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Month: March 2017

Blog

The deal with LED lighting

March 31, 2017

So what’s so awesome about LEDs?

Well they’re much more affordable now, and they last a long time. With average usage, 1 LED light bulb can last upwards of 40 years, saving you about 25 replacements of your standard incandescent bulb (that’s that same technology we’ve been using for the last…hundred years).

Also they’re way more efficient. Incandescent bulbs on average release 90% of their energy as heat. LED efficiency is constantly improving, but right now, on average, they use about 75% less energy than your average incandescent bulb.

So widespread use of LEDs has a huge potential impact on our energy savings here in the U.S. The D.O.E. estimates that potential electricity savings equal to the output of 44 large power plants. That’s about 30 billion dollars worth of energy in today’s prices.

Sources:

  1. “LED Lighting”, U.S. Department of Energy, Energy.gov
  2. “How Energy-Efficient Light Bulbs Compare with Traditional Incandescents”, U.S. Department of Energy, Energy.gov
  3. “Lighting Basics”, Bulbs.com
Blog

Solar industry growth

March 15, 2017

Today we’re going over some exciting numbers from the solar industry. How fast exactly is the industry growing?

Well this is the fourth consecutive year that solar industry jobs grew by 20% or more. In comparison, last year, jobs in the U.S. economy grew by only 1.5%. So the U.S. solar industry is booming and it now employs more workers than natural gas and more than double the number of workers in the coal industry.

These are domestic jobs creating domestic energy and there’s plenty more growth to come.