Intelligent Buildings: Energy Savings from Smart Controls RMI Outlet, February 24, 2016. Image credit: MichaelGaida 1. INTELLIGENT BUILDINGS ARE A FAST-GROWING MARKET Commercial buildings consume a lot of energy. In fact, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technology Office, the cost of energy to operate the 5.6 million commercial buildings in the United States … Read more
Lisa Markowski for Zondits, February 16, 2016. Image credit: Mark Fischer (modified) Just four days before the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, the SCOTUS voted 5-4 to put the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP) on hold. The ruling will allow time for the lawsuits filed by twenty-seven states opposing the CPP to be … Read more
Jeffrey Perkins and Allison Donnelly, ERS The DOE’s definition of a microgrid is “A group of interconnected loads and distributed energy resources (DER) with clearly defined electrical boundaries that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid [and can] connect and disconnect from the grid to enable it to operate in both … Read more
Presented at the AESP 26th National Conference on February 3, 2016 Elizabeth Titus, NEEP Brian McCowan, ERS Rebecca Foster, VEIC Electric tumble clothes dryers were introduced in the United States in the late 1930s, and until recently have remained largely unchanged, with only small incremental improvements in operation. Recent advancements in electric clothes dryers range … Read more
Jeff Perkins, ERS Presentation at AESP’s 26th National Conference in Phoenix, AZ, on Wednesday, February 3 at 1:30 p.m. Session 5C: DSM Business In this presentation we will explore how the adoption of microgrids fits into the collective efforts to reduce long-term costs, promote distributed resources, and build resiliency into the grid, and how current government-funded … Read more
Switch says all data centers, clients on green power Las Vegas Review-Journal, January 5, 2016. Image credit: The Networking Nerd The data storage company Switch has announced that as of Jan. 1, all of its SUPERNAP data centers and its more than 1,000 clients who are co-located at their facilities were powered by 100 percent … Read more
Todd Winner for Zondits. January 12, 2016. Image credit: fotobias The retail marijuana market is booming. Among the 23 states that have legalized cannabis for medicinal purposes, as well as the 4 states (and Washington D.C.) that have legalized cannabis for recreational use, the demand is rising. And with other states currently looking to legalize … Read more
Gita Subramony for Zondits, January 6, 2016. Image credit: tpsdave Last week Marketplace reported on how solar customers in Nevada might end up paying more on their utility bills even though they use less energy from the grid. What’s going on here? Abundant sunshine in the Silver State created high demand for solar arrays. However, the … Read more
Light Chips Could Mean More Energy-Efficient Data Centers MIT Technology Review, December 23, 2015. Image credit: Glenn Asakawa, University of Colorado Now a prototype described in the journal Nature offers a promising and practical approach. The electronic-optical microprocessor, developed by a group of researchers at MIT, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Colorado, Boulder, … Read more