Category: Energy Management

How Fans can Increase Energy Savings

If you want to decrease your energy use and trim the fat from your electricity bill, ceiling fans might be able to help. With these power saving tips, you’ll learn how to make the most of your ceiling fans while reducing HVAC costs.

Ceiling Fans

If you’re looking to maximize your savings and lower your energy consumption effectively, a ceiling fan is your best bet. Ceiling fans circulate air in a room without using too much electricity. If you use an air conditioning system, a ceiling fan will allow you to use it less while maintaining the temperature you want.

Unfortunately, ceiling fans are appropriate only in rooms with ceilings at least 8 ft. high. Ceiling fans must be installed so their blades are no closer than 8 inches from the ceiling.

Generally speaking, more expensive ceiling fans operate more quietly often last longer than cheaper versions.

ENERGY STAR

To maximize your energy savings, look for ceiling fans that have the ENERGY STAR label. Fans with this label are guaranteed to move air 20% more efficiently than standard—and more expensive, over time—models.

Though ceiling fans deliver better circulation of cool air, they can still waste your money and energy if no one is in the room to enjoy their effects. Here are a few tips to avoid this:

  • Don’t install fans in rooms that aren’t used very often.
  • Turn fans off as you leave a room.
  • Keep the fan turned off, and the light on as a default. Only use the fan feature when you need it, and turn it off when you don’t.

If you’d like to know more about fans and energy savings, contact MaintenX today!

How Smart Utility Meters Can Save You Money

What is a “Smart” Utility Meter?

Smart electric utility meters are electronic devices that track and record electricity usage in customers’ homes, businesses, or facilities. These smart meters automatically record energy data and then send it back to your power company.

Smart utility meters can provide fast, precise measurements of electricity use while removing the need for an estimated monthly bill or human meter readers.

While there are many benefits to smart utility meters, there have also been concerns raised by the public that smart utility meters are collecting customers’ private information. Critics of smart utility meters argue that this collection of data is a violation of customers’ privacy.

Benefits

Some of the benefits of smart utility meters include:

  • Faster power-restoration times: some smart utility meters can notify the power company if a power outage occurs, allowing them to more efficiently map and address service problems, and restore your power faster than with a traditional meter.
  • A greener option: advocates for smart utility meters argue that the automation of meter-reading could take thousands of service vehicles off the road, reducing power companies’ carbon footprints.
  • The ability to check your energy consumption in real time gives you a better and more accurate understanding of your energy habits.

If you are considering a smart utility meter for your home or business, contact your power company and ask about your options.

If you’d like to know more about smart utility meter technology, contact MaintenX.

Smart Thermostat Benefits

What is a Smart Thermostat, Anyway?

Regular thermostats let you adjust the temperature in your home, functioning as simple control panels for your HVAC system. What makes smart thermostats “smart” is that they learn from your behavior, allow you to control temperatures remotely via smartphones and computers, display your energy consumption, and can regulate themselves when you’re away. Here are just a few of the benefits of smart thermostats.

Cost Savings

Heating and cooling account for nearly half of your home’s energy costs! A smart thermostat offers greater control over your home’s temperature and climate, and smart automation that could save you a bundle on your energy bill.

Keep an Eye on the House while you’re Away

A smart thermostat can also be a way to monitor things in your home when you’re not home. Most smart thermostats come with a companion app for your smartphone, so you can track conditions in real time. You can also change settings or turn the system off remotely with the touch of a button. This means that with the right system, you can make your home life more convenient and affordable.

Set It and Forget It!

Most smart thermostats are very simple to set up and program, owing to their simple-to-understand user interfaces and seamlessly designed companion apps.

For these reasons and more, it’s worth considering a smart thermostat for your home or business.

If you’d like to know more about the benefits of smart thermostats, call MaintenX!

Types of Building Sensors that can Improve Your Facilities

It’s an exciting, innovative time in the world of smart technology and the Internet of Things. Commercial buildings and homes alike are experiencing a technological revolution in how they operate and are becoming smarter and smarter by the minute.

But what makes a building “smart”? Put simply, automated systems in homes and companies:

  • reduce operational expenses
  • save energy
  • enhance space allocation
  • increase safety and security
  • improve comfort

You can think of sensors as the ‘sense organs’ of the building which allow it to take in information about the things happening within and outside it. Just like a living thing, a  building’s sensors give it the data it needs to react appropriately.

Here are some examples of the sensors now available:

  • Accelerometers
  • Air Quality
  • Atmospheric Pressure
  • Biometric
  • Electrical
  • Fluid Flow
  • Humidity
  • Imaging
  • Light
  • Magnetometers
  • Motion Detectors
  • Occupancy Detection
  • Air Pressure
  • Radiation
  • Sound
  • Temperature
  • Vibration

Energy Efficiency

By counting the number of occupants in a given space, HVAC systems can be optimized to save energy and money. Integrating sensors into lighting fixtures allows property managers a new understanding of energy management by allowing them to track lighting usage and observe trends and problem areas in energy consumption.

A smart, well-connected sensor array can automatically monitor any conditions you require and substantially boost performance in the residential, public or commercial facilities, including:

  • Hotels
  • Office buildings
  • Airports
  • Train stations
  • Libraries
  • Sport stadiums
  • Schools
  • Government buildings

Sensor-based smart facilities make life easier for facility managers while helping a business’s bottom line.

Want to know more about smart buildings? Call MaintenX today!

Benefits of Smart Facilities

Smart facilities work by integrating the Internet of Things into the workplace to address questions of inefficiency. Inside a smart facility, all the internal systems are interconnected and respond to one another. Everything from the HVAC system to the security system to the lighting is tracked by a central hub. That information is shared among systems and made available to property managers in real time.

What are the Benefits of a Smart Facility?

By using an array of sensors (tracking things like temperature, electricity use, motion sensing and tracking, heat sources, security breaches, and electrical malfunctions), data is gathered on how the building is used over time, and adjustments are made accordingly. This allows a smart facility to perform better, more efficiently, more cheaply.

Better Efficiency

One of the most important benefits of smart facilities is its ability to optimize energy usage. For most businesses and homes, energy use is the single largest facilities expense. To increase the energy efficiency of your facility, you must monitor use, access its systems, and control its parameters. To continue to be energy efficient, a smart facility must constantly monitor its energy usage. This ensures that use is optimized to the schedules and habits of the people and operations that inhabit it. A smart facility is engineered to boost energy efficiency, irrespective of external or internal factors. This is a powerful and cost-saving approach to automating and streamlining your building’s functions.

Want to learn more about how a smart facility can increase your business’s efficiency while lowering costs? Contact MaintenX today!

What is Energy Infrastructure Resilience?

New physical and financial threats are posing ever-growing problems to the energy sector – and negatively affecting the world economy in the process.

Reliable infrastructure is the foundation of a thriving economy, allowing for timely and safe production and delivery of vital goods and services to all sectors. When infrastructure fails, the entire system is disrupted, but the consequences of energy infrastructure failure can be especially devastating.

All over the world, climate change represents the greatest threat to communities and the energy and economic infrastructure they rely on. Some examples of these threats include:

  • extreme heat
  • stronger storms
  • more intense and longer-lasting droughts
  • more frequent wildfires
  • sea level rise and attendant flooding

Extreme weather conditions affect all parts of the United States, from hurricanes in Puerto Rico to tornadoes in Oklahoma, exacting terrible humanitarian and monetary costs.

What is Energy Infrastructure Resilience?

 Energy infrastructure resilience’s goal is to mitigate the risks posed by climate change and ensure the stability of energy infrastructure in the face of these growing threats.

Some of these methods include:

Energy Storage

 This increasingly important technology seeks to store more power in smaller vessels. This can help communities whose generation capacity is disrupted, and save lives in hospitals, nursing homes, and more.

Home Green Power Generation

If you have solar panels or a wind turbine on your roof, you have less to fear from your power lines going down.

Undergrounding of Power Transmission

While electrical poles can be blown down, and debris can fall on lines, underground wires are much less vulnerable to most natural disasters.

The best way to prepare for the increased risk of natural disaster is for countries to develop thorough emergency preparedness plans and implement them quickly when needed. Planning ahead will give us the best chance of retaining our energy infrastructure in the face of a world with increasingly hot and extreme weather.

LA Lakers Taking Steps to Go Solar

After signing one of the biggest stars in the basketball, LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers have decided to up their facility game.
The LA Lakers, LG Electronics USA, and Vaha Energy have joined forces to build a new state-of- the-art headquarters powered by green energy from LG solar panels.
The 120,000-square-foot LEED Platinum-certified building will act as the LA Lakers’ training facility and the home of the Lakers’ G-League affiliate, the South Bay Lakers. It will feature two basketball courts and cutting-edge equipment designed to improve training, conditioning, player nutrition, and injury prevention. All in all, the project promises to set a new standard for professional athletics facilities.

How will LG’s solar panels work?

The roughly 500 solar panels will produce a combined 245,000 kWh yearly, roughly 16% of the facility’s energy requirements (or enough to power 35 average American homes for a year). The group predicts this will save the facility around $40,000 per year. The new building will feature LG’s new 375-watt NeON 2 solar panels, which are more efficient and can absorb light at a higher rate than competing panels. The solar panel array is anticipated to pay for itself in as little as 4 years.

LG also plans to expand its partnerships and is increasing production of solar panels. In service of that, they will construct a multi-million-dollar solar panel manufacturing plant at their corporate headquarters in Huntsville, Alabama. The new plant promises to create at least 160 new jobs.

Why LED Conversion Matters (Not Just to Save Energy)

LEDs have long been replacing conventional lighting for many reasons: longer lifespans, reduced energy consumption, and fewer maintenance requirements are just a few. As the cost of LEDs continues to plummet, more homeowners and facility managers are replacing their existing lighting systems with LEDs. Below are some things to consider before you take the LED plunge.

Heat Reduction

Simply put, LEDs are cool lights. They don’t produce infrared radiation, virtually eliminating any heat from the bulb. If you’ve ever burned your hand changing an incandescent bulb, you can see the benefit of this. This also allows LED fixtures to be placed in places where heat could create a problem, and saves power that would otherwise be spent on cooling.

On/Off

LED lights turn on immediately, which makes it a perfect choice for public infrastructure uses like traffic lights.

LEDS: A Greener Option

LEDs come without the environmental problems posed by traditional light sources like fluorescent or mercury lights. Both of these light sources have mercury inside the bulb, meaning they need special handling at the end of their lifespans. LEDs contain no toxic chemicals, last much longer, and can be disposed of in a safer manner.

Want to know more about LED light solutions? Contact MaintenX!

USF St. Petersburg earns LEED Platinum Certification

The University of South Florida St. Petersburg’s Warehouse Laboratory has received LEED Platinum certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Platinum is the highest and most difficult to attain certification from the most important green building rating system in the world.

Few buildings reach this level—about 10 to 15 percent of LEED-rated buildings in the world meet these specifications.

What is LEED?

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) is the most widely used green building rating system in the world. LEED provides a framework to create healthy, efficient and green buildings. LEED certification is globally recognized.

LEED has become the international standard for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance structures. In addition, LEED creates a more streamlined user experience and more goal-oriented credits.

USF wins Platinum for Green Building

The Warehouse Laboratory isn’t the first building at USF St. Petersburg to earn LEED certification; in fact, it’s the fourth. The Science and Technology building, the University Student Center, and Lynn Pippenger Hall have been awarded LEED Gold Certification over recent years.

The University acquired the property, a large building which was a Greyhound bus station in its previous life, in 2014 and started the work of remodeling the building by installing a new roof, an efficient HVAC system, and adding insulation and an external facade to aid energy conservation.

The 10,500 sq. ft. building now boasts a fully-equipped chemistry lab, two biology labs and convertible biology/physics lab.

What Services are offered at MaintenX?

Facility Maintenance

MaintenX is a full-service Facility Maintenance company serving 14 states across America, including major restaurants and Fortune 500 companies.

With just a call or click, we can take on a project, schedule preventative maintenance, or jump into action on an emergency service call in many locations in the U.S.

We offer 24/7 professional Facility Maintenance service and repair, including:

– Air conditioning

– Refrigeration

– Plumbing

– Electrical Work

– Roofing Repair

– Backflow Programs

– General Contractor Needs

– Rapid Disaster Response

– Preventative Maintenance

– Floor Maintenance

– Snow Removal

– Landscaping

– Dark Closed Stores

– Property Management and Maintenance

– Extensive Self-Performing Facility Maintenance & Repair

MaintenX is one of the largest Facility Maintenance service companies in the U.S. We are always expanding our service area.

Our extensive system of more than forty-five thousand contractors lets us to provide quality Facility Maintenance work throughout the United States. To maintain the standards for our self-performing technicians, contractor selection is not based simply on price, but also quality, experience, consistency, dependability, and service history, coupled with proper preparation and certification.

Green Power Incentives

The Energy Policy Act of 2005 and other federal laws have provided tax incentives for certain energy management projects that exceed the minimum energy consumption benchmarks. Certain utilities companies and state energy offices also have demand-side management rebates and low interest loans to help foster sustainability and energy conservation projects. At MaintenX, we encourage you to look into these Green incentives, as they could be used towards your next project.