San Diego Community College District – San Diego, CA
San Diego Community College District is the recipient of the APPA’s 2015 Sustainability Award recognizing and advancing sustainability excellence in educational facilities. An CREE want a little school credit. The upgrades used Cree® LED lighting upgrade with SmartCast® Technology.
Looks good.
In the meanwhile, Ikea stores are moving to only selling LED lights by 2016. Read here about Idea's LED ideas. They argue that about 20% of electric energy use in the world comes from lighting. So if LED lights can reduce that by about 85%. That is a BIG Woo Hoo for the environment too. The savings of energy/electricity are really only a small part of the savings. Other lights produce huge amounts of heat, which generally increase air conditioning costs. It takes time and money to buy replacement bulbs, install the new and dispose of the old. The costs to a business are huge. Whereas the LED light will not be replaced in many of our lifetimes.
LED lights now have much better light quality, and many are dim-able.
Oh. And if you love CREE's products and services, be careful buying the stock of the company. Even with all their patents and proprietary technologies, this is an overly competitive market.
Very cool.
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Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label electricity. Show all posts
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Wednesday, June 4, 2014
Monday, March 10, 2014
Day Light Savings Time... And Energy Efficiency... and Sustainability
While you are are staying up late, thinking about saving time and saving money...
Give a look at the past blog post here on EE and DST and California's discussion about Daylight Savings Time.
This is the heart of sustainability: things that we can do right here, right now, to move toward more sustainability. Some of them might be only small changes, like adjusting the clock to start earlier in the day, when sun gets up earlier...
One other idea is to move to LED lights. If 10% of our utilites comes from lighting, and LEDs will save us about 70%.... That cuts about 7% of our electric production. if utilities are about 2.5% of our $16.15T GDP... That's $28B per year. Every year. As a perpetuity at 5% interest that would be a half trillion dollars ($565B). These are rough numbers, but the concept holds up nicely.
Give a look at the past blog post here on EE and DST and California's discussion about Daylight Savings Time.
This is the heart of sustainability: things that we can do right here, right now, to move toward more sustainability. Some of them might be only small changes, like adjusting the clock to start earlier in the day, when sun gets up earlier...
One other idea is to move to LED lights. If 10% of our utilites comes from lighting, and LEDs will save us about 70%.... That cuts about 7% of our electric production. if utilities are about 2.5% of our $16.15T GDP... That's $28B per year. Every year. As a perpetuity at 5% interest that would be a half trillion dollars ($565B). These are rough numbers, but the concept holds up nicely.
| GDP | Factor | $16.15 | T |
| $ Energy | 2.50% | $ 403.75 | B |
| % Lights | 10% | $ 40.38 | B |
| Savings | 70% | $ 28.26 | B |
| Perpetuity | 5% | $ 565.25 | B |
Monday, September 23, 2013
Natural gas, the media’s failures, and you « The Cost of Energy
Natural gas, the media’s failures, and you « The Cost of Energy:
Ouch!
"The Cost of Energy" Lou Grinzo blogs (and reblogs) about how unclear NatGas really is. It all has to do with the Methane released from the fracking.
See the reprint of the blog at EthicsAndClimate.org from Dr. Brown.
Sadly NatGas may really not be cleaner than Coal. How dirty is that!
Here's my comments over to Lou's post.
Okay, as always, your blogs are extremely informative, with lots of facts that are well substantiated. The Dr. Brown article is a real eye opener on fracking.
Ouch! This is ugly. So we really don't gain anything from NatGas except maybe fuel independence -- and a wonderful improvement to our US trade (im)balance!:-(
The question I have for all of this NatGas is here and now. Half of the NatGas in the US is flared. So when we say that NatGas is 50% cleaner than coal, do we count the other 100% that is flared in the making? Oh, wait, we aren't saying that NatGas is actually cleaner than coal. It may not be!
Don't get me wrong, there's a safety and a transport issue here with flaring...
Good news is that much of the flaring is probably methane, right? So it could be worse, there might not be as much flaring. Simply releasing the methane would be a hefty magnitude worse?
And, of course, the point is that there should be no (short-term) plan to switch to NatGas without some follow-on plan to switch completely to sustainable fuel/power.
Much like our US energy policy, if there is one, the short-term plan is the only plan, even though it is based on exhaustible resources. That is, the plan is broken as designed.
Non-sustainability, over time, has a way of giving a wicked whiplash effect. And somehow, everyone with this broken short-term plan feel warm and cuddly about it.
Double ouch!
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Ouch!
"The Cost of Energy" Lou Grinzo blogs (and reblogs) about how unclear NatGas really is. It all has to do with the Methane released from the fracking.
See the reprint of the blog at EthicsAndClimate.org from Dr. Brown.
Sadly NatGas may really not be cleaner than Coal. How dirty is that!
Here's my comments over to Lou's post.
Okay, as always, your blogs are extremely informative, with lots of facts that are well substantiated. The Dr. Brown article is a real eye opener on fracking.
Ouch! This is ugly. So we really don't gain anything from NatGas except maybe fuel independence -- and a wonderful improvement to our US trade (im)balance!:-(
The question I have for all of this NatGas is here and now. Half of the NatGas in the US is flared. So when we say that NatGas is 50% cleaner than coal, do we count the other 100% that is flared in the making? Oh, wait, we aren't saying that NatGas is actually cleaner than coal. It may not be!
Don't get me wrong, there's a safety and a transport issue here with flaring...
Good news is that much of the flaring is probably methane, right? So it could be worse, there might not be as much flaring. Simply releasing the methane would be a hefty magnitude worse?
And, of course, the point is that there should be no (short-term) plan to switch to NatGas without some follow-on plan to switch completely to sustainable fuel/power.
Much like our US energy policy, if there is one, the short-term plan is the only plan, even though it is based on exhaustible resources. That is, the plan is broken as designed.
Non-sustainability, over time, has a way of giving a wicked whiplash effect. And somehow, everyone with this broken short-term plan feel warm and cuddly about it.
Double ouch!
'via Blog this'
Tuesday, December 18, 2012
NextEra Energy Resources commissions its 10,000th megawatt of wind energy - 12/18/12
NextEra Energy Resources commissions its 10,000th megawatt of wind energy - 12/18/12:
NextEra (FPL by an older name) now produces enough Wind Power to run a city the size of Chicago, or it will.
Rather cool is to check out the company's Sustainability Report. http://www.nexteraenergy.com/news/index.shtml
This will give you an indication of what power generation companies should be talking about in terms of their production capacity and their carbon footprint.
For example:
"In 2011, 52 million tons of CO2 avoided
from zero-emitting generation and
customer energy efficiency programs."
And, compared to the industry, FPL -- I mean NextEra -- had:
"90% lower SO2 emissions,
80% lower NOx emissions, and
51% lower CO2 emissions."
This is compared to the industry, so the "industry, may or may not be pretty...
By NextEra is looking pretty pretty, by comparison.
It appears that this will put NextEra firmly in the leadership position of Wind Generation in the USA.
'via Blog this'
NextEra (FPL by an older name) now produces enough Wind Power to run a city the size of Chicago, or it will.
Rather cool is to check out the company's Sustainability Report. http://www.nexteraenergy.com/news/index.shtml
This will give you an indication of what power generation companies should be talking about in terms of their production capacity and their carbon footprint.
For example:
"In 2011, 52 million tons of CO2 avoided
from zero-emitting generation and
customer energy efficiency programs."
And, compared to the industry, FPL -- I mean NextEra -- had:
"90% lower SO2 emissions,
80% lower NOx emissions, and
51% lower CO2 emissions."
This is compared to the industry, so the "industry, may or may not be pretty...
By NextEra is looking pretty pretty, by comparison.
It appears that this will put NextEra firmly in the leadership position of Wind Generation in the USA.
'via Blog this'
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Daylight Saving Time - Saving Time, Saving Energy... EE Efficiency...
Daylight Saving Time - Saving Time, Saving Energy:
Remember to move your clocks forward an hour today. Your laptops and cell phones should give you the right time. But, while you are at it, PONDER THIS....
The 10 year savings is between $21B and about $200B savings for the US. Multiply that times all the northernmost and southernmost countries in the world, and the savings could add up.
DST does help many retailers, so arguably it helps the economy in that respect if in no other!-)
Shop ‘til you drop, starting when the sun comes up.!
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Remember to move your clocks forward an hour today. Your laptops and cell phones should give you the right time. But, while you are at it, PONDER THIS....
This is actually a pretty good play on energy efficiency and smart(er) energy policy.
The idea is that spending more wake time when the sun shines will result less energy usage. The greenest possible killowatt is the KW saved.
Although Daylight Savings Time was first mentioned by Ben Franklin it was a century later that it fully got its start:
"Though mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, the modern idea of daylight saving was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson [8] and it was first implemented during the First World War. Many countries have used it at various times since then; details vary by location. " (Daylight savings time, 2012, para. 2).
The savings turns out to be somewhat sporadic and not conclusive. But it ranges from 0% to about 4% for residential savings of electricity use. A California study showed only a modest savings of electricity (.4% to .2% for winter and summer) but a significant savings of money because of the peak-time shift in usage (California Energy Commission, 2011). The Department of Energy study in 2008 (related to prior years) estimated 0.5% savings. (But this study has several limitations.)
With about 2.5% of the US GDP devoted to electricity, the savings over a year would be somewhere between $2B and $20B savings per year. The back-of-the-envelope computations are shown in the following table.
The idea is that spending more wake time when the sun shines will result less energy usage. The greenest possible killowatt is the KW saved.
Although Daylight Savings Time was first mentioned by Ben Franklin it was a century later that it fully got its start:
"Though mentioned by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, the modern idea of daylight saving was first proposed in 1895 by George Vernon Hudson [8] and it was first implemented during the First World War. Many countries have used it at various times since then; details vary by location. " (Daylight savings time, 2012, para. 2).
The savings turns out to be somewhat sporadic and not conclusive. But it ranges from 0% to about 4% for residential savings of electricity use. A California study showed only a modest savings of electricity (.4% to .2% for winter and summer) but a significant savings of money because of the peak-time shift in usage (California Energy Commission, 2011). The Department of Energy study in 2008 (related to prior years) estimated 0.5% savings. (But this study has several limitations.)
With about 2.5% of the US GDP devoted to electricity, the savings over a year would be somewhere between $2B and $20B savings per year. The back-of-the-envelope computations are shown in the following table.
Electricity as % of GDP:
|
2.5%
| |||||
Growth in US GDP:
|
2.0%
| |||||
($T) US
|
Est. Elect
|
DST Savings
|
DST Savings
|
DST Savings
|
DST Savings
| |
Year
|
Economy
|
Usage $B
|
0.5%
|
1.0%
|
2.0%
|
4.0%
|
2012
|
$15.30
|
$382.50
|
$1.9
|
$3.8
|
$7.7
|
$15.3
|
2013
|
$15.61
|
$390.15
|
$2.0
|
$3.9
|
$7.8
|
$15.6
|
2014
|
$15.92
|
$397.95
|
$2.0
|
$4.0
|
$8.0
|
$15.9
|
2015
|
$16.24
|
$405.91
|
$2.0
|
$4.1
|
$8.1
|
$16.2
|
2016
|
$16.56
|
$414.03
|
$2.1
|
$4.1
|
$8.3
|
$16.6
|
2017
|
$16.89
|
$422.31
|
$2.1
|
$4.2
|
$8.4
|
$16.9
|
2018
|
$17.23
|
$430.76
|
$2.2
|
$4.3
|
$8.6
|
$17.2
|
2019
|
$17.57
|
$439.37
|
$2.2
|
$4.4
|
$8.8
|
$17.6
|
2020
|
$17.93
|
$448.16
|
$2.2
|
$4.5
|
$9.0
|
$17.9
|
2021
|
$18.28
|
$457.12
|
$2.3
|
$4.6
|
$9.1
|
$18.3
|
10-yrs Savings
|
$4,188.3
|
$20.9
|
$41.9
|
$83.8
|
$167.5
| |
The 10 year savings is between $21B and about $200B savings for the US. Multiply that times all the northernmost and southernmost countries in the world, and the savings could add up.
Of course this is a paltry amount of savings compared to something like switching away from incandescent light bulbs.
TIP: When changing all the clocks in the house, it is advised to check/change the batteries in smoke detectors and pressure in fire extinguishers. Also, while at it, check all the electricity use appliances and replace the most frequently used incandescent lights with compact fluorescents… or even better with some of the new LED lights that use a fraction of the electricity.
But let’s take our savings wherever we can get them.
DST does help many retailers, so arguably it helps the economy in that respect if in no other!-)
Shop ‘til you drop, starting when the sun comes up.!
References
California Energy Commission. (2011). Saving time, saving energy: daylight savings time: Its history and the reason we use it. Retrieved March 11, 2012 from: http://www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html
Daylight saving time. (2012, March 11). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 14:31, March 11, 2012, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Daylight_saving_time&oldid=481293297
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