective: "reserves of Esson Mobil are around 14B barrels total." That puts the high end of the range in perspective.

Other points of note: "Full production will not start at the very earliest [until] 2013."

The discovery "is comprised of no single field of more than 300M barrels." Wow.

Read the post. It might be off-base, but it's food for thought!

22 Sep, 2006

I was led to the San Diego Creative Investors Association -- a blog, I think, which describes itself as "San Diego's Oldest Real Estate Investment Club.  The post to which I was referred is from a "sales manager of a branch office of a top-10 national lender." He runs an office of seven loan officers. This person provided a bullet-list tally of the last 100 loan apps taken. Here are a few of the bullets:

22 (of the 100) "were either in forfearance or had been in forbearance within the past 12 months."

66/100 "had Pay-opeion ARMs." 27 of those were late on their mortgage payments.

16/100 "had LTVs over 100% at the time of application." LTV = loan-to-value.

Then comes the kicker: "We took 14 applications today, and we cannot qualify a single borrower for any type of loan. We are sub-prime; in fact, sometimes I say we are sub-sub-prime. We can qualify almost anyone for a loan. Not today."

See the post in its entirety here.

21 Sep, 2006

"I could be a door greeter at Wal-Mart and make more money than I have in the last thre years, with a whole lot less stress."

That quote from Randy Enevold, president of John's Electric in Lewiston, Idaho, printed in the 6/18 Lewiston Morning Tribune. The item notes that Johns was going out of business, after 50 years as an electrical contracting firm. It once employed as many as 40 people. A few other things from the story:

Enevold started work at the company in 1973, as an apprentice.

Other area electrical contractors are fine. A local economist quoted in the article claims the number of ECs "in the Lewiston-Clarkston Valley" increased from 10 in 2002 to 15 in 2005.

One problem: Potlatch Corp., a big customer for John's Electric, reduced its modernization spending in 2000. It reportedly went from "tens of millions per year" in modernization projects to just "millions" per year.

21 Sep, 2006

According to a publication from The Lone Star Growth Investor (which I do not necessarily endorse):

"Currently, the U.S. and Canada consumer around 25 barrels of oil per capita per year. Japan and South Korea consume roughly 15 barrels of oil per capita per year. China nad India -- two of the world's fastest-growing and dynamic eocnomies -- each consume less than 3 barrels of oil per capita per year."

Wow. What's the point? Here's what LSGI says it is:

"As the middle class in these countries [India and China] expands -- and their citizens begin to enjoy the luxury ofautomotive transportation, upscale housing, and other material comforts -- expect the per-capita demand for oil to expand at an accelerating pace."

That, in fact, is precisely what I expect. That's the reason the current drop in the price of crude oil should be disregarded, even if it extends downward from here and for additional weeks or months.

21 Sep, 2006

A guy name of Walter Jowers writes the "Helter Shelter" column for a publication called Nashville Scene. I know nothing about him, the column, or the newspaper. His 8/17 column, headlined "Tired Wires," starts with "If your house is more than 20 years old, there's a good chance that some parts of your electrical system need to be replaced."

Here's how it ends:

"So, when you decide to rewire your house—and everybody will have to do it sooner or later—choose your electrician very carefully. Not that a license makes anybody any smarter, but make sure he’s licensed—and not just working under his employer’s license. Make sure he’s bonded and insured. If he looks funny, smells funny or acts funny, don’t hire him. Eventually, you ought to be able to find somebody who can do the job."

Really great advice. See the column here.

18 Sep, 2006

A “Summary of Industry Sectors” was offered up by a Web site that blogs about Alternative Energy Stocks earlier this month. It’s pretty good – and concise, too. If you want to read it, go here.

What attracted me in scanning it were these bullets under the heading “Energy Consumption and Oil:”

·  2 billion of the world's 6.4 billion people still do not have electricity

·  there is one car for every 65 people in China

·  China is expected to have 7-fold increase in vehicle ownership by 2020

·  a 50% increase in worldwide energy demand is expected by 2030

·  'peak oil' is defined as the year in which half of exploitable oil is gone

·  peak oil estimates vary but some believe it is between 2015 and 2020

·  investments in oil are not being made by major oil players

I’m reading more about “peak oil” – I haven’t made up my mind yet about it. But the data on China (in fact, the first four bullets alone) are enough to wake you up!

That blog relies on an 8-page PDF, “The Alternative Energy Revolution,” from Guinness Atkinson Funds as its source. To cut out the middleman, download the PDF here.

18 Sep, 2006

A lot cheaper. At least, that’s what it says on the site of EDN, an electronic engineering magazine. Ed Sperling, the Editor-In-Chief of Electronic News, let loose with a blog entry on 9/5. Here’s a link.

Here’s why you should read it:

“Solar energy is about to get cheaper – much cheaper. The cost of installing solar panels on a roof is expected to drop to about a third of what it now costs over the next several years, turning an experimental industry into a mainstream boom.

“In real dollars, that means the average residential installation will drop to $8,000 from the current $24,000, not including state and federal rebates.”

Now – doncha wanna follow that link?

 As a follow-on – a story in a Portland (Ore.) newspaper noted: “Oregon Solar Energy Industry Experiencing Shortage of Tradespeople to Install the Technology.” I found it online in an unusual place; you might be able to get to it by clicking here.

15 Sep, 2006

Somehow, while working just now I stumbled across this -- as presented on the site of The Daily News-Journal (Murfreesboro, TN):

. . . in place of communities like these well-known historic sections of Murfreesboro and Franklin, what are we building today? Are we thinking long term? Are we protecting what we have? Are we making connections to our past that our children and their children will remember? What are the "homes" that future generations will remember?

I suggest that instead of building those types of communities, what we are doing instead is spending billions of tax dollars for new highways, sewer, electrical, and water systems to take our existing population and spread it around. We're ruining our historic cities and towns and we're destroying our countryside. We're building gated communities so that individuals who have money will not have to live around - and interact with - our citizens from the lower and middle economic classes. What we are building today is urban sprawl and it is having a devastating effect on our life as Americans.

There is in America today the equivalent of 4,000 abandoned shopping malls. As I've driven through Murfreesboro through the years, I've seen more than a few of them. Our building patterns encourage a "use-it-up and throw-it-away" mentality that includes buildings, land, and - some might say - people.

We are building communities where you cannot get from one place to another without a car. Most suburbanites have to drive everywhere for such simple tasks as buying bread, getting to work, and picking up the kids after school. I happen to live now just outside of Washington, DC - which has five of the 10 richest counties in America. We also have - and this has just been documented - the worst commute in America. All our wealth has not been able to help us build communities that work.

It comes from a speech by David Brown, EVP of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. You can find the whole thing here. This guy is right. Further, this economic freedom -- which I enjoy as much as the next guy -- is, literally, bankrupting us. We are spending our treasure and spilling our blood (and that of others) in the Middle East (but not in Darfur or Cambodia or Rwanda) specifically because we need more and more crude oil . . . in significant part because of this lifestyle.

14 Sep, 2006

Natural gas prices fell like a stone today, to lows not seen since May 2004. Also today, Energy & Power Management posted to its Web site the contents of its September print issue, including a Joe Salimando column on natural gas.

Timing really is everything! See the column here.

03 Sep, 2006

I snipped this from an 8/31 Washington Post story on upcoming local elections. The "council" noted below is the Washington, D.C. city council.

This is paragraphs #12, 13, 14, and 15 of the story:

Lawyer A. Scott Bolden, who is challenging two-term incumbent Phil Mendelson (D) for his at-large council seat, has already flooded D.C. mailboxes with six pieces of campaign literature in a desperate bid to gain name recognition.

Now, Bolden is getting a little help.

Voters recently received yet another mailing, this one paid for by the Citizens for Empowerment Political Action Committee, a $200,000 operation funded by Dulles-based electrical contractor M.C. Dean Inc. and Bethesda-based Miller & Long, one of the largest concrete contractors in the nation.

The four crisp photos in the action committee's literature are identical to shots in material produced by Bolden, a former president of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce who has had an adversarial relationship with local labor unions.

From Joe: M.C. Dean is a huge local (and non-union) electrical contractor in the D.C. area.

# # #

28 Aug, 2006

A writer for TheStreet.com covers stocks in the construction/building materials area. It's mostly about wallboard, but it's possible to infer stuff about electrical construction. For example:

"All the indicators are that commercial construction is really buoying up the demand for wallboard."

"People shouldn't be buying these stocks because they think the wallboard market has a lot of growth over the next 12 months, because it doesn't."

"One believe is Warren Buffet."

See the piece here.

23 Aug, 2006

An 8/18 Wall Street Journal feature, "Aged Equipment Sends A Jolt Through Strained Power Industry," is actually WORSE than the headline might make it appear.

Here are my favorite horrible-sounding bites from the 1,524-word article:

"We've been using equipment far beyond its original intended life." -- a guy from Black & Veatch, the consulting firm.

"Few utilities know the exact age oftheir oldest pieces of equipment, which often lie buried below city streets and are hard to get at. 'Records are pretty sparse,' says Chet Knapp, manager of reliability for Pepco Holdings . . . It is not unusual for utilities to find equipment dating to the era of the Model T Ford."

"There's another aging mechanism going on and it's related to the overheating of equipment that's caused by heavy electricity use." -- from a guy at KEMA consulting.

27% of Con Edison's system (in the New York City area) "consists of the old paper-insulated cable." According to the article, the utility expects to finish replacing old cable by . . . 2024.

Southern California Edison asked regulators for a $145 million rate hike, the cost of replacing 800 miles of aging underground cable. "But consumer advocates . . . [argued] that there was no proof that the worst cables would be replaced first, given inadequate utility records."

Utilities are just now "installing more sensors in equipment to warn of imminent failures. 'We're the last industry to aggressively embrace sensors'," accordign to a guy from the Electric Power Research Institute.

All in all, if you took the article and set it to music . . . it would be a musical comedy.

23 Aug, 2006

Prof. Philip Krider of the U. of Arizona has been hired by West Virginia's Office of Miners' Health Safety & Training, according to an 8/15 Associated Press item. His assignment: Help investigate the Sago Mine explosion. "State and federal investigators have yet to determine the cause of the accident," the item says. Twelve miners died.

International Coal Group, which owns the mine, says lightning caused the explosion. A lightning strike could have caused the problem "by igniting a buildup of naturally occuring methane in the mine."

Does the state of West Virginia believe this? From my reading of the item, not necessarily. But Krider's expertise will help look into the fact.

If it's still online, here's the AP story. Here's Krider's home page.

04 Aug, 2006

I get (free) the monthly "Houing Roundup" e-mail newsletter from ULI -- the Urban Land Institute. It's a handy-dandy (but long) summary of news items of interest to ULI members and others. When I say "long," I mean it -- the August e-mail topped 13,000 words!

Here are a few of those words, on San Diego, that might be worth noting:

- - - - -

S.D. Real Estate Concerns Fannie Mae

Sign-on San Diego
July 20, 2006
Pierce, Emmet

Fannie Mae is watching San Diego County closely as the housing market there slows, the mortgage finance giant's chief economist, David Berson, said during an economic and mortgage report on Wednesday.  Many housing market observers view San Diego as a forerunner of national real estate trends; the market, which has a sound economy, has had an increase in inventories while home price gains are down from their peak and affordability is low.  In June, local prices declined year-over-year for the first time in a decade; sales declined for the 24th straight month year-over-year; and the median home price fell 1 percent from a year ago to $488,000.  Nationally, housing is expected to slow this year, with existing-home sales falling by 7 percent to 9 percent, new-home sales declining 9 to 10 percent, home values sinking about 3 percent and mortgage originations tumbling from about $3 trillion last year to between $2.3 trillion and $2.4 trillion.

04 Aug, 2006

I get (free) the monthly "Houing Roundup" e-mail newsletter from ULI -- the Urban Land Institute. It's a handy-dandy (but long) summary of news items of interest to ULI members and others. When I say "long," I mean it -- the August e-mail topped 13,000 words!

Here are a few of those words, on San Diego, that might be worth noting:

- - - - -

S.D. Real Estate Concerns Fannie Mae

Sign-on San Diego
July 20, 2006
Pierce, Emmet

Fannie Mae is watching San Diego County closely as the housing market there slows, the mortgage finance giant's chief economist, David Berson, said during an economic and mortgage report on Wednesday.  Many housing market observers view San Diego as a forerunner of national real estate trends; the market, which has a sound economy, has had an increase in inventories while home price gains are down from their peak and affordability is low.  In June, local prices declined year-over-year for the first time in a decade; sales declined for the 24th straight month year-over-year; and the median home price fell 1 percent from a year ago to $488,000.  Nationally, housing is expected to slow this year, with existing-home sales falling by 7 percent to 9 percent, new-home sales declining 9 to 10 percent, home values sinking about 3 percent and mortgage originations tumbling from about $3 trillion last year to between $2.3 trillion and $2.4 trillion.

- - - - -

You can find a link to the current issue of ULI's Housing News Roundup, plus "opt in" to the free e-mail -- on this Web page.

04 Aug, 2006

I don't know Rick Zabel, editor-in-chief at Automation.com, but I read his stuff regularly. It's interesting; he has a good brain. Here's some futuristic-sounding stuff from the 8/2 newsletter (which is Volume VII, #30!) from his site:

With a new wireless standard called Near Field Communication (NFC), we'll be able to pay for items by simply swiping our cell phones near cash registers. Unlike radio-frequency identification (RFID) and other existing contactless payment systems, NFC chips allow two-way information exchange by rolling an RF transmitter and reader into one five-millimeter package. The chip will also be able to take in data like receipts, bus schedules, concert tickets and more. Even better, we won't have to buy new phones. SanDisk will offer mini-SD card-sized adapters that will add NFC to any smartphone with a Symbian operating system.

The applications for this technology could be endless. Why not embed our drivers license, insurance cards and other information in our cell phone? Of course, this technology would make our cell phones much more valuable, but if it can eliminate having to carry around a wallet also, I'm all for it. An obvious issue that comes to mind with this technology is security, but I would think the use of a PIN number (or similar mechanism) would solve that problem.

See the newsletter here.

Here's my (minor) problem with this. I think folks in Finland and perhaps elsewhere in Scandanavia have been paying for stuff -- like drinks at vending machines -- with their cell phones . . . for several years now.

Other than that, I like Rick's vision. My wife and I once moved from a townhouse community after three armed robberies took place within 100 feet of our front door over a 22-month period. We took a loss on the house (it sold for $20K less than we paid). At the point in my life, I was traveling frequently (as publisher of Electrical Contractor magazine).

What got me to convince my wife to move -- from a location we liked, and a house we enjoyed -- was the idea that whoever was perpetrating these robberies was sticking a gun into the ribs of our neighbors for the content of their wallets.

Most people don't carry a lot of cash with them. Stolen credit cards don't go very far. Someone was risking serious jail time for a few $20 bills. To me, that meant that someone was incredibly stupid. So: The idea of substituting a cell phone for a wallet is attractive.

Of course, there are folks who are taking this thinkng a few steps beyond. Your cell-phone-as-wallet could be stolen. If a chip is embedded into you, and that chip is your wallet, it can't be stolen.

10 Apr, 2006

You hear a lot about how the price of oil isn't yet at the all-time high -- inflation-adjusted -- that it hit in 1980-81. That happens to be true, but it also happens to be irrelevant. Such items are "factoids." By definition, a "factoid" is totally bogus -- the word "factoid" insults the item that you are quoting.

That's why I invented the term "factolito" -- butchered Spanglish for "little fact." I like factolitos. Here's another one, which I found in reading (very late) a bunch of January columns from Morgan Stanley's free analyses online. This one is from Andy Xie, who's got a brain in his head, he has!

Gold is small beer in the context of global commodity markets.  The juggernaut is oil.  At today’s price of US$65/bbl for Brent crude, the consumption of oil at 83.3 mn bbl/day is worth US$5.4 billion/day or US$2 trillion per annum (5% of global GDP).  Compared with the average price of US$24.9/bbl for Brent crude in 2002, oil producers are making US$3.3 bn/day or US$1.2 trillion extra (55% of China’s 2005 GDP) per annum.

Find Xie's column by clicking here.

See the next item for perspective on Morgan Stanley's free online stuff.

10 Apr, 2006

I had other work responsibilities at the end of March, so I missed the spring Electronic House Expo in Orlando. I am trying to catch up online, and there's some interesting stuff that probably will end up here.

In so doing, I stumbled across a factolito that needed posting here, from a 3/21 Consumer Electronics Association press release:

Roughly one-third of adult gamers spend 10 hours or more per week playing console or PC games compared to just 11 percent of teens, according to results from a new study released by the Consumer Electronics Association (CEA®). The surprising results are part of CEA's 2006 Gaming Technology Study, which surveyed adults via online survey and teens (ages 12-17) via telephone interview.

Click here to see the CE release.

07 Apr, 2006

The IBEW recently (I’m not sure when) began posting the full text of its magazine, The IBEW Journal, online. IBEW = International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. There are more than 750K members, of which roughly 1/3^rd are involved in electrical construction (working for contractors).

April’s magazine includes the following stuff EleBlog readers might want to read:

            Page 4 – one-page message from President Ed Hill. On construction.

            Pages 16 + 17 – an explanation of the new Mechanical Allied Crafts union construction group.

Download the 32-page, 4.78MB document by clicking here

07 Apr, 2006

Red Herring, now a weekly bizmag, printed a full-page Q&A with Quayle Hodek, CEO of Renewable Choice Energy, in its 4/3/06 issue. Question: How do you respond to critics of wind power? Part of Quayle's answer contained a data point I'd not previously seen expressed in precisely this way:

"The other criticism is that [wind turbines] have an impact on bird life. But cats actually kill 20 times more birds than wind turbines."

08 Mar, 2006

Back in May, the Government Accountability Office (used to be described as "Congress's watchdog") emitted a 29-page PDF, Federal Real Property: Lightning Protection Systems for Federal Buildings."  What's it about? "The objectives of this study," the cover page says, "were to determine" --

1. "to what extent" selected fed agencies are using lightning protection standard(s)

2. how the agencies "assess the need" for such systems

3. what is the GSA thinking when it leases privately owned buildings (think, that is, about lightning); and

4. are there any data on the financial impact of lightning protection and federal buildings.

After the intro page, there are 5.5 pages of text. Page 7-27 reproduce slides (1 per page) from a slide-show presentation of the results; most of the slides are WORDY.

Download the thing by clicking here.

08 Mar, 2006

A short feature on the site of Appliance Design magazine gets into the nitty-gritty about power cords, double-insulated plugs, and such. If you think not much can be said on this, you're not an appliance manufacturer . . . it's 1,500+ words. Click here.

04 Mar, 2006

With Bush in India of late, a couple of semi-topical + relevant stories:

CHINA will need 1,230 gigawatts of power in 2020, according to China Electricity Market 2006 (from Capgemini, a consulting firm). The country plans to add 950 gW between now and '20 according to an article (click here) on Forbes.com. That means China will fall 280 gW short of what it needs.

INDIA's city of Mumbai (Bombay to you old people) "has not been subjected to load-shedding. However, this situation will change in the coming months of April and May '06, when the demand may outstrip the available supply during peak hours." This is from Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission, as quoted 2/23 in The Economic Times (a Knight-Ridder thing). The report quoted Dilip Valse Patil, the state energy minister: "We hope to avoid it. But there's hardly anything we can do."

02 Mar, 2006

Transmission & Distribution World ran a supplement to its February issue on how electrical contracting companies and their linemen handled the emergency last year in New Orleans. The supplement is sponsored by NECA-IBEW and looks neat in print -- with photos and ads -- but you can access the text-only version online, here: http://tdworld.com/mag/power_linemen_give/

20 Feb, 2006

I'm an honest-to-pete Liberal, and therefore generally agree with almost none of the positions advocated by the National Association of Manufacturers. But I stumbled across the NAM's 2/1 release -- 'Five Clear Warning Signs' Point to Lower Economic Growth, Living standards.

It's about the future of America's manufacturing base. It's not "from the age of the Dinosaurs," as is so much of what comes out of NAM. See it here.

Pay particular attention to the paragraph about productivity gains. Interesting point: Most of America's "productivity revolution" of the 1990s (up to today) has happened in MANUFACTURING, not the general (service) economy. You can look this up. The bottom line on this: Our productivity gains are coming in the sector that we're allowing to evaporate.

20 Feb, 2006

It's possible that China will fall into a hole. Skyrocketing growth can't sustain itself forever. But two recent news items higlight what's going to happen, and it's mighty amazing:

China to build 1.2 million kilometers of roads in five years.

China to build over 4,000 kilometers of power lines -- this year!

Among other things, this makes me think about what's going to travel over those two different types of highways. There are going to be a lot more cars in China (they're not building the roads for show). That means more crude oil consumption (and more pollution).

Those power lines are going to carry electrons(!). That means more facilities to generate the power, and more stuff on the consumer end (in homes and businesses) to use the electricity. Which means more copper consumption in China, more energy consumption (be it oil, natural gas, or nuclear) . . . and more pollution, perhaps.

20 Feb, 2006

A column on TheStreet.com carries the headline, "Connect to Home Networking Stocks." It promotes touts AT&T, Dell, Cisco Systems, Intel, and Time Warner. I'm not sure this is what folks who read CE Pro think of as "home networking stocks," but if you wanna read it -- it's here.

20 Feb, 2006

A neat product roundup in Design News reviews the Cableyoyo and Belkin's CableFree USB Hub.

If you've often felt like a Cableyoyo, now you can see what one looks like . . . here.

20 Feb, 2006

"How the end of the Residential Boom Affects Commercial" was a piece late last year in National Real Estate Investor. It's worth reading -- and thinking about it -- no matter which market(s) feed you and yours. It's 1,117 words.

See it here.

01 Feb, 2006

Interesting food for thought: "The Myth of the Digital Lifestyle," a column published in Network World. See it here.

An except to whet your appetite: "So it was that Gates wound up on stage holding his digital device in his hand with marketing egg on his face."

01 Feb, 2006

Lots of publications of all sorts -- consumer, professional, technical -- send writers/reporters/editors to the Consumer Electronics Show each January. I'm sorry to say that I've not yet attended. But I try to perform "due diligence" and read at least some of this stuff. My preference, ordinarily, would be to see what the folks from CE Pro magazine have to say. And the coverage that magazine offers is NOT disappointing -- see it here.

But I found a neat report -- written by the Canadian Consulate General (based in Los Angeles) -- provided via the Continental Automated Buildings Association. It prints out at 5 pages, and it's by a nonspecialist. It's interesting reading; find it here.

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01 Feb, 2006

Buildings magazine ran a wonderful feature, "100 Influences That Have Shaped The Buildings Market," in the most recent edition. I've printed out the online version (which you have to do in four tranches, because each piece is so long) and I've looked at the printed version. The print edition is superior -- pointing out, for those who have missed it, that Print can still do one heck