Energy Newsbriefs
Articles for August 8, 2011
ENERGY NEWSBRIEFS is a weekly current awareness service provided by the WSU Extension Energy Program Library and written by Angela Santamaria, WSU Energy Library Manager, to assist users in tracking developments in the energy field. To view past issues or to subscribe to receive an email notification of the publication of a new issue, go to the Energy Newsbriefs home.
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BUILDING SCIENCE
High Performance Public Buildings is a 46-page final report on legislatively-mandated "green" requirements for public buildings; it was published June 23, 2011, by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee (JLARC) of the Washington State Legislature. It begins with a brief two-page summary of the report.
DATA CENTERS
"Keeping It Simple with Data Center Cooling," by Buddy Phillips, Atlas Sales & Rentals Inc., was published in the June 2011 issue of HPAC Heating/Piping/AirConditioning Engineering. The author discusses how spot coolers can, effectively and relatively inexpensively, help cool data centers and server rooms.
GEOTHERMAL
"Gibson, BC District Geothermal Energy System," by Ed Lohrenz, Geo-Xergy Systems, Inc., Winnipeg, MB, Canada, was published in the May 2011 issue of Geo-Heat Center Quarterly Bulletin. It describes the phenomenon of a growing town's decision to put its planned 110 acres of new development on a geothermal system. This article focuses on the Phase I part of the planned project.
INDUSTRIAL SECTOR and IT
Dennis Brandl, BR+L Consulting, has included the following related articles in his Engineering and IT Insight column for Control Engineering:
1. "Future Is Virtual for Manufacturing IT" was published in April 2011. It is a discussion on how one actual IT server can be made to function as several and how virtual IT servers will impact the systems used in manufacturing plants including those, like controllers, that run manufacturing operations.
2. "Virtualize Manufacturing IT," published in May 2011, shows how virtualized servers need not be located near the shop floor and how they contribute to the financial and operational health of a manufacturing plant.
3. "Virtualize Now, Send the Message to Your Vendors" was published in June 2011 and describes how effective virtualized machines can be in simplifying the process of patch installation. Snapshots of the entire IT system can be used in either of two ways, depending upon whether system downtime is or is not acceptable.
LABORATORIES
"LBNL Releases New Laboratory Energy Profiling Tool" (scroll to or select page four) was published in Volume 20 Issue 1 of FEMP Focus. It highlights an energy efficiency tool developed at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL). A pilot test of the Laboratory Energy Efficiency Profiler (LEEP) at four national labs shows that personnel not expert in energy auditing can use the tool effectively after only two to three hours of training.
MILITARY – US NAVY
"ESPC Creates Long-Term Success at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard" was published in Volume 20, Issue 1 of FEMP Focus. It describes a three-phase project where water, energy, and CO2 are reduced in the shipyard's various systems and infrastructure. Verified savings have totaled $45 million.
UTILITIES
"Growing Pains" is a six-page article by Steven Andersen, Fortnightly’s Contributing Editor, Public Utilities Fortnightly; it was published in the June 2011 issue of that journal. The article is a discussion of the relationship between a utility and its customers, a relationship that is necessarily changing given the reality of smart grid implementation. It includes three sidebars by the author: "Austin Plugs In" and "Taking It to the People," and "90 Days to Pave the Way."
WATER
"The Carbon Footprint of Water," by Bevan Griffiths-Sattenspiel and Wendy Wilson, is a 50-page, May 2009, report funded by the Energy Foundation. The carbon footprint of water is a function of the amount of energy it takes to bring water from one place to another. The report draws the connection between energy consumption and water use in four sections: The Energy Intensity of Water, Estimating Energy in Water End-Uses, A New Estimate of National Water-Related Energy Use, and Saving Energy by Saving Water. The report begins with an informative Executive Summary.
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