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
It’s not realistic to expect electrical contractors – who seem to have enough to do right about now – to monitor the Department of Energy’s websites, e-mails, events, and thinking. Here’s some recent stuff at which you might want to look:
Electric vehicles – two recently posted publications (each a 20-page PDF) are Plug-In Electric Vehicle Handbook for Public Charging Station Hosts – and another one with the same title, except it ends “For Electrical Contractors.”
Note that the document for hosts specifically says this: To find licensed electrical contractors trained in EVSE installation, contact the Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Training Program
LED testing – the DOE’s testing of on-the-market LED products is called CALiPER. Round #14 was recently completed; see this 3p PDF (from James Brodrick). Eleven downlight retrofit units were tested; collectively, they generated between 527 and 803 lumens. Of note: The piece claims there are 800 million downlights installed in the U.S.
Did you miss the first 13 CALiPER reports? There’s a lot of info in them – posted here for reference.
Solar financing – DOE’s SunShot Initiative has the goal of bringing the total installed cost of solar PV to (or beneath) $1/watt – by 2020. One way to do that, it turns out, is to lower the cost of solar project financing; more here.
See the SunShot home page here.
Two favorites: My personal favorite DOE information services are:
EERE Network News – it’s hard (even for a non-contractor/writer-type guy) to keep an eye on what DOE is doing that might be of interest. This weekly newsletter (with issues back to 1999 archived electronically) helps. EERE = “energy efficiency and renewable energy,” one of DOE’s many arms.
Today in Energy – graphics-heavy, lots of info; much of it not directly relevant to ECs. But how about the graphic below, showing electricity reserve margins across the country.
