EleBlog

16 Aug, 2010

From a GreenTechMedia.com article on Xcel Energy (utility) and a demo on wind-to-battery energy storage (you really ought to read the whole thing):

The sodium sulfur battery, Black observed, is likely both simple and inexpensive. The key, he said, "is storing the most kilowatt-hours per dollar that you possibly can. You need big cheap batteries."

"My doubts," he added, "are scale-related. I am not sure any battery technology right now can be used for grid-scale energy storage. There is a huge expense related to that."

Frank Novachek, Xcel Energy's Director of Corporate Planning and the manager of the wind-to-battery storage project, explained how the preliminary results of the field test that began in October 2008 unequivocally prove the technical capability of the batteries to store wind.

They also confirm Black's doubts.

"We don't know what the right battery price is," Novachek said about the use of battery storage for shifting wind energy from off-peak availability (when electricity is least expensive) to peak demand availability (when electricity is most expensive). "But we do know it's too high for looking at the time-shifting aspects alone."

Who be "Black?" -- Forbes Black, described by GTM as "a battery technology and energy storage systems engineer."

12 Aug, 2010

Why landowners fight wind + solar transmission lines (Forbes blog)

If the Grid didn't exist, would we need to invent it? (Infrastructurist.com)

U.S. falls behind (China) on clean energy (Business Week, commentary)

AND ON EVs --

06 Aug, 2010

Return of the Solar Shakeout is a piece on SeekingAlpha.com -- from Greentech  Media, which I'd call a respected source -- predicting a solar shakeout in 2011. It's worth reading for that reason alone (you don't have to believe it, just read it!).

What caught my eye in there was something more, specifically this assertion:

So the question remains: why do installers and developers continue to purchase modules from high-cost producers (thus enabling the continuation of status quo business models) when there is an abundance of less expensive options on the market? And why do we keep hearing about the global market being in a state of module undersupply right now when available supply still exceeds demand?

The answer lies in the much-discussed but seldom explicated notion of bankability as it applies to module vendors. In a post-Lehman world, lenders have become extremely selective about which projects they choose to finance; the projects that receive capital are those with the lowest perceived risk profiles.

Since the cost of debt is fixed, there is little upside for a bank if cheaper (and thus higher-return-enabling) modules are used, as long as the project clears its hurdle rate. This means only established firms with proven technologies and long-term product performance (i.e., module yields) will make the cut from the abundance of available options.

It comes down to this: each lender has a relatively small, carefully chosen list of module vendors it is willing to finance (perhaps 100 in Europe, and as few as 10 in the U.S.). Unsurprisingly, almost every European crystalline silicon-based producer is on the list. Very few Asian and thin film firms currently are.

06 Aug, 2010

I recently subscribed to the SeekingAlpha.com postings of John Peterson, who writes about Energy Storage. I'm just "reading in," so it's too soon to recommend his thinking. However, I was struck by this Aug. 3 post, which starts with a quote from T.A. Edison!

-- and ends with this prediction (I've bold-faced the key words):

31 Jul, 2010

38 terms, from CE Pro.  If you're an electrical industry veteran, you already know ALL of them.

But not everyone who comes here is.

21 Jul, 2010

From another presentation (from the ENR/CURT forum, 6/16), I leafed thru slides from a presentation by David Umstot, PE, vice chancellor for facilities mgmt. at the San Diego Community College District.

I didn't hear his presentation. But one of the slides claims:

PROJECTS DESIGNED IN BIM -- change order rate = 2.3%

PROJECTS NOT DESIGNED IN BIM -- change order rate = 8.0%

. . . it's easy to see why project owners want to use building information modeling, isn't it?

- - - -

Note: FREE DOWNLOAD -- 82p PDF -- SDCCD "BIM Standards for Architects, Engineers & Contractors"

20 Jul, 2010

According to this blog on the Construction.com site (dated 7/14/10) -- the Stimulus earmarked $31.2 billion for Buildings.

Of that, $8.3B has been mailed in the form of a check ("outlays") . . . the rest is sitting there.

19 Jul, 2010

Lux Research offers -- for the price of filling in some personal details -- a "white paper" on The Smart Grid. It's old, and TSG is moving fast, so it might be a bit outdated. However, if you're not up to speed on TSG . . . take the time to fill in, download, and then read the 7-page thing. 

19 Jul, 2010

If you have employees, you need to read this Construction Business Owner article --

New IRS Audit Likely to Snare Some Contractors

16 Jun, 2010

These are newsletters you might like that are NOT published by an association. The next bit of this will list NLs published by associations...

 (More)

27 May, 2010

If you need a refresher or it's news to you, here's a 1,000-word piece (from Construction Equipment). 

23 May, 2010

"The status quo of electric cars: Better batteries, same range."

The gist: Today's "modern" electric vehicle has about a 100-mile range, max -- which isn't much different from, well, 100 years ago.

16 May, 2010

The headline on the EnvironmentalLeader.com item says "Expect Higher Priced Electricity, Gas" -- but the reality is far from what that might lead you to expect:


That's not a big move, now is it? The article is about the official US government outlook for prices (from the DoE's EIA).

The EleBlog remains convinced that higher electricity prices -- much higher -- would be good for everyone in the U.S. Like maybe a double in a couple of years.

09 May, 2010

IEEE Spectrum, a magazine from a bunch of geeks, ran a special report -- Top 10 Tech Cars of 2010. In it one found a review of the Nissan Leaf, an all-electric car. I have written (on tedmag.com) that there will be problems building out the charging infrastructure -- in the homes of EV owners. Here's what the Spectrum report says about that:

A big pothole, though, may lie ahead for Nissan. It doesn’t matter how good the batteries are if you can’t easily recharge them. As with other electric cars, the biggest challenge for the Leaf is the charging infrastructure. ”If it’s not easy for customers, it’s not going to work,” acknowledges Nissan Canada’s marketing director, Mark McDade.

So the company is working hard to make it easy. Nissan recently announced that if you buy a Leaf, it will have a contractor install a charging station in your garage before the car arrives. With a 220-volt charger, you can replenish a fully depleted battery in 8 hours. Nissan is also prodding governments and electric utilities to deploy public charging stations, which could charge the battery up to 80 percent in just under 30 minutes to support long-distance driving.

13 Apr, 2010

What is a megawatt?

There are all kinds of answers to this question, but the CEO of Utilipoint bylined a piece to get at the question. Here's just a start on his answer:

The answer starts with understanding the basic definition of energy terms. Watts (W) are the yardstick for measuring power. A one hundred watt light bulb, for example, is rated to consume one hundred watts of power when turned on. If such a light bulb were on for four hours it would consume a total of 400 watt-hours (Wh) of energy. Watts, therefore, measure instantaneous power while watt-hours measure the total amount of energy consumed over a period of time.

A megawatt (MW) is one million watts and a kilowatt (kW) is one thousand watts. Both terms are commonly used in the power business when describing generation or load consumption. For instance, a 100 MW rated wind farm is capable of producing 100 MW during peak winds, but will produce much less than its rated amount when winds are light. As a result of these varying wind speeds, over the course of a year a wind farm may only average 30 MW of power production. Similarly, a 1,000 MW coal plant may average 750 MW of production over the course of a year because the plant will shut down for maintenance from time-to-time and the plant operates at less than its rated capability when other power plants can produce power less expensively.

And here's a table included with the column: 

Census Division	Number of	Average Monthly
State	Consumers	Consumption (kWh)
New England	5,822,935	618
Middle Atlantic	15,045,495	641
East North Central	18,705,754	763
West North Central	8,287,837	903
South Atlantic	22,473,797	1,088
East South Central	7,356,975	1,193
West South Central	12,883,403	1,151
Mountain	7,368,280	847
West Coast	15,763,570	668
Hawaii & Alaska	609,661	642
U.S. Total	114,317,707	877

 (More)

13 Mar, 2010

19 Clever Uses for Fabric Softener Dryer Sheets

I like the idea of reusing stuff, recycling things, and not throwing things away. In case you don't click the link above, here they are:

1. Pick up pet hair


2. End car odors


3. Lift burned-on casserole residue


4. Freshen drawers


5. Wipe soap scum from shower door


6. Repel dust from electrical appliances


7. Do away with doggy odor


8. Counteract laundry hamper or wastebasket odors


9. Tame locker-room and sneaker smells


10. Prevent musty odors in suitcases


11. Buff chrome to a brilliant shine


12. Use as a safe mosquito repellent


13. Use an inconspicuous air freshener


14. Do away with static cling


15. Keep dust off blinds


16. Renew grubby stuffed toys


17. Substitute a dryer sheet for a tack cloth


18. Consolidate sheets and make them smell pretty


19. Abolish tangled sewing thread

02 Feb, 2010

I have met a lot of electrical contractors in the past 31 years, and none -- not one -- got into the biz to think about (much less "do") accounting.

Yet this article on the HousingZone.com site -- How to use percentage-of-completion accounting -- is pretty damn important.

23 Jan, 2010

Each year, Better Homes & Gardens magazine does a survey -- and, apparently, releases the results at the annual Builders' show.

Here's the 2010 release.

A slice:

05 Jan, 2010

I came by this factolito from reading the blog entry of Liz Shuler on the liberal Huffington Post site.


Her piece referred to a survey by "Working America" of workers age 18 to 34. I went looking for the survey document, and found it (48-page PDF).

- - - - -

What interested me was her single-line note that "one in three still lives at home with parents." I was hoping to find a break-out (how many 18 year olds still live home, how many 30-year-olds). That wasn't there.

What was (on page 15):


I know those ages 18-34 are not from my generation (I'm 56). But I still find it hard to envision a situation where there are SEVERAL people of an adult age -- some in their 60s, some in their 20s and even 30s -- living together. It would not have worked for me with my parents.

Note that this is NOT about young people taking their parents in when they are older (which is a different thing). This is about still living, in ages 18-19-20 and even 30-31-32-33, in the same situation -- and perhaps, even, the same exact room -- in which one was raised as a child.

For me, that's a Wow!

04 Dec, 2009

Download the 23-page (PDF) ENERGY MATTERS newsletter from the U.S. Dept. of Energy. It's from the Industrial Technologies Program. If you do any electrical work in any industrial facility, you need to check this out -- just to keep up-to-date with what's being talked about by the only source (the only one that I know about, anyway) that works daily on industrial energy savings. 

29 Nov, 2009

AGC of America has a Specialty Contractors Council.

AGC's SCC just issued a 2-page PDF -- Best Practices Guidance for Retainage.

The major points:

1. Parties can begin to raise questions about retainage as they prepare their bids and proposals.

2. Sub-tier parties should read and understand all documents that collectively comprise the agreement between the owner and prime contractor, including the general conditions of that agreement.

3. Contracting parties may negotiate contractual terms and conditions. Each party should make an independent determination of the terms and conditions that it considers acceptable, and identifying, negotiating, and/or accepting the following are among the terms and conditions subject to each firm's independent business judgement.

22 Nov, 2009

According to a study, 150 million people are going to be "displaced" by the year 2050. See the DOE news on this.

Going by what I've previously learned, there will be 9 billion people on Planet Earth by 2050. 150M people = 1.66% of the population at that time.

Needing to move? This sound like World War III is coming.

THIS IS NOT A SERMON. I'm not certain that global warming is human-caused (what if it is something that is caused by something humans can't control?). And I'm growing in certainty that, if it is human-caused, human beings aren't capable of getting their collective act together to DO something about it.

So where does that leave us? With the prospect of 150 million people moving before the year 2050, maybe. Or maybe a damn big war.

THIS IS, to repeat, NOT A SERMON. The year 2050 will mark the 97th anniversary of the my birth (I don't expect to be here to celebrate a birthday).

Anyone significantly younger might consider what they care to do to prepare for this potential disaster

11 Nov, 2009

. . . and a company "falls up." A blog on the site of an Austin newspaper went into the subject of lighting standards falling down at athletic facilities. Here's some of it (find the rest here):

Consider a 100-foot pole loaded with athletic lights: Using AASHTO standards, the total load could be no greater than two-thirds of the pole’s rated strength. The safety cushion also protects against variations in materials and workmanship. Just as important, the additional strength reduces fatigue during times of normal stress, which weaken the poles’ structural integrity over time.

Why did Whitco use the lesser specs? One possible answer, which has been suggested by some including the company’s former owner, was to save money and increase profits. Reducing the metal in the poles and their base plates means less money spent on materials.

04 Oct, 2009

Intelligent Utility magazine (which I just discovered at GridWeek) worked with a consulting firm to select the 25 "most intelligent utilities" in the U.S. See news report here. 

04 Oct, 2009

IIt's not online anywhere, but a transcript of John Colson (chairman/CEO) of Quanta Services -- speaking 9/15 at a JP Morgan conference -- includes some interesting data on the electrical grid. Building it out and maintaining it is what Quanta does (or one of the things it does). I'm retyping here, so forgive errors:


EleBlog note: The first time I read that, I thought it said that the amount of miles on the national grid had increased 14% in 2008. That's NOT what it says! It says the amount of miles built in 2008 was 114% of the number of miles built in 2007.


EleBlog note: It's not clear from John's words here whether that $2 trillion (or $1.5 trillion) includes major expenses for installation of The Smart Grid and its components, or not. I looked for the thing -- it's a Brattle Group report that dates to 11/08 (see news item here). Key paragraph from a news item on the BG report -- NOTE: This is NOT from the Colson/Quanta presentation!!!

I tried to find the report on the Brattle website, but all I could find (for free) is this two-page 11/08 release (PDF). However, following thru on a link there, it looks as if one can download the full report -- at no charge -- here.

One more thing from Colson's presentation:


Colson's remarks come in the context of him recommending investments in his company's stock. I'm not going to tackle that (although John Colson is one of the most honorable people I've met in 33 years of doing business-to-business journalism!!!). But clearly, the nation needs to make major investments in the grid . . . for what John is talking about above (rebuilding . . . lack of past spending . . . lack of maintenance . . . future increases in demand) but for the Smart Grid -- and also for the Extra High Voltage lines that Secretary Chu spoke about at GridWeek.

Wow!

Note that you can listen to Colson's presentation from the JPM conference at the Quanta site.
 (More)

02 Oct, 2009

Print publications (especially newspapers) are suffering thanks to the Internet. That's a long story. But another story is how publications can use the Web to supplement the information they present in print. A shining example is a presentation by Robert Cassidy, editor-in-chief of Building Design & Construction magazine, now posted to the BD&C website.

In June, he talked about "healthcare design + construction: Trends, innovations, opportunities." POSTED HERE, it weighs in at 5,850 words. I'm not kidding.

In his initial remarks, after outlining 10 items "on the minds" of hospital CEOs, Cassidy goes on to:

So, that’s the “milieu” of today’s hospital. You’re working with CEOs, hospital executives, and health systems boards that have an overwhelming list of EXCRUCIATINGLY COMPLEX PROBLEMS AND PRIORITIES.

Have you noticed that I’ve said VIRTUALLY NOTHING about “buildings”?

You – hospital designers and your Building Teams – are way down on the CEO totem pole of priorities.

• Hospital CEOs may do 1 major project per career move (every 5-10 yr)
„« May be their first and only building project
„« Each one poses a new set of problems
„« Always a new learning experience, every single time.

• Remember, too, that they are not in the “building business” – they’re in the HEALTHCARE business.

• Thus, your project actually represents A THREAT to them, a potential disaster – cost overruns, delays, design or construction shortcomings, worker or visitor injury, etc.

Yes, it's a lot of words. There's almost no way this would end up in print (and it didn't in BD&C) in any modern magazine; it would be a very long article! The assumption behind the way most magazines are edited is (a) long pieces repel readers; and (b) as we have very few pages in our magazine these days, we can't devote a lot of pages to one feature, we won't give the reader enough variety in that issue.

I don't challenge these assumptions.

However, there is a place for a long piece that makes someone think -- in depth, with perspective -- on a particular topic. If healthcare construction is important to you, you're going to want to click on that link above and read Cassidy's remarks. Posting stuff like this is a fine example of how the Web can supplement a print publication, instead of supplanting it.

30 Jul, 2009

Older folks have to lock down fixed costs (you are, in theory, living on a "fixed income," right?). That might explain why AARP posted an 8-page PDF, "Can Advanced Metering Help Reduce Electricity Costs for Residential Consumers?" The thing features info on time-of-use pricing, peak time rebates, and such.  (More)

22 Jul, 2009

Michael Johnston, a NECA staff member, will chair a task group (formed by NFPA, according to the release, at the request of NIST) on electrical construction and the Smart Grid. You might want to click over and read the release, it's lengthy and contains info that may turn out to be important on down the line. Here's a slice:

“The Obama administration has made the smart grid a high priority, and we have the technology to make it a reality,” Johnston said. “But the technology requires a new level of coordination between systems on both the customer and utility ends of the service point.”

Functionally, “service point” refers to “the junction where a utility’s wiring ends and a customer’s wiring begins,” Johnston said. In a smart grid, not only will a customer’s power usage be recorded, but that information will be communicated back to the power generation and transmission facilities in real time. This data will then allow the utility to “shed load” when demand for power is low and step it up when demand increases.

“It’s a true demand response system,” Johnston said. “The good news is that the highway is already built – meaning we have a linked system of power generation, transmission, and distribution. With the smart grid, we’re going to be adding instrumentation such as sensors, relays and other technologies to communicate what’s going on and automatically modify what’s going out based on that information.”

29 Jun, 2009

I just stumbled across a page on the AIA site with PDFs of presentation from the architects' 2009 annual convention. Some stuff EleBlog visitors might find interesting:


The first two are 13 pages each; the last is 5.

The 2nd is from CEDIA; the 3rd is from Lutron.

15 Jun, 2009

I've written about the Smart Grid, but I still find -- still am fascinated by -- the various visions and versions of this thing. Here's a slice of a Q+A with the president of of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research (I added the bolding)

Instead of that, for instance, we could have a machine that makes ice when the wind blows. You have wind turbines, the wind blows at night, you need air conditioning in the daytime. You make ice when the wind blows and you get your air conditioning from the coldness stored in the ice.

And this machine is now commercially available. Companies are willing to work with utilities. This is a way in which you could essentially eliminate the peak load in the summers and shift it to the times when renewable energy is available.

But to do it, you need the air conditioning and ice making machines to be able to talk to the meteorological tower near the wind turbine. That takes a smart meter. It takes a control point at the user's end and it takes a control point at the generating end and the two need to be connected. That is the promise of a smart grid - software, electronics, the Internet.

Once you have a smart grid, you're in a different universe than the one with 1,000 megawatt machines that are always waiting on you hand and foot.

13 Jun, 2009

For cheaper solar, fix the inverters -- that's the headline on a 6/5 post to a Technology Review blog. Some raw meat (results of a study) --

28 Apr, 2009

That's the word from Tom Gale, a friend of mine, reporting (on his blog) on the doings at the Industrial Supply Association's recent conference. ISA's members are distributors. A slice:

13 Apr, 2009

Someone recently asked me what I thought of "green jobs." Let's leave my opinion out of it (temporarily, anyway).

The a House Subcommittee recently (3/31) held hearings on "Green Jobs and Their Role in Our Economy." It's a sub of the Education & Labor Committee which, it turns out, posted the testimony and a video.

SO you can watch or read and figure out what everyone is talking about (and whether or not it is a bunch of baloney.

I actually did read one set of prepared remarks, from Kathy Krepcio of the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. Here's a paragraph that stuck out in my quick review:


I'm sorry to be contrary, but I'm not sure how these jobs are "green" or how they are "new," or what relevance they have to anything in particular. I'll keep reading.

11 Apr, 2009

I've been thinking of stocking up on oil stocks and ETFs. I'm not in a big hurry -- it's something I think you can do over the next couple of years. Along comes this report from CERA, a company of which I'm not all that fond. It makes important points, including:

25 Mar, 2009

Annually, the Consumer Electronics Assn. offers "5 Technology Trends to Watch." This year's 25-page PDF document, downloadable free, covers this ground:

25 Mar, 2009

It's my strong belief that the U.S. government is going to have to SHRINK in the (near-term) years to come. When I voice this belief, folks tell me it will never happen. Of course, that's what they said about today's financial environment, and the ever-declining value of houses -- and I was right about that!

In leafing through a presentation on the Public Buildings Service (a unit of the General Services Administration), one slide notes that the GSA had 40,000+ employees in the 1970s, and has 12,500 employees now. Over that time, the "portfolio" of federally owned buildings (and space leased by federal agencies) has only increased.

Today, the PBS is responsible for 8,500 buildings, more or less, with a gross space under roof of about 347 million sq. ft. These buildings are located in 2,100 U.S. communities; they house 1 million federal workers who labor for 60 agencies. The PBS estimates that it would take $42.7 billion to replace the buildings under its care.

Perhaps a surprise: A pie chart shows the Top 10 Agencies with space under roof. According to this, 17% of the space houses Justice Department operations (of course, GSA has nothing to do with the Defense Department, which has its own real estate/construction operations).

Spending: GSA/PBS requested $722 million for repairs and alterations in fiscal 2008, with another $531 million for construction & acquisition of buildings.

If you're a contractor looking to do biz with GSA/PBS, go to www.fedbizopps.gov.

12 Mar, 2009

Some of us really hate the twice-yearly fooling with clocks. I have to believe that there are more traffic accidents, lost productivity, and more disasters resulting from screwing with the internal clocks of hundreds of millions of human beings.

However, the Department of Energy says otherwise -- at least when it comes to energy:


Here's the PDF of the DoE report. I'll have to read it and see if anyone else has analyzed this idiotic concept to find actual real-world "results."

18 Feb, 2009

Just when we need 'em, there's going to be a shortage, according to the Association of Energy Engineers. 41% of Energy Professionals surveyed plan to retire in the next 10 years

16 Feb, 2009

A 9/18/08 Wall Street Journal article delves into how one can make a house more energy-efficient -- with the help of four websites. 

13 Feb, 2009

I wrote a 3-part series on The Smart Grid for TED magazine's website. Electrical distributors (TED's readers) are, sooner or later, going to be hip-deep in Smart Grid stuff. It's likely that everyone else in the electrical industry will be, too.


Everything you need to know about The Smart Grid IS NOT HERE. There are 4,500 words all told, or thereabouts, in the three pieces. But if you trouble to wade through all three (and follow some of the links in Part 2) . . . you'll come out with an introduction to the subject, a basic understanding of what folks are talking about, and a spin (from me) on what's actually going on.

08 Feb, 2009

This might be a little too touchy-feely for some. FMI Corp., the leading construction industry consulting firm, has come up with the answer to "what makes a contractor successful?"

There are five different Contractor Success Profiles, FMI says:

15 Jan, 2009

I didn't go to the November 2008 Electronic House Expo. If you didn't, you might enjoy a HomeToys.com report on the event.  (More)

25 Nov, 2008

That's what this news item, from the ASC, says. We need 14,500 miles of new transmission lines. Etc. 

22 Nov, 2008

I didn't go to this year's Rockwell Automation Fair, but I've been once in the past. If you're into automation and control, this is the place for you. Some info:

ControlGlobal.com offered "live" coverage from the event. It's stuff available.

Rockwell emitted a release on the thing.

The press room on the Automation Fair site offers "stuff," including a downloadable video.

20 Nov, 2008

Title for the graphic below is "Annual & cumulative growth in US wind power capacity." It's from a 3,000-word article (with more illos + graphics) by a couple of fellows from the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (which is part of the U.S. DoE). The piece posted 9/4/08 to Renewable Energy World.

20 Nov, 2008

Bloomberg.com ran a story this summer, "China to be world's top manufacturer of Green Energy [technology]." It's not available as a freebie anymore.

The article, dated 8/1, claimed that China "is poised to lead world production of solar cells, wind power turbines, and low-carbon energy technology" and that the country "is already the world's largest renewable-energy producer as measured by installed generating capacity . . . is also the world's top manufacturer of solar cells" and, by the end of 2009, will be "the leading exporter of wind turbines."

In searching for it, I found this on Wikipedia -- "Renewable Energy in China." It's actually a more comprehensive read than the Bloomberg.com article.

17 Nov, 2008

The Independent Electrical Contractors -- the association of non-union electrical contractors -- held its convention late last month. The IEC website offers the opportunity to download PDFs of presentations. 

14 Nov, 2008

I've heard and seen energy harvesting demonstrated. The link takes you to a product release about "The Joule-Thief." From the release:


It's a simple idea; Harvest energy from a structure's vibrations.

13 Aug, 2008

I don't flood visitors to this site with "stuff" about what printed in Electrical Contractor magazine -- for at least one very good reason: I presume that if you can make it here, to The EleBlog, you can also make it over to www.ecmag.com. I even have a link at right to help those who came here expecting to find the magazine.

However, if you DO NOT receive the publication, you probably should go over here, to the research page on ECMAG. The first link on that page will bring you a PDF of the Profile of the Electrical Contractor story (with oodles of valuable data) that printed in a recent issue of E.C. magazine.

I didn't have anything to do with this Profile. But I worked on previous versions of this every-two-years statistical report on the industry -- in 1980, 82, 90, 92, 94, 96, and 98.

EleBlog take: This is MORE than worth your time -- the best free data on electrical contracting found anywhere.

09 Aug, 2008

I believe the idea that drilling more in the U.S., off our coasts, and in Alaska is the solution -- or even a big part of the solution -- to our energy problems is, in a word, DUMB.

I'm not the only one. Browsing the DOE website the other day, I found a 6/5/08 speech by an assistant Energy secretary. Here's a single, long paragraph of the speech, broken up (by me) -- but this is the whole paragraph, nothing is missing:


EleBlog take: Lee Raymond is the closet thing we all can see in 2008 if we want to view a dinosaur. And yet event with that major moron as its chairman, the NPC came up with the conclusions described above. REMEMBER, the guy who made the speech above (click thru to read the rest of it -- you can see the video of the speech if you don't feel like reading).

"Drill-drill-drill" is a VERY short-term solution to the energy problem -- something like treating a gunshot wound to the heat by sticking Kleenex up a nostril to stem a resulting nose bleed.

03 Aug, 2008

Northern Kentucky Electric Service posted a release with the "Top Five Energy Saving Tips For Business." They are:

1. Use night setback thermometers
2. Correct power factor problems
3. Install modern, high efficiency heating and cooling equipment
4. Replace metal halide fixtures with energy efficient fluorescent lighting
5. Turn off lights and computers at night

21 Jul, 2008

If you use the Search feature on the EleBlog, you'll find that the acronym PHEV has appeared here 9x before. Here we are again. My previous assessment has been that this is Gonna Be Hot.

Recent news from the U.S. DoE:


EleBlog take: And so it begins.

Incidentally, the EERE Network News is worth getting delivered -- to your e-mail in-box, FREE, courtesy of the U.S. government (and my tax dollars, if not also yours). See the Network News Archives -- or get it . . . subscribe.

13 Jul, 2008

I've been going through old stuff. The graphic below is from a 3/5 presentation by R. Swisher, exec. dir, American Wind Energy Association. I hope you can see it, or download it somehow and make it big enough to look at in detail.


 (More)

29 May, 2008

I found a 6/01 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs -- "Energy Use of Set-top Boxes and Telephony Products in the U.S." Find it here.  It's a 51-page report; I made it through the executive summary.

Data are for U.S. residential electricity consumption in 1999. Here are shares of that:


And shares of the same thing for TV set-top boxes:


What's the point? I guess one might note that there are a lot more wireless chargers and CATV set-top boxes NOW than in 1999. But let's leave that alone. If you add up what's presented here (the LBNL data), "together, set-tops and telephony constituted 1.2% of U.S. residential electricity consumption in 1999."


. . . and here's the kicker: "Standby power use accounted for about 60% ofthis energy use."

12 May, 2008

The April/May issue of The CPA Technology Advisor contains 2008 Review of Contractor/Construction Accounting Systems. The article is presented in TWO HTML pages and -- pay attention now -- you need to get to PAGE 2. That's where the article continues, of course, but lists 12 software items -- with links to brief reviews of each of them.

29 Apr, 2008

Someone name Stuart Staniford has written a number of think pieces on what is probably the best of the "peak oil" websites -- The Oil Drum. One of them is Powering Civilization to 2050, posted in late January.

Here's a link -- and a snippet that, I hope, is indicative of what Staniford sees:

10 Mar, 2008

This is from a MikeHolt.com newsletter sent out last week -- but it's actually an 11/30/07 UL release:


Read the rest here.

27 Feb, 2008

The website Financial Sense.com held an energy roundtable on 2/02/08, featuring Matthew Simmons, author of Twlight in the Desert -- a oil industry investment banker who has provided details that feed the Peak Oil hypothesis. There are two other participants.

Note that the roundtable runs more than 10,000 words. You can choose to listen to it instead (it's available in four modes -- see the top of the page).

Here's a key piece of the roundtable. Jim is Jim Puplava, host of the roundtable (and the site). Matt is Simmons, of course. CERA = Cambridge Energy Research Associates, an energy industry consulting firm:

JIM: Something that does not get enough play in my opinion is depletion. I mean we saw the CERA report that came out a couple of weeks ago that said that world oil depletion was 4 ½% a year or about 4 million barrels that we need to find just to stay in place. And yet we know the large oil fields – Cantarell, North Sea, North Slope – the depletion rates there are much higher.

Matt, you looked at the world’s oil fields and came up with some different conclusions than the optimistic CERA report. Were you guys looking at different data because...

MATT: I don’t have any idea. I’m very puzzled with that report. They lay out, without any names, some very specific numbers and in the number of fields they say they’re looking at and how much those fields collectively add up to. And what puzzles me is that they say they have 811 fields in their database – in their proprietary database – and that 400 of the 811 are all giant oil fields accounting for about almost 50% of world production, which means that they would have to average 90,000 barrels a day per field.

Well, when I went through last – in the fall of 2001, one of the more enjoyable treasure hunts I’ve done because I got more and more intrigued by no one seems to have a list of the top 20 or 30 or 40 oil fields. So I decided to put a cut-off of 100,000 barrels a day as my definition of anything over that is a giant oil field. And I searched far and wide and in fact at one point we spent a fair amount of money buying 34 fields from the IHS database because even the CIA didn’t have any field production out of Russia. They didn’t even know the names anymore.

So at any rate, I finally got this, added it all up, put in a pretty extensive white paper and then circulated that to hundreds and hundreds of people that might know, and saying that “I’m going to republish when I get some better data or if you think x field is producing less or more, please let me know.” That got unbelievably widely praised as the first study that anyone had done maybe ever on oil fields – not by their reserves but by their production.

And I came up with 110 that accounted for 90% of our current production, so how you could find 400 that were 49%. Something had to be totally wrong with the study I did. I mean vastly wrong.

FinancialSense.com also has "an interview with Matthew Simmons," which weighs in at only 3,500+ words -- a column from CaseyResearch.com which consists of a Q&A with Simmons. It was posted 1/9/08.

With crude oil prices above $101/barrel at this moment, it might be a good time to listen to/read Simmons. Folks who have listened to him have guessed right on the direction of oil prices . . . even as we (apparently) verge upon entering a recession.

11 Feb, 2008

Buildings magazine has posted a 4 ,100-word forecast-- with pieces from various industry experts -- covering education, hotels, multifamily housing, healthcare, industrial, retail, and (of course!) office buildings.

EleBlog take: I'm pretty sure ALL forecasts are going to be OFF this year, as things are changing . . . rapidly. But this is no doubt still worth a read.

11 Feb, 2008

This is an NAHB deal, as 'splained here:


On NAHB's small site for the HTA, I found a 39-page PDF -- a report on research into how NAHB members see the Electronic Systems Contractor.

I've scanned the thing (not yet made it through) -- seems interesting.

You might also check out NAHB's HTA home page.

10 Jan, 2008

In 2006, Hanley-Wood -- a publishing company that's HUGE in the housing business -- held a fall event, the American Housing Conference. I was unable to attend (you can't be everywhere). I did manage to download some of the presentations. I can't find a place where H-W talks about a 2007 renewal of the event.

In the past few "slow" weeks, I've been mashing through the file cabinets here in my townhouse, going through files to dump stuff so I can make room for more paper that I won't look at for a few years. I found the one presentation from the '06 AHC that I kept -- titled "The Secret Life of Building Contractors - A Psychographic Study."

Apparently, H-W did a study of readers of two of its magazines -- Builder, the flagship, and Remodeling. There were 1,053 respondents all told. I can't upload this thing, and I can no longer find it online. Here are some of the results of note included in the PowerPoint slide show I downloaded and printed:

02 Jan, 2008

AGC's economist, Ken Simonson, regularly updates "Quick Facts About the Construction Industry." I don't know anyone else who does this; Ken should get credit. I've chosen to post the whole thing below; I think Ken wants this OUT there, not kept secret.

Construction is a significant source of jobs. The industry provides jobs for 7.6 million employees—more than 5% of the total nonfarm workforce. In contrast to the steep drop in homebuilding, nonresidential construction employment grew at least 0.9% from November 2006 to November 2007. This estimate is probably understated, since many “residential” construction employees are now doing nonresidential work, even though their employers are still counted as residential contractors.

Construction jobs are good-paying jobs. In November 2007, seasonally adjusted hourly earnings in construction averaged $21.27 per hour, 21% higher than the average for all private industry nonsupervisory workers.

Construction makes a disproportionately large contribution to GDP. For the past eight quarters, investment in private nonresidential structures has grown faster than gross domestic product (GDP). Construction spending totaled $1.16 trillion in October 2007; nonresidential was $647 billion (56%).

Construction is a substantial purchaser of U.S. manufactured products. In 2006, shipments of construction materials and supplies topped $500 billion—nearly 11% of total U.S. manufacturers’ shipments. Shipments of construction machinery totaled $36 billion—11% of all U.S. machinery.

Materials costs are a major problem. From December 2003 to October 2007, the producer price index for inputs to construction jumped 28%, twice the 13% rise in the consumer price index.

The typical construction firm size is very small. In 2005, there were 788,000 construction establishments with 6.8 million paid employees. Thus, average employment was less than nine per establishment. (An establishment is a permanent business location. Most construction firms have only one establishment.) More than two million additional construction firms had no paid employees—mainly self-employed individuals but also partnerships and holding companies

Small business is big in construction. In 2005, 91% of construction establishments had fewer than 20 employees. Only 1% had 100 or more.

Construction is a low-margin industry. Internal Revenue Service figures for 2004 show that the 722,000 corporations in construction had net income (less deficit) of $47 billion, or 3.7% of total receipts of $1.3 trillion. That was considerably below the all-industry average margin of 4.9%.

Construction is a high-turnover industry in terms of entering and exiting firms. Census data prepared for the Office of Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration shows that 99,000 of 630,000 construction firms with employees in 2004 (16%) opened since 2003, while 77,000 firms closed

The 2007 Construction Industry Annual Financial Survey, conducted by the Construction Financial Management Assn. (www.cfma.org), included responses from 756 companies. The net margin before income taxes in the latest fiscal year averaged 2.7%. The median return on assets was 8.8%.

12 Sep, 2007

I ran across a 5/21/07 New York Times article, "Electricity Crisis Hobbles an India Eager to Ascend." I can't link to it. But there's some amazing information in it, which I'll regurgiate here:


There's more in the story -- about generator use by private businesses, etc. But the most appalling thing: "Gurgaon does not have a sewage treatment plant of its own." This is "the best address south of Delhi"???

According to Wikipedia, Gurgaon in 2001 had a population of almost 175,000.


 (More)

12 Mar, 2007

There were 85 posts, total, on The EleBlog in January + February. I've posted each month's posts together as a downloadable MS Word document --

Click here for January.

Click here for February.

29 Jan, 2007

There were 38 of them. If you missed one, or you want to read off-line -- or whatever -- I've put them all together on one MS Word document, which you can download by clicking here.

05 Jan, 2007

"Top Stories of 2006" is the heading on a list of 12 stories (with links to each) from RenewableEnergyAccess.com. Included: "Solar Cell Breaks the 40% Efficiency Barrier" & "Biodiesel Edges Out Ethanol" and "Vinod Khosla on Proposition 87." See the thing here.

[I wrote about Khosla back in 10/05 -- see the blog entry here]

13 Dec, 2006

I've combined the 38 posts from October + November in a single, downloadable MS Word document. Download it from here.
 (More)

19 Oct, 2006

A report from the NECA Convention & Show, plus info on Housing -- and much more -- can be found in the EleBlog Report I just posted, dated 10/18/06. It's #6. Click here to see it.

18 Oct, 2006

In September, there were 46 EleBlog posts. I've put them together in one MS Word document -- click here to see it.

30 Sep, 2006

I've been posting the "EleBlog Report" here every 2 or 3 weeks -- for a couple of month. #5 just went up. It's a special report with U.S. government data -- taken from a variety of places -- on electrical contractors. It's worth your time, I promise -- click here to read it.

18 Sep, 2006

There were 45 posts to the EleBlog in August. I've rounded them up and put them in one place. Here are three ways to access them:

1. Click here to download a 29-page PDF. (309kb)

2. Click here to view the 29-page MS Word doc. (327kb)

3. At right, click on the August 2006 link under "Archives" to see the same thing in HTML.

14 Sep, 2006

The occasional newsletter from this site went up today, 9/15. See it by clicking here.

30 Aug, 2006

Date: 8-30-06. Access the newsletter by clicking here.

17 Aug, 2006

The 8/17 EleBlog Report (the 2nd edition) is now available. Click here to see the HTML doc.

09 Aug, 2006

I'm trying a new idea -- The EleBlog Report. It's designed to post three times a month, and it's patterned on the old "Web Prowler" that I wrote years ago for ecmag.com. Take a look at the first one [please] by clicking here.