Energy Solutions for a Greener America | from the National Electrical Contractors Association

By Joe Salimando
Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com

“Solar Fred” posted tips on how solar installers can fight commoditization on RenewableEnergyWorld.com. A few comments before you click over:

1. The NECA Energy Solutions approach is not about becoming “a solar installer” (although that’s certainly an option). Most ECs know all about the downside of having customers treat your expertise as being no different from others out there . . . being regarded as a commodity.

As currently formatted, the Energy Solutions concept is about enabling your company and your people to deliver a full menu” of energy savings, renewables, smart buildings – to customers large and small.

“Fred” came close to that with the 5^th of his five bullet points:

“Most importantly, you can give some unique added value to your solar installation service. That is, you can give some extra customer care that no one else does. It may even be something that customers never realized that they needed or cared about”.

It’s the fervent belief here that:

(a) trained, skilled electricians and their electrical contractor employers are the best “installers” of solar and most of the rest of the energy efficiency, smart building, and renewables concepts;

(b) each NECA contractor is in a unique position to deliver whatever the customer wants from that menu (i.e., one appetizer or the whole shebang); and

(c) there is a design-build element in all of this work that a truly qualified EC can handle, differentiating himself/herself/the company from others.

In other words: “Installer” be damned!

2. “Fred” noted that, “What I’m suggesting isn’t easy and may even be so overwhelming that it’s not even worth attempting.”

This may be the case for the vast majority of “solar installers.” But it is clearly not true of a typical electrical contracting company that has been around for decades (thus having long-timer customer relationships), has a workforce with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to get a variety of energy projects done – and has owners and managers ready to capture new markets.

3. Finally: It will be worth your while to read the comments (15 of them as of 4/30, to an item posted 4/20) . . . even while you might not agree with some.

GE introduces self cooling 27-watt LED light bulb to replace traditional 75-watt incandescents. Read More >>

Top 10 [Simple Yet Effective] Home Energy Tips from ase.org

To help U.S. consumers go green and save green, the Alliance offers this compilation of energy-saving tips:

1. Seal air leaks and properly insulate – Always the first steps for reducing energy waste, saving up to 20% on heating and cooling bills and increasing home comfort.
2. Turn off all lights, appliances and electronics not in use. (Sometimes the simplest things are really effective!)
3. Use your windows shades – Close blinds on the sunny side in summer and open them in winter.
4. A programmable thermostat, properly programmed, can save up to 10% on cooling and heating costs.
5. Look for the Energy Star label, the government’s symbol of energy efficiency, on a wide range of consumer products to save up to 30% on related electricity bills.
6. New & improved light bulbs – Reduce energy use from about a third to as much as 80% with today’s increasing number of energy-efficient halogen incandescents, compact fluorescents and LEDs.
7. Clean or change furnace filters regularly. A dirty filter will slow down air flow and make the system work harder to keep you warm.
8. Reduce water heater temperature to 130° F to save energy and money on heating water; and wrap the water storage tank in a specially-designed “blanket” to retain the heat.
9. Wash clothes in cold water to save $63 a year.
10. Use low-flow faucets and shower heads to save on water bills, too.

By Joe Salimando
Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com

Two recent reports – from the people at CleanEdge and GreenBiz – provide looks at the “green” industry. As most of us don’t spend all of our work time on “green” (and these people do) . . . they might be worth some time. Additionally, they’re both free.

Clean Energy Trends 2012 was posted to the web last month; the price of downloading the 23-page PDF is providing some information. Here are the four assertions on the first page:

1. The oil, gas and coal industries still receive massive subsidies.
2. Venture capital is a risky, high-reward business key to U.S. infrastructure.
3. Nuclear power projects require considerably more in loan guarantees than renewables.
4. 2011 marked a number of developments that point to significant scale-up of clean tech.

That first point was made here recently. Point #2, of course, is about the government (I’ve heard Energy Secretary Steven Chu make the same point in a recent speech – if you invest in start-ups and new technologies, you should expect some failures).

Above: Estimate of future solar prices and electricity costs out to 2021 from the Clean Energy Trends report.

Point #3 notes that the U.S. government guaranteed an $8.3 billion loan for two new nuclear power plants – nearly 25% of all Dept. of Energy loan guarantees, and equal to 15 Solyndras. Even if you are (like me) pro-nuclear power, it does make one think.

Point #4 includes this sentence: “ . . . a number of noted investors upped their clean-tech investment activities, with Google and Warren Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy Holdings investing nearly $1 billion and $2 billion respectively in U.S. solar projects.” You can safely be skeptical of Mr. Buffet’s political stances and whether Google legitimately follows its much-lauded “don’t be evil” motto. But from at least a fiduciary standpoint, neither is supposed to go out and fling corporate money at phantasms.

Certainly, all four assertions seem debatable, as does the data in the nearby table taken from the report. However, significant volume installations for Energy Solutions contractors seem likely if, as indicated, the cost-per-watt for solar PV falls from $3.47 last year to $1.28 – in less than a decade.

State of Green Business 2012 is thicker (84 pages) and wider in scope; again, you’ll have to share some information (here) in order to download the PDF. This pulse-taking wanders the waterfront – encompassing (in brief essays) how CFOs feel about sustainability to clean-energy patents, employee telecommuting, e-waste, green office space, and organic agriculture.

LEFT: Data that is out there, but perhaps is not widely reported (were you aware of this before seeing the graphic?). From State of Green Business 2012.

As we might expect – as neither you nor I spend all of our time on matters green – there is information and opinion in here not found elsewhere. The page on office space is headlined: “Inside LEED’s Disappointing Numbers.” Here’s what Rob Watson, interviewed for the page, had to say about LEED 2011 vs. 2010:

“ . . . the real issue—and the real disappointment—is that the total floor area certified [as LEED] decreased compared to 2010. [LEED building] registrations performed slightly better—it is hard to be disappointed if anything grows 17 percent in one year.

“But the truth is that the growth in existing building registrations and certifications needs to double for the next three or four years and maintain that level of certification and registration in order to approach the carbon dioxide reductions science agrees must happen.”

There’s something you probably don’t think about while chasing lighting retrofit business and other Energy Solutions work. In addition to providing employment to electricians, buying materials, saving energy for your customers – and hopefully making a little money at the same time – the bottom line on what you do is being measured in terms of what it’s doing to the environment!

By Joe Salimando
Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com

As you probably already suspect, there is a great deal to know about LED lighting. Headlines (LED bulb prices at retail are falling) crumble when you do a little investigation (the somewhat-heralded $4.95 LED bulb, from Lemnis Lighting, gives off a paltry amount of light).

LEDs have serious problems elsewhere. Retrofit ‘em into a place with an existing lighting control system, or simple dimmers, and you probably get a call-back. Install LEDs from one of the many names with which you’re not familiar and . .  . well, it’s not for nothing that LightFair will be held next month in Las Vegas!

There are numerous problems I won’t list here. You’d have to study the CALiPER work done by DoE (11 rounds of testing off-the-shelf LED products) to get a clear picture. And you’d need to pay attention to the progress, or LACK of same, of LED replacements for T8 fluorescent tubes.

Above: Lots of LEDucation6 exhibits consisted of bright lights. My photo-taking abilities yielded a lot of pix like this (and some much worse).

Suggestion: You’re just the guy/gal to do it. Electrical contractors have always been at the “event horizon,” where the rubber meets the road, in the electrical industry. Nothing is different today, except for the fact that there is widespread ignorance and fear of LEDs throughout the lighting and electrical industries.

What’s more, your leading-edge knowledge of what’s going on in the LED world, if you can gain it, will further round out your status as an Energy Solutions provider.

Taking the pulse

On March 21, I took the Amtrak from D.C. to NYC for LEDucation 6, a one-day LED-only lighting show and conference organized by the Designers Lighting Forum of NY (www.dflny.org). Helping me out greatly was the fact the Hotel Pennsylvania, where the event was held, was right across the street from Penn Station (i.e., underneath Madison Square Garden). No taxi fare!

My notebook is chock full of stuff; there’s not enough room here to go into it all. Here are highlights:

Freedom from binning – In a session in which Chad Stalker of Philips Lumileds spoke about “LEDs: The Move To The Digital World,” he briefly covered binning. More importantly, his slide read “freedom from binning” – yet there seemed to be little excitement about this in a packed house.

From what I know about LEDs and binning, “freedom” is a great proposition. At one point, he asked for a show of hands – how many knew what binning was; perhaps 33% or fewer of the attendees raised their hands.

I spoke with Stalker after; how did he interpret the fact that perhaps two-thirds of the audience (we were at an LED conference, remember!) indicated they were not acquainted with binning? Possibilities I’ve come up with:

1. Arthritis and/or bursitis run rampant in the NYC lighting design community.
2. People are shy (Stalker’s guess).
3. Many attendees showed up to learn about LEDs. These lighting people don’t know any more than you do!

Above: An exhibitor talks to an attendee at LEDucation6. I was born in Brooklyn and this picture is encouraging – some people in the NYC area still talk with their hands!

Hot topic – according to DLFNY, more than 2,000 people showed up for this thing. I spoke to someone associated with the org – who indicated that there was a “waiting list” of exhibitors. Now, one reason for this might be that Lightfair has not been held in NYC since 2009 – and won’t be this year or next.

Can it be that lighting folks won’t take the train or drive to Philadelphia? That’s where Lightfair was held last year and will be next year.

I was not on the show floor after 5PM. However, the thing ran to 8PM – and I was told (by someone old enough to know!) that at about 6PM, “don’t stand near the elevators” (the show   was on the hotel’s 18^th floor). Why? “That’s when the lighting designers who get off work come here, and there are a lot of them!”

LEDs & building automation – I couldn’t stay for the full final panel discussion, which was about LED controls. One panelist suggested making LED controls a part of building automation systems. We could even, he said, send power and control over the same wire!

He never said the words “Power Over Ethernet” (or the acronym POE). His audience (including fellow panelists) seemed almost stunned by the idea of bringing this topic in from deep left field . . . maybe from the parking lot behind the bleachers, for Pete’s sake!.

Tentative conclusion – I believe most electrical contractors likely to read this know something about POE. I don’t know if LEDucation 6 was promoted to a list of local contractors; I don’t know if ECs or their employees were among those charging off the elevators at 6PM.

BUT: Perhaps you don’t know much right now about binning . . . well, it appears you might not have a lot of ground to make up, at least on that subject.

If you envision yourself as an Energy Solutions provider, LEDs probably are not going to be central to your expertise and service offerings. But they are be in there, no doubt; part of the “mix” that you’re likely to pursue or be asked about.

Ignoring LEDs now, or just trusting to your distributor or name suppliers, might not be the most reliable way for you to go.

As you gain more experience talking to people about LEDs, and learning from suppliers, you’ve got a good shot at becoming the local expert on what will work and what won’t work in real-world applications. That opportunity isn’t out there for everyone!

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. -Thomas Edison, inventor (1847-1931)

By Joe Salimando
Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com

Items on electric vehicles (and what they might mean to electrical contractors):

GM halts Chevy Volts production for 5 weeks – GM had an oversupply; this is what smart makers of things do when things they make (from Captain Crunch cereal to refrigerators) aren’t been bought by the public.

See this Washington Post report. Lots of negatives in there; one biggie is the Volt’s price, $41,000 (after the $7,500 federal tax credit, we’re talking $33,500).

Note: I drive a GM car, a Saturn Ion. After a Zero down payment, it costs me $3,156/year (for six years). The thing gets 26 mpg city, 39 highway. Yes, it burns gasoline. But it doesn’t burn a hole in my pocket.

From an EC point-of-view: The Volt’s battery offers 40 miles of range; after using that, the car switches to a gasoline-powered “extender.” Volt owners might not be prime customers for residential EV charging stations; they might  never, ever use a commercial facility.

Personal observation – on 3/7, I flew to San Francisco, from Washington’s Dulles Airport, for our first vacation since 2010. After parking the car, the walk to the terminal (on floor 3 of parking garage A) took me by 5 EV charging stations, located right next to the handicapped parking.

Benefit for EV owners: Shorter walk to/from the gates.

Charging at the time: One of the 5 stations was in use.

Brain bother: I wondered if the one car that was charging was left there by a guy/gal/family who took a 1-day trip . . . or would be gone for 7 days. No rules were posted telling an EV owner “you can’t plug in and fly away for a long time.”

Above: A slice of www.goElectricDrive.com.

Upcoming EV events – if you live in or near Southern California, or you want to go there for business and a visit, two of the three upcoming EV events that I know about will be handy. The other’s in Texas.

April 18-19 – Plug In Electric Vehicle Infrastructure USA, San Diego.

May 6-9 – Electric Vehicle Symposium 26, Los Angeles.

July 23-26 – Plug-In 2012, San Antonio TX

Note: I’ve been to Plug-In 2009 and Plug-In 2011. I found attendance worthwhile and, in truth, there was no substitute for being there.

Two conference calls on 2/24 – a webinar (held by the sponsors of the April event) and a phone meeting (held by the Electric Drive Transportation Association) took place within hours of each other 2/24. I combined what I heard and produced two pieces for tedmag.com:

Catching up with EVs – on the Leaf, the I-5 “Electric Highway,” the EV Project’s scoreboard, and more.

Where EVs are taking you – lessons learned, lessons not learned, and how a locale can make itself EV-friendly.

Stray notes:

• EDTA has a website about itself and another one (“consumer-facing,” they called it) – www.goElectricDrive.com. A graphic from it is shown above.
• EDTA also posted a file of the phone conversation referenced above.
• DoE’s website now has 6 EV-related videos.
• You can find a Powerpoint on “electric drive vehicle overview,” dated 10/11, on the DoE’s EERE website.
• Go here to access archived DoE “Clean Cities” program webinars. The most recent: 2/27 – on Plug-In EV standards, upcoming PEVS and their features, and a charging system overview.

On that last bullet: If you page down to September 2011, you can listen to a web session that includes info on EV charging stations and electrical inspectors; you can also download a PDF of that piece of the presentation.

By Joe Salimando

Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com

Many speakers at the National Electricity Forum – held Feb. 8-9 in D.C. – focused on the future, out to 2035. That’s because the event’s theme was “Visualizing the 21^st Century Electricity Industry.” Sponsors were the DoE’s Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability and the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, or NARUC.

One session, “Game Changers” (for utilities and the folks who regulate them), included Plug-in EVs and grid-scale Electricity Storage.

Moderator: Mark Ferron, a member of the California Public Utilities Commission. In brief remarks, he reminded attendees of something I had missed: The state has a goal of hitting 87% zero-emission vehicles by 2050. Sounds far out? Yes, but there are milestones en route; 15% of new cars sold in California are to be zero-emission by 2025.

[I am NOT using the ZEV acronym for zero-emission vehicle, because it looks like yet another one of those EV  types – and could be confusing.]

Above, from GM-Volt.com: Graphic from 2007, found through Google Images, shows a “power cord to home” and includes “powering your home” verbiage.

Several points occur, of course. One is: How do you regulate what people want to buy? If the major auto-makers (including those with HQs in foreign countries) make a good-faith effort in 2023-24-25 and Californian’s don’t want the EVs and other ZEVs . . . will the state going to penalize car-makers, or citizens?

Also of interest: California remains the one state to have deregulated EV charging stations. In most states, you can’t sell electricity unless you are a utility. That’s not the case out West . . . but there are 49 states that still haven’t followed suit.

Britta Gross

She’s director, global energy systems and infrastructure commercialization, for General Motors – and one of the panelists. She had a lot to say (at least, a lot that interested your humble reporter) . . . here’s some of it.

• Most interesting to me: The GM Volt contains a 16 kW battery. But “we only let you use 10 kW,” Gross said. Yes, I am sure I heard this. Her explanation: GM wants drivers to avoid complete battery discharge, which is widely believed to reduce battery life.

• GM has confidence in the car it is selling, but not necessarily the battery. Why? It’s made cars for a long, long time. It’s included the kind of battery you’ll find in a volt (lithium-ion) . . . just in the Volt. For a company with generations of car-making know-how, Gross said, with this new battery, “we just don’t have a lot of experience yet.”

• Volt owners have three battery charging methods from which to choose. One is a “smart” delayed charge feature. This is about the much-discussed idea with EVs – plug it in when you get home at 6PM, but it recharges after electricity rates drop (perhaps after 1AM in your area).

• In answer to another question, Gross noted that it was possible to put a utility-grade electric meter inside the car (!). Problem with that, of course: Will the utility accept the information from the meter in the car for billing purposes?

Power from the vehicle (?!?!!??)

• There was a lot of talk about V2G (vehicle-to-grid). The idea, which has been the subject of heavy speculation, is that we’ll all charge our cars at home, drive them to work, plug them in there, and when a power peak hits (as in, maybe, August in the Washington DC metro area). . . the utility will suck just a bit of power out of the EV batteries to meet demand.

SIDEBAR:

I think V2G is a rotten idea. But let’s leave my opinion out of this; here’s a paragraph from an ElectricDrive.org release:

“Engineering vehicles capable of interconnecting to the power system for bi-directional power flow is a key component of emerging ‘vehicle-to-grid’ systems, in which plug-in EVs communicate with the power grid to deliver electricity or modulate their charging rates.

“The global V2G market is expected to grow at a rapid pace, reaching the $2.25 billion mark in 2012 and accelerating to $40.4 billion by 2020, according to a new market analysis from GlobalData.”

Above: Graphic from a recent National Renewable Energy Laboratory report on EVs and V2G.

• Gross also mentioned V2H (vehicle-to-home). I like this idea; see graphic near the top of this blog entry. If you think about it, it would be smarter to charge wherever you park your car during the day (the office?) and then come home and supply power to your house. That is – if your employer makes EV charging a free benefit (it’ll be lots cheaper than major medical coverage) . . . and the utility can deal with ever-higher power demand during the day.

• Some attendees liked the idea of using V2G to help utilities deal with frequency regulation problems. When asked about this, Gross noted that some of this electricity stuff was going to be too complicated for Volt owners. As she put it: Do you want to explain (power-line) frequency regulation to customers, “or do you want to say ‘we’ll put ten extra bucks in your pocket each month if you let us access the battery” . . . ?

By Joe Salimando

Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com

Lots of folks are rehearsing dirges for solar, wind, and their fellow travelers. Egging them on this month was Wired magazine’s article, Why The Clean Tech Boom Went Bust.

In response, a Pike Research staffer (who is a contributing editor at Wired) penned this blog entry – which included what’s below.

What’s it doing here? If you are a NECA contractor pursuing energy efficiency and/or renewable energy – you might find it handy to read at least what follows (and maybe click through to the original article + response):

“As it happens, the Wired story came out almost simultaneously with former vice president Al Gore’s latest broadside, entitled “A Manifesto for Sustainable Capitalism.” In it, Gore and his partner David Blood . . . address the very dysfunction that has plagued the cleantech industries . . .

“What we need now, declares Gore, is ‘a more responsible form of capitalism, what we call sustainable capitalism: a framework that seeks to maximize longterm economic value by reforming markets to address real needs while integrating environmental, social and governance (ESG) metrics throughout the decision-making process.’

“This is not warm and fuzzy enviro-correctness; it’s a belated recognition that long-term performance (of corporations, of investment funds, of managers) is inextricably bound up with the notions of sustainability and social costs.

“That’s exactly the equation that the short-term, IPO-driven models of Silicon Valley VC firms are incapable of solving. To see what’s really happening in cleantech we need to step back, take off the blinders, and see the elephant in full.

“Unfortunately, gloom and doom stories like the Wired feature don’t help with that.”

By Joe Salimando
Salimando is a Fairfax, Virginia-based writer and contributor to energysolutions.necanet.org, eleblog.com, and tedmag.com.
Reach him at ecdotcom@gmail.com 

John Wooden, the legendary UCLA basketball coach, is credited with this: “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.” Isn’t it hard to believe that Yogi Berra didn’t say that?

Here’s what we all think we know: Green advocates want governments (all of ‘em – federal, state, regional, county, city, town, village, and the Chinese communists as well) to subsidize solar energy installations . . . forever.

That’s what I thought I knew, too. But here’s an article, Death to PV Subsidies, that contends that all presidential candidates should “pledge to end all Federal subsidies for all forms of electricity generation by the end of 2016.”

It’s written by a pro-solar guy. Is he off his rocker? Won’t this kill solar power?

Well, maybe not. The key word in that clause above is “all,” as made clear in what follows:

. . . the life cycle effects of coal and its waste cost the American public $333 billion to over $500 billion dollars annually . . . costs the coal industry is not paying and what everyone else is paying!

What would eliminating that subsidy do to the price of coal-fired electricity?

The math isn’t hard. The United States generated 1,755,904GWh of electricity from coal in 2009, the last year for which figures from the EIA are available. That means each kWh from coal burdened our nation’s people and environment with $.28 of costs.

Eliminate the subsidy and coal-fired electricity doesn’t cost six cents per kWh, it costs thirty-four cents. Unsubsidized solar can beat that price anywhere in the U.S.

Yes, this could be labeled a radical approach. Then again, if you want the Free Market to actually work – and we all say that we DO want that, don’t we? – you’ve got to get government subsidies out of the way. This idea does exactly that.

Of course, one might make the argument (as perhaps Rep. Ron Paul sometimes does) that what we have today, after decades of regulation and government meddling, is anything but a Free Market. This position may be radical or conservative-and-logical . . . depending on whether your livelihood depends (directly or indirectly) on coal production.

Not coincidentally, if we create this level playing field, the construction of solar PV power plants (and CSP plants, too) would go through the roof. If this ever happens, we’re going to need a lot more electricians . . .