Community News

DOE Launches New "Energy Savers" Web Site for Consumers

Last month, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) launched its new consumer-oriented Web site—"Energy Savers: A consumer guide to energy efficiency and renewable energy." The site combines the EERE’s "Energy Savers" booklet with new content on ways to save energy at home, as well as ways to use renewable energy to provide power, hot water, and heating and cooling. It also includes information on how to buy energy-smart vehicles, including alternative-fuel vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles. To check the site out, visit www.eere.energy.gov.

DOE Awards $20.4 Million for Energy-Saving Projects

The Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded $20.4 million to 13 projects that will make commercial and residential buildings more energy efficient. (Industry partners will also contribute more than $10 million to the projects.) To be completed within three years, the projects will introduce new technologies to reduce costs, lower emissions and save energy by improving today’s lighting systems, air heating and cooling equipment, windows, water heaters, appliances, and other building components. The project winners are:

• Brown University (Providence, R.I.) will extract light from microscopic nanomaterials and change these materials to produce a light that has a longer lifespan, uses less energy and is about three times more efficient than standard fluorescent lights used in office buildings.

• General Electric Global Research (Niskayuna, N.Y.) proposes to develop novel hybrid phosphor systems to increase the efficiency of fluorescent lamps by approximately 10 percent to 30 percent, thereby reducing the nation’s fluorescent energy lighting bill by $6.5 billion per year and slashing carbon emissions by 4.1 billion kilograms per year.

• Astronautics Corporation of America (Madison, Wisc.) will advance magnetocaloric air conditioning to the point where it is less costly and uses 40 percent less energy than conventional vapor-cycle air conditioners.

• TIAX, LLC (Cambridge, Mass.) will design, build and test a system that maintains good indoor air quality by supplying fresh make-up air to air-conditioned buildings.

• Aspen Aerogels Inc. (Marlborough, Mass.) will develop a low-cost approach of making a better type of aerogel, a material that increases the energy efficiency of windows, making prototype aerogel panes to be used in highly transparent, insulated windows available to customers at affordable prices

• Rockwell Scientific Company, LLC (Thousand Oaks, Calif.) will help commercialize “smart” window devices that may be more than 80 percent efficient in preventing solar heating.

• SAGE Electrochromics, Inc. (Faribault, Minn.) will improve production costs, processes and through-put efficiencies related to making insulated windows, doors and skylights for new buildings by using electrochromic (EC) smart window technology.

• United Technologies Corporation (East Hartford, Conn.) will speed up the penetration of commercial heat pump water heaters into the American market.

• Cermet Inc. (Atlanta, Ga.) will explore novel growth techniques using new, state-of-the-art facilities to push the manufacturing envelope of novel, lattice-matched materials that are robust enough to be engineered into finished devices like light emitting diode (LED) devices.

• Cree Lighting Company (Goleta, Calif.) will push the envelope of existing nitride materials up to four-fold while appreciably increasing current densities and reducing life-cycle costs.

• Dust Inc. (Berkeley, Calif.) will demonstrate that wireless control connections can be reliably made between environmental sensors, control switches, and lighting loads or ballasts.

• Georgia Tech Research Corporation (Atlanta, Ga.) will produce new knowledge of the roles various materials have on light-emitting diode (LED) properties and efficiencies and a more detailed understanding of the fundamental chemical process behind light production.

• OSRAM Opto Semiconductors Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) will demonstrate the potential of white Organic Light Emitting Diodes (OLEDs) for use in general lighting applications.

For more information, visit www.energy.gov.

California Self-Generation Incentive Program Extension Signed by Governor

On October 12, outgoing California Governor Gray Davis signed Assembly Bill 1685, which extends the California Public Utilities Commission's Self-Generation Incentive Program until January 1, 2008. The new legislation also sets emissions standards and requires a minimum conversion efficiency of 60 percent for any fossil-fueled distributed generation that seeks to qualify for the incentive payment. Combined heat and power projects can earn credits against the emission standards. For information, visit www.leginfo.ca.gov.

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