October 2016: Anyone still holding out and using 'standard' 60W incandescent bulbs? (smell, glass)
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i am also in the business of selling commercial enegy mgmt systems . for years the utility company's gave us such a hard time.
they did not want to much energy being saved . they walk a fine line where they have all this capacity they spent money on and want to be compensated , while they do not want to have to expand that capacity out and spend a fortune up sizing things .
they originally tried to stop us from connecting our gear in to their electric service . today they are much more liberal about it . but they still use demand meters and power factor surcharges to make sure you do not save to much .
a lot of what i did is to design the control panels that controlled the speed of the water pumps and fans in a facility . being able to cut the speed of a pump in times of low demand has a huge energy savings . if you cut the speed in half on what we call variable torque loads like fans and pumps you don't half the energy . you reduce it by a lot more . a 10hp motor acts like a 2-1/2 hp motor .when you cut the speed by 1/2
When I installed my koi pond I put in a variable speed pump with a single phase to 3 phase conversion box. What would normally be an on/off pump is fully variable. And I usually run it at 50% of its rating. Saves money.
one of the problems con ed has here in nyc is we have loads of commercial lighting and office buildings with hvac and pumps . many of the offices today are still using lighting with ballasts .
those are all inductive loads and as such present big problems for a utility in billing and measuring that power .
in a nutshell because so many inductive loads do strange things to the power the utility has to build in far more capacity than they can actually measure and get paid for , so our rates are very very high hitting .30 cents a kwr based on a total bill .
we have demand meters and power factor surcharges as well on commercial and industrial buildings . .
Same issues here with the Hospital... friends in Washington State enjoy much better rates and this can explain the number of all electric homes there.
PGE has increased meter minimums and a friend said the future isn't looking good as more connect to solar... many of my friends produce more than used... some have swapped out gas water heaters for electric or bought electric cars to use excess capacity.
We use 12 kWh daily average year round with ancient applicances and a 1950 home of 2300 square feet.
The SF Bay Area micro climate is extremely mild...
Personally I love the light of an incandescent best. Nice and yellow white. The blue tone of many lights just makes me want to kill myself. Plus I don't believe that mercury in our environment is such a great thing.
When I installed my koi pond I put in a variable speed pump with a single phase to 3 phase conversion box. What would normally be an on/off pump is fully variable. And I usually run it at 50% of its rating. Saves money.
single to 3 phase convectors are very very inefficient , i would never use one .. a drive is a suitable replacement but they have to be over sized by 2 to 3x depending on drive design . the line side of things will draw way more current than the nameplate amperage on the motor . the drives have to be way over sized .
i try to stay away from taking 1ph and trying to get 3ph out of it .
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-14-2016 at 01:23 PM..
Personally I love the light of an incandescent best. Nice and yellow white. The blue tone of many lights just makes me want to kill myself. Plus I don't believe that mercury in our environment is such a great thing.
1. LEDs do not contain mercury.
2. When you buy LEDs, you need to pay attention to:
a. color temperature (2700 °K is much warmer than 3000)
b. Color Rendering Index (CRI of 80+ is good).
single to 3 phase convectors are very very inefficient , i would never use one .. a drive is a suitable replacement but they have to be over sized by 2 to 3x depending on drive design . the line side of things will draw way more current than the nameplate amperage on the motor .
i try to stay away from taking 1ph and trying to get 3ph out of it .
I fashioned a couple of rotary converters to run my Bridgeport Mill and Le blond Lathe... they do work well over the last 25 years but not used often...
rotary phase converters used to be the worst way to try to create 3ph . they would kill you on inefficiency .
with the rise of small ac drives just about any ac drive can take single phase in and give you 3phase out .
while they are efficient at it you have to up size the drive by 2 to 3x making it costly . older drives could get by with 2x the current rating of the motor. newer drives have to go up by 3x
But... they were free and I was a struggling college student.
Basically took a 3 phase motor and had it idle on one phase giving me three phase to run my Bridgeport...
I use a rope to get the idler motor spinning the then flipped the switch... been doing this since 1980's and there were days when I would work a full 8 hours or longer at the mill...
Now I doubt I run the mill 10 hours total in a year...
Bridgeport NC J-head with 1 hp motor... Lathe 2 hp motor... rotary Converter same hp for each.
I love making do with what I have on the cheap... so going LED coming from me is quite a statement... did I say how much I love CREE bulbs... soon to be 3 years and no issues.
Last edited by Ultrarunner; 10-14-2016 at 07:56 PM..
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