WYANDOTTE -- Wilson Middle School will go green -- or at least greener -- next month with a solar-powered system designed to help deliver illumination during education.

Installation of the system began Tuesday through a program unique for a school district in the state. Paid for by a $50,000 state grant with another $50,000 kicked in by the city, the 10-kilowatt photovoltaic system will serve as a sort of hybrid energy conservation system and learning tool.

"Every student in Wyandotte goes through Wilson Middle School," said Melanie McCoy, general manager of the service that oversees water and electric providers. "And we, as the municipal service, can put information on our bills and on cable. It's a great mix and a great opportunity for information sharing."

March 21, 2008

Electricity reliability may not be top-of-mind with consumers but it is with technology wonks. Albany, N.Y. is now testing the use of the latest iteration of grid technologies that can carry 10 times the electrons of conventional copper wires.

The so-called high-temperature superconducting cable must actually be super-cooled. That will virtually eliminate the resistance to electricity flow, thereby greatly increasing the efficiency of the wire. The second-generation technology is one solution to the challenging task of providing sufficient electric power to densely populated areas. Burying cable and acquiring rights-of-way is prohibitively expensive, often representing three-quarters the cost of such projects. With their greater capacity, however, superconducting cables hold lots of promise.

March 19, 2008

The American economy may be in or near recession. But certain elements of the energy economy are poised to take off. Demand response technologies that allow grid operators to curtail electricity use during peak periods is one of those segments.

The sector is now in its early stages. But with the overall emphasis on energy conservation and air quality, the market for demand response is developing at a fast pace and a lot of players want to participate in that expected growth. The jockeying for position is well underway, with smaller privately-held enterprises trying to occupy market share along with better-established businesses such as General Electric, Comverge and EnerNOC.

The board of directors of the Muskegon Area Chamber of Commerce Friday announced that it favored a Michigan energy policy that preserves electric competition, promotes renewable energy and energy efficiency, and also provides the opportunity for businesses to generate and sell energy into the grid.

In short, the chamber said, its members have benefited from the state Customer Choice and Electric Reliability Act of 2000. The chamber policy opposes current efforts to eliminate or restrict the current electric choice program which has benefited many of its members and has helped make Michigan more competitive with neighboring states.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
No. 08-OPA012

CHICAGO (Jan. 29, 2008) - U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 5 announced today that five Fortune 500 corporations in the region are now buying a total of more than 286.6 million kilowatt-hours of green power annually.

They are Kohl's Department Stores, Menomonee Falls, Wis., 236 million kWh; Baxter International Inc., Deerfield, Ill., 20.5 million kWh; GE Healthcare Headquarters, Waukesha, Wis., 15.8 million kWh; General Motors Service Parts Operations, Pontiac, Mich., 14.1 million kWh; and Monsanto/Agracetus Campus Middleton, Wis., 399,000 kWh. Kohl's was ranked eighth nationally on the amount of green energy purchased.

The IRS has had tax deductions in place through the Energy Policy Act of 2005 which allow taxpayers to deduct the cost of energy-efficient equipment installed in commercial buildings they own. But publicly-owned buildings aren't taxed, and therefore, there is no additional tax savings to the building owner. However, the law allows the designer of the energy-saving portion of a public building to claim the tax credit.

Originally the term 'designer' was undefined, and it was unclear who could claim this deduction and how it could be applied. But the AIA has reported that the IRS has recently provided updated interpretation rulings that help clarify the Act and spell out how this rule may be applied.

By Craig DiLouie, Lighting Controls Association

Published November 2005

While new fluorescent ballast efficiency rules went into effect earlier this year, another batch of rules have just been passed that will affect lighting systems starting in 2009. This time, the efficacy standards have been set high enough that the vast majority of magnetic ballasts-including ballasts operating energy-saving T12 lamps-will no longer comply.

In September 2000, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published the Fluorescent Lamp Ballast Energy Conservation Standards (10 CFR, Part 430), which established new minimum ballast efficacy factor (BEF) standards that would go into effect starting in 2005. Ballasts that did not pass the standards would be phased out of production and sale in the United States.