Energy Newsbriefs
Articles for May 16, 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.
Please be aware that although every URL is checked for accuracy prior to the publication of Energy Newsbriefs, URLs are, for various reasons, subject to change. Further, servers sometimes fail to connect to working URLs.
APPLIANCES
The following five articles discuss several aspects of commercial and residential appliances including lighting, motors, solar power, and pumping; they were published in the April 2011 issue of Appliance Design:
1. "Maximize Aesthetic Appeal with LEDs" was co-authored by Michael Godwin, Director of Visible LEDs, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors Inc. (Sunnyvale, California); and Nina Weilhammer, Global White Goods LED Marketing Manager, OSRAM Opto Semiconductors GmbH (Regensburg, Germany). Appliance lighting can be enhanced in many ways with highly energy-efficient LEDs (light-emitting diodes). The article includes excellent advice for the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) in the selection of LEDs in their discussions of color, optimization, power class, and sensing and control.
2. "Motor Drive Trends Deliver Value," by Tom Robbins, Applications Engineer, Lenze Americas, is a review of the latest technologies that support products on the market now. They include pulse-width modulation and vector technology for variable frequency drives.
3. "Select the Best Motor," by Kamron Wright, Team Leader, ECM HVAC Engineering, Genteq, is a primer on the selection of appliance motors. Seven general considerations are listed. Then, four considerations, more specific to the project at hand, are enumerated. These are followed by useful reviews of horsepower, motor types, enclosures and mountings, and some other issues.
4. "A Solar Solution For Long-Term Refrigeration," by Larry Adams, Contributing Writer, Appliance Design, features a refrigerator line designed for storing medicine at optimum temperatures in a Southern African country with a mainly rural population and a largely undeveloped grid. The refrigerators are solely solar powered. The author describes their design in detail along with the stringent UN WHO (United Nations World Health Organization) temperature requirements they meet.
5. "Washing Machines and Dishwashers Push Pump Technology" was written by Lou Kren, Contributing Writer, Appliance Design. New washing machines and dishwashers are expected to reduce noise, water, and energy in their operations. New pump designs can get them to meet those expectations. The author lists and describes several new cleaning and rinsing systems that demand more from the appliance pumps than ever. He includes a section on low-noise impeller pumps, as well.
BUILDINGS
Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey – is a web page on the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA is a division of the U.S. Department of Energy). It explains that the 2007 CBECS will not be released because of fatal errors in data collection due to a cheaper and poorer survey structure, inadequate survey methodology, and related issues. The page includes a link to a recent EIA press release explaining that, for budgetary reasons, work on the 2011 CBES and the early preparations for the 2012 CBECS have been halted.
Following are three case studies focusing on green low-rise buildings, from the March+April 2011 issue of GreenSource:
1. "Hollywood Screenplay," by Sarah Amelah, highlights the development of the Lofts at Cherokee Studios, an urban infill project. A multi-use, new building that is a likely candidate for LEED-Platinum certification, the project gets high marks for sustainability. For one thing, when a building was demolished to make room for the new one, almost all of the waste was recycled. Additionally, used cooking oil fueled construction machinery at the site. Also, passive ventilation and solar was designed into the completed facility. Finally, the building design included variant refrigerant flow (VRF) for heating and cooling, a system more common in Europe but one that it beginning to gain interest in this country. (For more information about VRF technology, see the fact sheet by Marcia Karr, PE, Washington State University Extension Energy Program: "Ground-Source Variable Refrigerant Flow Heat Pumps: Ground-Source Variable Refrigerant Flow Heat Pumps: A Solution for Affordable Housing, Assisted Living, Hotels and Dorms.")
2. "A Horizontal Skyscraper Greens the Land," by Clifford A. Pearson, Editor, Architectural Record, describes the headquarters for China's largest developer of homes. The Vanke Center, in Shenzhen, China, is a LEED-Platinum building that includes a hotel, condos, offices, and more. It "floats" above a lagoon on a large site that has been converted to a public park. The building, which has a green roof, is part of a landscape that manages stormwater and the breezes from the South China Sea to cool the area.
3. "Waste Not, Want Not," by Jane Koleeny, focuses on the LOTT Regional Services Center in Olympia, Washington. The 1950s sewage plant for the city of Olympia became, 20 years later, the provider of wastewater services for Lacey, Olympia, and Tumwater cities and for Thurston County that is now known as LOTT. An environmentally aware governmental organization, LOTT, with its onsite cogeneration plant employs methane energy captured from water treating.
SOLAR
"Simplifying Purging," by John Siegenthaler, PE, was published in the March 2011 issue of HPAC Heating, Plumbing, Air Conditioning Magazine. The author shows how to remove air and introduce fluid into a closed-loop solar thermal system, the type commonly used to heat water in private homes.
RESIDENTIAL EFFICIENCY STRATEGIES
EnergySavers.gov: Stay Cool, Save Money is a website, revised (and re-named) seasonally, from the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Office of the U.S. Department of Energy. The site is now offering many tips for energy savings for the spring and summer.
Past issues of Energy Newsbriefs are available here.
Generally, subscription information for the journals cited above can be found at the home page of their web sites.
© 2011 Washington State University Extension Energy Program. This publication contains material written and produced for public distribution. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted, provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, and that each is referenced by title with credit to the Washington State University Extension Energy Program. Copying, reprinting or dissemination, electronic or otherwise, for any other use requires prior written permission from the Washington State University Extension Energy Program.