By GARANCE BURKE
FRESNO, Calif., Mar. 28, 2010 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- After a year of crippling delays, President Barack Obama's $5 billion program to install weather-tight windows and doors has retrofitted a fraction of homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected.
In Indiana, state-trained workers flubbed insulation jobs. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program has yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs.
The program was a hallmark of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a way to shore up the economy while encouraging people to conserve energy at home. But government rules about how to run what was deemed to be a "shovel-ready" project, including how much to pay contractors and how to protect historic homes during renovations, have thwarted chances at early success, according to an Associated Press review of the program.
"It seems like every day there is a new wrench in the works that keeps us from moving ahead," said program manager Joanne Chappell-Theunissen. She has spent the past several months mailing in photographs of old houses in rural Michigan to meet federal historic preservation rules. "We keep playing catch-up."
The stimulus package gave a jolt to the decades-old federal Weatherization Assistance Program. Weatherization money flows from Washington to the states, where it is passed to local nonprofits that hire contractors to spread insulation and install efficient heaters in people's homes.
Energy officials said the stimulus infusion is on track to create thousands of career-pathway jobs and support an industry that lowers carbon emissions while saving consumers money.
"This is the beginning of the next industrial revolution with the explosion of clean energy investments," said assistant U.S. Energy Secretary Cathy Zoi. "These are good jobs that are here to stay."
But after a year, the stimulus program has retrofitted 30,250 homes -- about 5 percent of the overall goal -- and fallen well short of the 87,000 jobs that the department planned, according to the latest available figures.
As the Obama administration promotes a second home energy-savings (OOTC:HESV) program -- a $6 billion rebate plan -- some experts are asking whether that will pay off for homeowners or for the planet.
"A very rosy picture was painted that energy efficiency would be a great way to create jobs and save money," said Michael Shellenberger, an energy expert who heads the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland-based think tank that is financed by nonpartisan foundations and works on energy, climate change and health care issues. "The Obama administration risks overpromising again."
Many states held off on weatherizing under the stimulus over concerns about a Depression-era law that requires contractors to pay workers wages equal to those paid for local public works projects. The U.S. Labor Department issued wage rules for every county in the country in September but after receiving about 100 complaints, changed the wage rates again a few months later.
Bureaucratic delays kept officials in Austin, Texas, from weatherizing anything while they waited to hire furnace technicians under a $7.4 million federal grant, of which they received the first installment this month.
The recession itself has compounded the problems, since hiring freezes in some states meant there weren't enough public employees to administer the program.
In California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered many state workers to take "Furlough Fridays," the program had created 84 jobs and weatherized 849 homes at last count, in December. Officials estimate several hundred jobs have been created since then.
Energy Department spokeswoman Jen Stutsman said the program produced 8,500 jobs nationwide from October to December 2009, but said she could not provide job creation figures for the last full year since federal guidelines for measuring the program's impact changed in the fall.
Zoi said the number of jobs created and homes completed would rise quickly as the program emerged from its startup phase, and that it was on target to meet overall goals. Now that the money is trickling down more quickly, auditors are fretting over how to make sure it doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
The Energy Department plans to hire one program officer for each state to watch for waste, fraud and mismanagement.
That also will help to ensure crews' performance is up to snuff.
In Illinois, the staff of the department's inspector general, Gregory Friedman, discovered that one agency weatherization inspector missed a dangerous gas leak on a newly installed furnace. State and local officials told auditors they would make sure the leak was fixed and retool statewide training materials.
In Indiana, where workers were required to go through a state weatherization training program, local managers say they have spent hours teaching new recruits to do their jobs properly.
"We keep getting inundated with all kinds of people who want a paycheck, but just aren't qualified to do this kind of work," said Bertha Proctor, who heads a nonprofit contracting agency in Vincennes, Ind.
Still, some of the stimulus program's flexible standards have allowed for innovation.
In Portland, Ore., local officials are reporting an energy-saving boon that has helped minority-owned businesses in the job-starved construction industry. Ohio, which had a strong weatherization program in place at the outset, had completed 6,814 homes by the end of last year, more than a fifth of the total nationwide.
Legislation authorizing a second energy savings program is moving slowly through Congress. Many details of the plan, including how long it will run and its total cost, still need to be worked out. The Obama administration said the "HomeStar" program would reward homeowners who buy energy-saving equipment with an on-the-spot rebate of $1,000 or more, and hope it could become as popular as last year's Cash for Clunkers money-back program for cars and trucks.
Micheline Guilbeault, 65, of Lawton, Okla., whose home was weatherized through the stimulus package, said she thought the new proposal would encourage more homeowners to go green.
"My house doesn't shudder anymore when the wind blows," Guilbeault said. "With the door that they just put in, I'm sure that the bill will go down because myself, I can feel the difference."
Still, some government watchdog groups said taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook paying for home improvements if the government has yet to release figures showing how much weatherizing saves.
"The government should have stayed out of the weatherizing business in the first place," said Leslie Paige of Washington-based Citizens Against Government Waste. "This is a way to rapidly expand and entrench an existing program without ever going back and looking at the rationale or intent or effectiveness."
Monday, March 29, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
Home Automation
Researchers Study Demand-Responsive Dimmable Lighting
by Craig DiLouie, Lighting Controls Association
Posted March 2010
Electric bills paid by commercial building owners often have a consumption and a demand component. The consumption component is the amount of electric energy, measured in kWh, that the building consumes in a given month. The demand component reflects maximum demand, measured in kW, that the building uses over a given time period. Peak demand is the most expensive power that a generator produces and can represent a significant part of the electric bill.
Utilities, Independent System Operators (ISOs) and other power providers servicing commercial buildings share a common interest with their customers to reduce peak demand. This is because shaving the peak enables these organizations to satisfy customer demand while avoiding the high cost of building new capacity or having to buy very expensive power from other markets during an emergency or demand spike. Besides charging more for power used during peak demand periods, a number of utilities and ISOs offer financial incentives to building owners to curtail load on request, usually during an emergency grid event such as during brownout or imminent blackout conditions.
Role of code and standards
Demand response is now beginning to be required by codes and standards—in particular, at present, California’s Title 24-2008 energy code and ASHRAE 189.1 standard for designing high-performance green buildings.
California’s Title 24-2008, which became effective January 1, 2010, requires demand-responsive lighting controls in retail buildings that have a sales floor area larger than 50,000 sq.ft. The code defines demand-responsive lighting control as “control that reduces lighting power consumption in response to a demand response signal.” In this case, the lighting controls must be able to uniformly reduce lighting power by at least 15%. The requirement does not apply if the building’s lighting already has 50% or more of the total lighting wattage controlled by daylight harvesting controls.
Section 7.4.5.1 of ASHRAE 189.1 requires peak electric load reduction capability. The building must contain automatic systems capable of reducing peak electric demand by at least 10%, not including standby power generation.
The role of demand response in codes and standards is likely to intensify in the future. According to the Department of Energy, about 281 gigawatts of new generating capacity will be needed by 2025 to satisfy growing demand for energy, much of which will be allocated solely to satisfy peak demand. This is nearly a thousand 300MW power plants.
Role for dimmable lighting
To reduce peak demand, we can turn equipment off, turn it down or use it more efficiently. Strategies include equipment downsizing, duty cycling, thermal storage, improved maintenance, commissioning. Lighting, at first glance, has a small role to play. While we can use it more efficiently, it is difficult to turn lighting off in routinely occupied spaces for obvious reasons and cannot be turned down in many spaces without installing dimmable ballasts. But what if we did just that—replace every fluorescent ballasts in a commercial office with dimmable ballasts? It is commonly accepted that typical levels of automatic dimming, occurring in strategies such as a daylight harvesting, is unlikely to be noticed or found irritable by occupants. Researchers at the National Research Council Canada – Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) put this notion to the test, conducting a study to determine how far, how fast and over what period lighting can be dimmed before occupants notice and are adversely affected.
The researchers conducted two laboratory studies in full-scale office mockups where various dimming scenarios were studied with typical office workers performed office tasks, and then designed a field study, conducted during the summer, that included an open-plan office with 330 dimmable light fixtures and a college campus with 1,850 dimmable fixtures in several buildings. Load shedding was undertaken during afternoon hours over several days. The rate of dimming spanned one to 30 minutes with dimming reductions up to 40%. Occupants were warned that an experiment would be conducted over the summer involving afternoon dimming, but were not told which days.
In the field study, lighting loads were able to be reduced by 14-23% without occupant complaint. Based on this data coupled with the lab study data, NRC-IRC developed several recommendations.
Stage 1: This type of demand response involves dimming by amounts that are not noticed by the large majority of occupants. Dimming can occur rapidly, over as little as 10 seconds, by 20% with no daylight, 40% with low prevailing daylight, and 60% with high prevailing daylight. If dimming occurs slowly, over 30 minutes or more, and with no immediate expectation of diming occurring, levels may drop by 30% with no daylight and 60% with high prevailing daylight.
Stage 2: This type of demand response involves more load reduction, with steeper reductions in light levels but still acceptable to a large majority of occupants. Dimming can occur rapidly, over as little as 10 seconds, by 40% with no low daylight and 80% with high prevailing daylight. If dimming occurs slowly, over 30 minutes or more, and with no immediate expectation of diming occurring, levels may drop by 50% with no daylight and 80% with high prevailing daylight.
The researchers emphasize that these recommendations relate only to situations where load shedding is performed to alleviate the effect of temporary—and infrequent—grid stress events, with dimming lasting a few hours at most. The recommendations are not intended to replace current lighting practice and support daily load shedding
by Craig DiLouie, Lighting Controls Association
Posted March 2010
Electric bills paid by commercial building owners often have a consumption and a demand component. The consumption component is the amount of electric energy, measured in kWh, that the building consumes in a given month. The demand component reflects maximum demand, measured in kW, that the building uses over a given time period. Peak demand is the most expensive power that a generator produces and can represent a significant part of the electric bill.
Utilities, Independent System Operators (ISOs) and other power providers servicing commercial buildings share a common interest with their customers to reduce peak demand. This is because shaving the peak enables these organizations to satisfy customer demand while avoiding the high cost of building new capacity or having to buy very expensive power from other markets during an emergency or demand spike. Besides charging more for power used during peak demand periods, a number of utilities and ISOs offer financial incentives to building owners to curtail load on request, usually during an emergency grid event such as during brownout or imminent blackout conditions.
Role of code and standards
Demand response is now beginning to be required by codes and standards—in particular, at present, California’s Title 24-2008 energy code and ASHRAE 189.1 standard for designing high-performance green buildings.
California’s Title 24-2008, which became effective January 1, 2010, requires demand-responsive lighting controls in retail buildings that have a sales floor area larger than 50,000 sq.ft. The code defines demand-responsive lighting control as “control that reduces lighting power consumption in response to a demand response signal.” In this case, the lighting controls must be able to uniformly reduce lighting power by at least 15%. The requirement does not apply if the building’s lighting already has 50% or more of the total lighting wattage controlled by daylight harvesting controls.
Section 7.4.5.1 of ASHRAE 189.1 requires peak electric load reduction capability. The building must contain automatic systems capable of reducing peak electric demand by at least 10%, not including standby power generation.
The role of demand response in codes and standards is likely to intensify in the future. According to the Department of Energy, about 281 gigawatts of new generating capacity will be needed by 2025 to satisfy growing demand for energy, much of which will be allocated solely to satisfy peak demand. This is nearly a thousand 300MW power plants.
Role for dimmable lighting
To reduce peak demand, we can turn equipment off, turn it down or use it more efficiently. Strategies include equipment downsizing, duty cycling, thermal storage, improved maintenance, commissioning. Lighting, at first glance, has a small role to play. While we can use it more efficiently, it is difficult to turn lighting off in routinely occupied spaces for obvious reasons and cannot be turned down in many spaces without installing dimmable ballasts. But what if we did just that—replace every fluorescent ballasts in a commercial office with dimmable ballasts? It is commonly accepted that typical levels of automatic dimming, occurring in strategies such as a daylight harvesting, is unlikely to be noticed or found irritable by occupants. Researchers at the National Research Council Canada – Institute for Research in Construction (NRC-IRC) put this notion to the test, conducting a study to determine how far, how fast and over what period lighting can be dimmed before occupants notice and are adversely affected.
The researchers conducted two laboratory studies in full-scale office mockups where various dimming scenarios were studied with typical office workers performed office tasks, and then designed a field study, conducted during the summer, that included an open-plan office with 330 dimmable light fixtures and a college campus with 1,850 dimmable fixtures in several buildings. Load shedding was undertaken during afternoon hours over several days. The rate of dimming spanned one to 30 minutes with dimming reductions up to 40%. Occupants were warned that an experiment would be conducted over the summer involving afternoon dimming, but were not told which days.
In the field study, lighting loads were able to be reduced by 14-23% without occupant complaint. Based on this data coupled with the lab study data, NRC-IRC developed several recommendations.
Stage 1: This type of demand response involves dimming by amounts that are not noticed by the large majority of occupants. Dimming can occur rapidly, over as little as 10 seconds, by 20% with no daylight, 40% with low prevailing daylight, and 60% with high prevailing daylight. If dimming occurs slowly, over 30 minutes or more, and with no immediate expectation of diming occurring, levels may drop by 30% with no daylight and 60% with high prevailing daylight.
Stage 2: This type of demand response involves more load reduction, with steeper reductions in light levels but still acceptable to a large majority of occupants. Dimming can occur rapidly, over as little as 10 seconds, by 40% with no low daylight and 80% with high prevailing daylight. If dimming occurs slowly, over 30 minutes or more, and with no immediate expectation of diming occurring, levels may drop by 50% with no daylight and 80% with high prevailing daylight.
The researchers emphasize that these recommendations relate only to situations where load shedding is performed to alleviate the effect of temporary—and infrequent—grid stress events, with dimming lasting a few hours at most. The recommendations are not intended to replace current lighting practice and support daily load shedding
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Energy Crisis
Mar 9, 2010 USA Today
Poll: African Americans will pay higher energy bills to reduce global warming
African American voters want Congress to enact legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even if it means higher energy bills, a just-released survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has found.
The Washington-based think tank, which tracks voting trends in the black community, also found that African American voters are following this year's congressional races closely and plan to vote in large numbers.
The findings are the result of a survey conducted during the last three weeks of November. The Joint Center contacted 500 African American adults in each of
four states: Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, and South Carolina. President Obama got sky-high approval ratings from black voters in all four states.
Large majorities of African Americans in all four states said they are willing to pay an extra $10 per month for electricity to combat global warming, the survey found. But the numbers drop off sharply if the hypothetical energy bills rise: Only about one in six of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay as much as $50 extra a month to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While a majority of African Americans in all four states believe global warming is a problem, the Joint Center survey found a generation gap when it comes to Congress' proposed solution: Older black voters opposed the "cap and trade" system proposed in a House-passed bill. It would require companies that exceed government-set levels of greenhouse gas emissions to pay fines or buy credits from other companies. The youngest black voters -- those under 25 -- supported the plan.
The black voters surveyed said they are likely to vote in the fall midterm elections, a forecast that could bode well for Democrats running in some key Senate races. African Americans gave high marks to Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a top GOP target this year, and to Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, running against Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to take the place of retiring Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican.
Poll: African Americans will pay higher energy bills to reduce global warming
African American voters want Congress to enact legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even if it means higher energy bills, a just-released survey by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has found.
The Washington-based think tank, which tracks voting trends in the black community, also found that African American voters are following this year's congressional races closely and plan to vote in large numbers.
The findings are the result of a survey conducted during the last three weeks of November. The Joint Center contacted 500 African American adults in each of
four states: Arkansas, Indiana, Missouri, and South Carolina. President Obama got sky-high approval ratings from black voters in all four states.
Large majorities of African Americans in all four states said they are willing to pay an extra $10 per month for electricity to combat global warming, the survey found. But the numbers drop off sharply if the hypothetical energy bills rise: Only about one in six of those surveyed said they would be willing to pay as much as $50 extra a month to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
While a majority of African Americans in all four states believe global warming is a problem, the Joint Center survey found a generation gap when it comes to Congress' proposed solution: Older black voters opposed the "cap and trade" system proposed in a House-passed bill. It would require companies that exceed government-set levels of greenhouse gas emissions to pay fines or buy credits from other companies. The youngest black voters -- those under 25 -- supported the plan.
The black voters surveyed said they are likely to vote in the fall midterm elections, a forecast that could bode well for Democrats running in some key Senate races. African Americans gave high marks to Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln, a top GOP target this year, and to Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan, running against Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., to take the place of retiring Sen. Kit Bond, a Republican.
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Enery Management
2. Obama to outline rebates for energy efficiency
Mar 2, 2010 Associated Press Online
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
WASHINGTON, Mar. 2, 2010 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- Consumers would collect on-the-spot rebates of $1,000 or more for buying insulation, water heaters or other equipment to make their homes burn energy more efficiently under a new rebate program to be announced by President Barack Obama.
Obama was traveling to Savannah, Ga., on Tuesday to outline the Home Star program. Obama called for energy rebates in his State of the Union address, and officials hope the plan will be as popular as last year's Cash for Clunkers money-back program for autos.
"We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities -- and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which support clean energy jobs," Obama said in January.
He has said shifting the U.S. toward cleaner, renewable sources of energy and making homes -- particularly older houses -- more energy-efficient will help accomplish three goals: reducing America's dependence on foreign energy sources, creating much-needed jobs and saving consumers money on their utility bills.
Obama was stopping at Savannah Technical College to visit students who are learning how to install insulation and other equipment.
The new program has two levels of rebates. Various vendors, ranging from small, independent contractors to national home improvement chains, would promote the rebates, give the money to consumers and then wait for reimbursement from the federal government.
Some details of the program, including how long it will run and its total cost, remain to be worked out with Congress, according to senior administration officials who spoke anonymously Monday to describe the program before Obama's formal announcement.
The price tag for Home Star could be in the range of $6 billion, said one official.
Cash for Clunkers was a $3 billion program that ran for about a month last year, from July 27 to Aug. 25.
Under the first level of energy rebates, to be called Silver Star, consumers would be eligible for rebates between $1,000 and $1,500 for a variety of home upgrades, including adding insulation, sealing leaky ducts and replacing water heaters, HVAC units, windows, roofing and doors. There would be a maximum rebate of $3,000 per home.
Under the second level, Gold Star, consumers who get home energy audits and then make changes designed to reduce energy costs by at least 20 percent would be eligible for a $3,000 rebate. Additional rebates would be available for savings above 20 percent.
"The simple act of retrofitting these buildings to make them more energy-efficient -- installing new windows and doors, insulation, roofing, sealing leaks, modernizing heating and cooling equipment -- is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest things we can do to put Americans back to work while saving families money and reducing harmful emissions," Obama said in December while visiting a Home Depot (NYSE:HD) in Alexandria, Va.
Once the program is enacted, the administration expects millions of households will boost demand for insulation, water heaters and the like -- the same way consumers pumped up car and truck sales last year by trading in their gas-guzzling autos with more fuel-efficient models.
Senate Democrats included an energy rebate program in their jobs agenda.
Newstex ID: AP-0001-42475813
Mar 2, 2010 Associated Press Online
By DARLENE SUPERVILLE
WASHINGTON, Mar. 2, 2010 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- Consumers would collect on-the-spot rebates of $1,000 or more for buying insulation, water heaters or other equipment to make their homes burn energy more efficiently under a new rebate program to be announced by President Barack Obama.
Obama was traveling to Savannah, Ga., on Tuesday to outline the Home Star program. Obama called for energy rebates in his State of the Union address, and officials hope the plan will be as popular as last year's Cash for Clunkers money-back program for autos.
"We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities -- and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which support clean energy jobs," Obama said in January.
He has said shifting the U.S. toward cleaner, renewable sources of energy and making homes -- particularly older houses -- more energy-efficient will help accomplish three goals: reducing America's dependence on foreign energy sources, creating much-needed jobs and saving consumers money on their utility bills.
Obama was stopping at Savannah Technical College to visit students who are learning how to install insulation and other equipment.
The new program has two levels of rebates. Various vendors, ranging from small, independent contractors to national home improvement chains, would promote the rebates, give the money to consumers and then wait for reimbursement from the federal government.
Some details of the program, including how long it will run and its total cost, remain to be worked out with Congress, according to senior administration officials who spoke anonymously Monday to describe the program before Obama's formal announcement.
The price tag for Home Star could be in the range of $6 billion, said one official.
Cash for Clunkers was a $3 billion program that ran for about a month last year, from July 27 to Aug. 25.
Under the first level of energy rebates, to be called Silver Star, consumers would be eligible for rebates between $1,000 and $1,500 for a variety of home upgrades, including adding insulation, sealing leaky ducts and replacing water heaters, HVAC units, windows, roofing and doors. There would be a maximum rebate of $3,000 per home.
Under the second level, Gold Star, consumers who get home energy audits and then make changes designed to reduce energy costs by at least 20 percent would be eligible for a $3,000 rebate. Additional rebates would be available for savings above 20 percent.
"The simple act of retrofitting these buildings to make them more energy-efficient -- installing new windows and doors, insulation, roofing, sealing leaks, modernizing heating and cooling equipment -- is one of the fastest, easiest and cheapest things we can do to put Americans back to work while saving families money and reducing harmful emissions," Obama said in December while visiting a Home Depot (NYSE:HD) in Alexandria, Va.
Once the program is enacted, the administration expects millions of households will boost demand for insulation, water heaters and the like -- the same way consumers pumped up car and truck sales last year by trading in their gas-guzzling autos with more fuel-efficient models.
Senate Democrats included an energy rebate program in their jobs agenda.
Newstex ID: AP-0001-42475813
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