Thursday, July 31, 2014

Why is my laptop power supply sparking?

Q. I am getting “sparks” when I plug my laptop, not only in the old wiring receptacles in the living room but also with the […]

Licensed Electrician Robert Monk
Why is my laptop power supply sparking?
Copyright Robert Monk, 2012

Source: http://www.phillylicensedelectrician.com/laptop-power-supply-sparking/

electricians general contractor electrical supply

DIY: Doing electrical work on your own?

“That looks easy to fix,”  you might say, when you see a problem with your electrical wiring.  Many people enjoy doing their own work on their homes.  If they have the skills and tools, the DIY project can be very rewarding.  It’s a great way to save money and feels good to have done it […]

Source: http://www.blueskyelectric.net/blog/dyi-doing-electrical-work-on-your-own/

electrician jobs electrical installation contractors electric electric contractors electrical repair

Pretty Graphic on Commodities, 2005 to 2014 (first half)

Found in a lengthy “2014 Commodities Halftime Report” (by U.S. Global Investors), the chart below is not only pretty, but it has tons of information — including the relative-to-other-commodities performance of COPPER (it’s the color you’d think it would be — 3rd from the top in the Legend at the far right).

Screen Shot 2014-07-31 at 3.34.28 PM

Click here to go to a much larger size.

Source: http://electricalcontractor.com/?p=15203

a electrical contractors contractors electrical electrical contractors in

Electrician Royal Palm Beach

Electrician Royal Palm Beach

(561) 366-2415

 

We certainly have been in essence the exceptionally marvelous electricians you need to have for your own home or your residence in Royal Palm Beach, Florida. Primarily we have electricians with more than 4 decades of experience. Choose us at this time as your very own strongly respected electrician. Southern Coast Electrical integrates a whole slew of electric replacement solutions for dwellings including companies throughout the Royal Palm Beach area. For the past eleven years we unquestionably have presented unmatched solutions as well as applied a deal of unparalleled expertise. Are solutions are extraordinary by any other service provider in Royal Palm Beach.

Electrician Royal Palm Beach

Electrician Royal Palm Beach

As a Electrician Royal Palm Beach we offer residential, commercial and business enterprise driven services. For anyone who is configuring the house where you are situated, or perhaps making it safer or you simply need some troubleshooting and/or repair work completed, Southern Coast can easily supply the electrical upgrade solutions you need. Our professional technicians are experts in the electrical trade, and we are able to in a flash get you rolling. Every bit of our standards for a Electrician Royal Palm Beach are of the highest quality you can expect.

Call us today for a Electrician Royal Palm Beach, hometown men and women receive the best quotes! Don’t look anymore for a Electrician Royal Palm Beach just get hold of us and we will get out their as soon as today!

Source: http://www.sflaelectrician.com/electrician-royal-palm-beach/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=electrician-royal-palm-beach

electricians general contractor electrical supply electrical engineer electrical wiring

Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...

photo11 225x300 Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning... A large horse power Motor failed in the facility and the facility replaced the motor and the wiring between the motor and the starter. However, during Cooper Electric's Annual Gear Maintenance and Cleaning we found that the actual source of the problem was a bad electrical termination on the C phas, inside of the distribution gear, which was actually the cause of the large horse power motor failure. Had we not found this and they started up the new motor, in all likelihood they would have destroyed yet another new motor.

ico tag Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning... Tags:  

Del.icio.us
delicious Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...
Facebook
facebook icon Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...
TweetThis
tweet Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...
Digg
digg Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...
StumbleUpon
stumble Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...


Copyright © Cooper Electric [Why We Perform Annual Gear Cleaning...], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Source: http://cooper-electric.net/why-we-perform-annual-gear-cleaning/

contracting electrical emergency electrician licensed electrician

Here’s The Beef On Those Solar Tariffs Imposed on the Chinese

From the 7/25 NY Times – bolding by EleBlog:

Even as regulators continue to wrestle with the protracted trade conflict with China over solar panels, the case has already started to reshape the industry, lifting manufacturers based outside China while also raising prices of panels for developers.

On Friday, the United States Commerce Department took another step in that direction, finding that Chinese solar companies had dumped their products on the American market at below cost, and imposing duties of 10.74 percent to 55.49 percent.

The ruling follows a separate decision in June that ruled that Chinese solar panel manufacturers had benefited from unfair government subsidies and that imposed steep duties of about 19 percent to 35 percent.

Even though Friday’s ruling, like the one in June, is preliminary and could change — final rulings are expected this year — the effect of the higher tariffs imposed in June has been evident in the market. Panel prices have increased by about 10 percent since then, developers and analysts say, resulting in decreased demand for some of the large, low-cost manufacturers that have dominated the market, like Yingli and Suntech.

Source: http://electricalcontractor.com/?p=15198

electrical works electrical repairs electrical installations electrical certification electrical inspection

Is Electricity Dangerous?

Picture 99 Is Electricity Dangerous?

Is Electricity Dangerous?...Call an Electrician!!

 

Hi and Lois comic strip brings us a great image of a son, asking his father if electricity is dangerous!.... Father replies, "not if you know what you are doing"... ZAP!!!...  And then son inquires "should I ask mom to call someone who knows what he's doing?"...  HA-HA

If you have not checked out Hi & Lois comic, it is a fun take on the life of a suburban family. Scenarios like the Flagstons family are into here with modifying the electrical system in the home, is something that comes up from time to time in houses all around the U.S.

For the professional electricians working on electrical inside your home, keep in mind that our electricians do this every single day of the week. There is time based training, years of education in understanding and knowing how to wire circuits, as well as maintaining the knowledge of the National Electrical Code through continuing education classes. The NEC code book is part of the National Fire Protection Associations efforts to prevent fire, and knowing the proper way to do things takes years of experience.

The Right Tools and Meters

We also have the right tools , meters and testing instruments to do the job properly the first time, and most important SAFELY!

   

ico tag Is Electricity Dangerous? Tags:  

Del.icio.us
delicious Is Electricity Dangerous?
Facebook
facebook icon Is Electricity Dangerous?
TweetThis
tweet Is Electricity Dangerous?
Digg
digg Is Electricity Dangerous?
StumbleUpon
stumble Is Electricity Dangerous?


Copyright © Cooper Electric [Is Electricity Dangerous?], All Right Reserved. 2014.

Source: http://cooper-electric.net/is-electricity-dangerous/

electricians general contractor electrical supply

Energy Eye™ HVAC Energy Management System

We are Kauai’s only: Factory Certified Installer Certified Technical Service Provider Distributor Energy Eye™ is helping hotels save from 15% to 35% on their guest room air conditioning expenses – GUARANTEED!   What is Energy Eye? It is an energy management system designed for hotel/resort rooms, offices, and condominiums to control your AC cooling based on room occupancy. […]

Source: http://www.blueskyelectric.net/blog/energy-eye-hvac-energy-management-system/

electrician electricians general contractor electrical supply electrical engineer

Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Are You Power Independent?

OK, be honest. How freaked out are you when the power goes out, even for a minute? It can be a trying time, but let it linger on for hours and tempers usually flare. We are a society of power consuming people that think there is no end to our power supply. Just plug it in and it will always be there attitudes might just catch us off guard one day, and it is coming before you think.

...

Read Full Post

Source: http://electrical.about.com/b/2014/05/19/are-you-power-independent.htm

licensed electricians residential electrician electrician company

Exit Signs

What is an essential fixture in your business that you never really notice until you need it? Exit signs! These signs are always on and if you still have old incandescent exit signs, they are burning up a lot of energy. Why not consider replacing them with 3 Watt LED exit signs? Not only will […]

Source: http://blog.atselectricinc.com/2014/05/exit-signs/

electrician jobs electrical installation contractors electric electric contractors electrical repair

More Kidney Stones In Our Future?

That’s a hidden downside of climate change, according to Grist.org:

New research from the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia suggests that even slight warming causes a marked increase in kidney stones. The study focused on 60,000 patients in five U.S. cities, analyzing the frequency of patients seeking treatment for kidney stones within 20 days of temperatures rising above a pretty mild 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Philadelphia, when average temperatures rose to 86 degrees, kidney stone cases went up a startling 47 percent.

While excessive heat was a big factor, rapid changes in temperature were also a big predictor. Atlanta and Los Angeles, for instance, have the same average temperature of 63 degrees, but Atlanta, which is far more prone to temperature extremes than seemingly climate controlled Los Angeles, had twice the reported rate of kidney stones.

Source: http://electricalcontractor.com/?p=15189

home contractors electrician jobs electrical installation

LED Light Strips Transform Your Home by Electrician in Santa Monica

As you explore different lighting options for your kitchen, you may want to check out LED light strips. You can have the strips installed virtually anywhere. If you have ever seen LED lighting, you know it is very bright. Amazingly, the bulbs are super small and extremely energy efficient. If you are looking for a […]

The post LED Light Strips Transform Your Home by Electrician in Santa Monica appeared first on The Electric Connection.

Source: http://www.theelectricconnection.com/led-light-strips-transform-home-electrician-santa-monica/

auto electrical repair construction electrical contractor contractors

“More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment” (Part I: 1994 Julian Simon essay reprinted)

“Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brakes are a) our lack of imagination, and b) unsound social regulations of these activities.

The ultimate resource is people – especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty – who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and so inevitably they will benefit not only themselves but the rest of us as well.”

- Julian L. Simon, essay of February 28, 1994 (below).

This is the economic history of humanity in a nutshell: From 2 million or 200,000 or 20,000 or 2,000 years ago until the 18th Century, there was slow growth in population, almost no increase in health or decrease in mortality, slow growth in the availability of natural resources (but not increased scarcity), increase in wealth for a few, and mixed effects on the environment.

Since then there has been rapid growth in population due to spectacular decreases in the death rate, rapid growth in resources, widespread increases in wealth, and an unprecedented clean and beautiful living environment in many parts of the world along with a degraded environment in the poor and socialist parts of the world.

That is, more people and more wealth has correlated with more (rather than less) resources and a cleaner environment – just the opposite of what Malthusian theory leads one to believe.

The task before us is to make sense of these mind-boggling happy trends.

The current gloom-and-doom about a “crisis” of our environment is all wrong on the scientific facts. Even the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that U.S. air and our water have been getting cleaner rather than dirtier in the past few decades. Every agricultural economist knows that the world’s population has been eating ever-better since World War II. Every resource economist knows that all natural resources have been getting more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the decades and centuries.

And every demographer knows that the death rate has been falling all over the world – life expectancy almost tripling in the rich countries in the past two centuries, and almost doubling in the poor countries in just the past four decades.

The picture also is now clear that population growth does not hinder economic development. In the 1980s there was a complete reversal in the consensus of thinking of population economists about the effects of more people. In 1986, the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences completely overturned its “official” view away from the earlier worried view expressed in 1971. It noted the absence of any statistical evidence of a negative connection between population increase and economic growth. And it said that “The scarcity of exhaustible resources is at most a minor restraint on economic growth”.

This U-turn by the scientific consensus of experts on the subject has gone unacknowledged by the press, the antinatalist environmental organizations, and the agencies that foster population control abroad.

Here is my central assertion: Almost every economic and social change or trend points in a positive direction, as long as we view the matter over a reasonably long period of time.

For proper understanding of the important aspects of an economy we should look at the long-run trends. But the short-run comparisons – between the sexes, age groups, races, political groups, which are usually purely relative – make more news. To repeat, just about every important long-run measure of human welfare shows improvement over the decades and centuries, in the United States as well as in the rest of the world. And there is no persuasive reason to believe that these trends will not continue indefinitely.

Would I bet on it? For sure. I’ll bet a week’s or month’s pay – anything I win goes to pay for more research – that just about any trend pertaining to material human welfare will improve rather than get worse. You pick the comparison and the year.

Let’s quickly review a few data on how human life has been doing, beginning with the all-important issue, life itself.

The Conquest of Premature Death

The most important and amazing demographic fact – the greatest human achievement in history, in my view – - is the decrease in the world’s death rate. Figure 1 portrays the history human life expectancy at birth. It took thousands of years to increase life expectancy at birth from just over 20 years to the high ’20′s about 1750.

Then about 1750 life expectancy in the richest countries suddenly took off and tripled in about two centuries. In just the past two centuries, the length of life you could expect for your baby or yourself in the advanced countries jumped from less than 30 years to perhaps 75 years. What greater event has humanity witnessed than this conquest of premature death in the rich countries? It is this decrease in the death rate that is the cause of there being a larger world population nowadays than in former times.

Then starting well after World War II, the length of life you could expect in the poor countries has leaped upwards by perhaps fifteen or even twenty years since the l950s, caused by advances in agriculture, sanitation, and medicine. (See Figure 2)

Let’s put it differently. In the 19th century the planet Earth could sustain only one billion people. Ten thousand years ago, only 4 million could keep themselves alive. Now, 5 billion people are living longer and more healthily than ever before, on average. The increase in the world’s population represents our victory over death.

Here arises a crucial issue of interpretation: One would expect lovers of humanity to jump with joy at this triumph of human mind and organization over the raw killing forces of nature. Instead, many lament that there are so many people alive to enjoy the gift of life. Even regret death rate. And it is this worry that leads them to approve the Indonesian, Chinese and other inhumane programs of coercion and denial of personal liberty in one of the most precious choices a family can make — the number of children that it wishes to bear and raise.

Decreasing Scarcity of Natural Resources

Throughout history, the supply of natural resources always has worried people. Yet the data clearly show that natural resource scarcity — as measured by the economically-meaningful indicator of cost or price — has been decreasing rather than increasing in the long run for all raw materials, with only temporary exceptions from time to time. That is, availability has been increasing. Consider copper, which is representative of all the metals. In Figure 3 we see the price relative to wages since 1801. The cost of a ton is only about a tenth now of what it was two hundred years ago.

This trend of falling prices of copper has been going on for a very long time. In the l8th century B.C.E. in Babylonia under Hammurabi — almost 4000 years ago — the price of copper was about a thousand times its price in the U.S. now relative to wages. At the time of the Roman Empire the price was about a hundred times the present price….

So by any measure, natural resources have getting more available rather than more scarce. Regarding oil, the shocking price rises during the 1970s and 1980s were not caused by growing scarcity in the world supply. And indeed, the price of petroleum in inflation-adjusted dollars has returned to levels about where they were before the politically-induced increases, and the price of of gasoline is about at the historic low and still falling.

Concerning energy in general, there is no reason to believe that the supply of energy is finite, or that the price of energy will not continue its long-run decrease forever. I realize that it sounds weird to say that the supply of energy is not finite or limited; for the full argument, please see my 1981 book (revised edition forthcoming) (Science is only valuable when it arrives at knowledge different than common sense.)

Food is an especially important resource. The evidence is particularly strong for food that we are on a benign trend despite rising population. The long-run price of food relative to wages is now only perhaps a tenth as much as it was in 1800 in the U. S. Even relative to consumer products the price of grain is down, due to increased productivity, just as with all other primary products.

Famine deaths due to insufficient food supply have decreased even in absolute terms, let alone relative to population, in the past century, a matter which pertains particularly to the poor countries. Per-person food consumption is up over the last 30 years. And there are no data showing that the bottom of the income scale is faring worse, or even has failed to share in the general improvement, as the average has improved.

Africa’s food production per person is down, but by 1994 almost no one any longer claims that Africa’s suffering results from a shortage of land or water or sun. The cause of hunger in Africa is a combination of civil wars and collectivization of agriculture, which periodic droughts have made more murderous.

Consider agricultural land as an example of all natural resources. Though many people consider land to be a special kind of resource, it is subject to the same processes of human creation as other natural resources. The most important fact about agricultural land is that less and less of it is needed as the decades pass.

This idea is utterly counter-intuitive. It seems entirely obvious that a growing world population would need larger amounts of farmland. But the title of a remarkable prescient article in 1951 by Theodore Schultz tells the story: “The Declining Economic Importance of Land.” The increase in actual and potential productivity per unit of land have grown much faster than population, and there is sound reason to expect this trend to continue. Therefore, there is less and less reason to worry about the supply of land.

Though the stock of usable land seems fixed at any moment, it is constantly being increased – at a rapid rate in many cases – by the clearing of new land or reclamation of wasteland. Land also is constantly being enhanced by increasing the number of crops grown per year on each unit of land and by increasing the yield per crop with better farming methods and with chemical fertilizer. Last but not least, land is created anew where there was no land.

Increasing Scarcity: Human Time

There is only one important resource which has shown a trend of increasing scarcity rather than increasing abundance. That resource is the most important of all — human beings. Yes, there are more people on earth now than ever before. But if we measure the scarcity of people the same way that we measure the scarcity of other economic goods — by how much we must pay to obtain their services — we see that wages and salaries have been going up all over the world, in poor countries as well as in rich countries.

The amount that you must pay to obtain the services of a barber or a cook has risen in India, just as the price of a barber or cook — or economist — has risen in the United States over the decades. This increase in the price of peoples’ services is a clear indication that people are becoming more scarce even though there are more of us.

About pollution now: Surveys show that the public believes that our air and water have been getting more polluted in recent years. The evidence with respect to air indicates that pollutants have been declining, especially the main pollutant, particulates. (See Figure 5). With respect to water, the proportion of monitoring sites in the U.S. with water of good drinkability has increased since the data began in l961.

Every forecast of the doomsayers has turned out flat wrong. Metals, foods, and other natural resources have become more available rather than more scarce throughout the centuries. The famous Famine 1975 forecast by the Paddock brothers — that we would see millions of famine deaths in the U.S. on television in the 1970s — was followed instead by gluts in agricultural markets.

Paul Ehrlich’s primal scream about “What will we do when the [gasoline] pumps run dry?” was followed by gasoline cheaper than since the 1930′s. The Great Lakes are not dead; instead they offer better sport fishing than ever. The main pollutants, especially the particulates which have killed people for years, have lessened in our cities. (Socialist countries are a different and tragic environmental story, however!)….

 

Source: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/07/people-weatlh-resources-environment/

contractor electric electrician job electricians jobs

The Struggle to Mainstream Electric Vehicles

“Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne told the Brookings Institution audience in Washington, DC regarding his company’s 500e EV: ‘I hope you don’t buy it, because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000.’ The reason the 500e exists is to meet zero-emission rules in California and elsewhere that might impose similar mandates. The company’s plan is to sell the minimum number of EVs it is required by law to sell, at whatever financial loss the company must bear, and then not to sell one more. Marchionne also said that if automakers are forced to suffer losses on EVs in order to satisfy political policies, then the companies will be back in Washington asking for new bailouts.”

Nissan (NSANY-OTC), the manufacturer of the LEAF electric vehicle (EV) has been the number one seller in the U.S. The June auto sales figures showed that Nissan sold 2,347 LEAF vehicles, up 5.5% over the sales for June last year, although they were down 770 units from May’s sales results, which was the record month for sales.  June marked the 16th straight month of record sales compared to the prior year month.

Year-to-date, LEAF sales are up almost 30% from the same period for last year.  So far in 2014, Nissan has sold 12,736 LEAFs versus 9,839 sold last year. Given its strong sales performance, one has to wonder about the latest announcement of the replacement battery pack pricing for the LEAF. 

The company announced that the replacement lithium-ion battery pack for the LEAF will sell for $5,499, after credit of $1,000 for the old pack that must be traded in, plus installation fees and taxes. Nissan estimates installation will require roughly three hours of labor that based on labor rates of $90 to $120 per hour, adds another $300 to the cost.  Nissan also introduced a special installation kit to make the battery pack “backward compatible” with 2011 and 2012 models. That kit costs $225.

The most interesting development is that the replacement battery pack will use new chemistry to address consumer criticisms of vehicle performance. The 24 kilowatt-hour battery pack will employ new heat-tolerant chemistry cells that reduce the loss of capacity batteries normally experience when operating in very high temperatures. The new battery chemistry cells will be deployed in all future LEAF vehicles starting with the 2015 model, now on sale.

The new battery chemistry cells, however, will not extend the battery’s range or improve its performance. LEAF advocates call the new battery the “lizard battery” because it is more capable of resisting the damage from very high temperatures. Unlike other EVs, the LEAF uses positive cooling for its battery, meaning it sheds heat to the air rather than to either cooled air surrounding the battery pack or liquid coolant circulating through the battery pack itself.

Battery capacity loss in extremely hot regions such as Arizona, Texas and Southern California has been a primary complaint of LEAF owners in those areas.  Nissan anticipates these new battery chemistry cells will overcome consumer criticism and hesitancy for purchasing a LEAF. Auto analysts had been speculating that Nissan might introduce a higher capacity battery, but there was no hint of this in the company’s announcement. Nissan recommends replacing the battery pack when it falls to 70% of its initial capacity. The new sales plan replaces a lease plan Nissan had introduced in June 2013 that drew substantial criticism from vehicle owners.

Nissan is providing a financing plan for replacement battery buyers. They would pay $100 a month for five years and then own the battery pack outright.  The replacement battery pack is warranted for eight years or 100,000 miles against defects from manufacturing. It has a five-year or 60,000 mile warranty against loss of capacity beyond nine out of 12 bars of capacity, or roughly 70% of the original capacity.

Analysts estimate that Nissan is losing money on the replacement battery pack based on the pricing. They assume the company is counting on very low replacement demand initially and that future economies of scale in battery making will improve profitability, especially as EV sales grow. As of the end of June, Nissan has sold 125,000 LEAFs worldwide, with 56,000 in the United States. (We have not been able to find any statistics on how many LEAFs were purchased by government agencies.)

Commentary from Nissan sales executives about their June results referenced the strong sales they experienced in Texas now that the state has introduced a $2,500 tax subsidy for the purchase of EVs, except for the high-priced Tesla (TSLA-Nasdaq) vehicles. According to comments from Toby Perry, Nissan’s director of EV Sales and Marketing, “Since the Texas state incentive went into effect in May; we’ve seen a big jump in LEAF sales in the Austin, Dallas and Houston markets. Our dealers are telling us that they saw more traffic in their stores, and they had their best LEAF sales performance in the last weekend in June.”

As the market leader in plug-in EVs, Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn has been a strong proponent of EVs and has made bold predictions about future growth for this market segment. In 2011, Mr. Ghosn predicted that his combined companies would sell 1.5 million EVs by 2016.  Late last year in an interview with the Financial Times, Mr. Ghosn admitted that his forecast would not be met; not because the vehicle was too expensive, but due to a lack of EV-charging infrastructure.  “I don’t think the main issue today is the cost of the car,” he said. “The main issue is infrastructure. It is normal. I would not buy a gasoline car if there were no gasoline stations.”

With average daily commutes well under 30 miles a day, most EV owners don’t need to charge anywhere during the day, but that doesn’t’ eliminate the ‘range anxiety’ in potential EV buyers. Research by many automakers shows that the installation of public charging infrastructure is as much about providing a perceived solution for range anxiety as it is for providing a place for EV owners to plug in.

The presence of public charging stations is akin to the comfort that comes for owners of typical autos by gasoline stations being nearby.  This auto research suggests that more car buyers would purchase EVs if they knew they could recharge in an emergency away from home. This means that more charging stations are needed along with stations that can quickly charge cars.

Drivers do not want to be held captive for hours to recharge their car when the time to fill-up at a gasoline station is merely minutes.

Exhibit 12.  2013 Fiat 500e Electric Car Source:  autoblog.com

We wonder what market research Fiat Chrysler (FIATY-NYSE) did. Its CEO Sergio Marchionne told the Brookings Institution audience in Washington, DC regarding his company’s 500e EV: “I hope you don’t buy it, because every time I sell one it costs me $14,000.” The reason the 500e exists is to meet zero-emission rules in California and elsewhere that might impose similar mandates. The company’s plan is to sell the minimum number of EVs it is required by law to sell, at whatever financial loss the company must bear, and then not to sell one more. Marchionne also said that if automakers are forced to suffer losses on EVs in order to satisfy political policies, then the companies will be back in Washington asking for new bailouts.

In his Financial Times interview, Ghosn said, “We will not be there (his 1.5 million car sales target for 2016).  “At the speed right now, I’m seeing it more four or five years later.  We have to admit, it is slower than we thought. But it is slower for the reason that we thought infrastructure building would be faster.  It is not.”

After learning about making aggressive forecasts, Ghosn seems to have learned the classic point about forecasting – give a volume but not a date. In speaking during a CNBC interview when opening Nissan’s Smyrna, Tennessee EV plant, he said, “We are now on a trend of 3,000 cars a month in the U.S., which is about 36,000 cars (per year). The next step is moving up to 4,000 a month which is going to be approximately 50,000.” The LEAF has yet to sell 3,000 cars in any month, and still seems to be dependent on tax subsidies, which probably is a reason why it priced its replacement battery pack as cheaply as it did, attempting to dispel EV critics who said replacement battery packs would cost upwards of $10,000.

A writer on the web site Inside EVs speculated that the LEAF’s price needed to be cut from its current $32,000 level to under $25,000 in order to boost sales to the 3,000 cars per month level, or the second generation LEAF needed to be able to comfortably deliver a minimum of 125 miles on a single charge with the vehicle priced at the current level.

Maybe one of the challenges for EVs is that competitive vehicles without range anxiety are making huge mileage improvements. Mercedes-Benz (DDAIF-OTC) recently demonstrated a diesel-hybrid sedan that traveled 1,200 miles on a single tank of fuel, or 60 miles per gallon.

With competition like that, it is reasonable to predict that EVs will remain a niche vehicle market segment and not likely to revolutionize the automobile business. Will that mean automakers will fall short of attaining President Barack Obama’s 54.5 miles per gallon CAFE standard by 2025? Remember, in calculating that standard, EVs are counted twice while hybrids are counted 1.6 times a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle.

Look for more government money to go to charging stations, subsidies for EV purchases, easier access to high occupancy vehicle lanes, and possibly clean vehicle mandates, much like renewable fuel standards.

Maybe Mr. Marchionne will change his mind about selling more 500es.

Source: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/07/struggle-electric-vehicles/

electrical contractor contractors electrician in electrician

For Whom The Bell Tolls...Or Not?

Door bells are a convenient tool for announcing someone as arrived at your door. Depending on the chime, there are often different sounds for different doors to differentiate from one door to the other. When someone gets to your door they either knock or push a button to ring your door bell. When the button is pushed, it completes the door bell circuit and rings the bell. But what if the bell doesn't ring? What could possibly be wrong? Could it be operator error? Well maybe, but I would say it is a problem in the switch, wiring or the door bell itself. To find out for sure, you'll need to perform these door bell troubleshooting tips.

...

Read Full Post

Source: http://electrical.about.com/b/2014/04/14/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-or-not.htm

electrician electricians general contractor

Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Electrical Safety 101

With electricity being an integral part of our everyday lives, sometimes it’s easy to forget how dangerous living and dealing with it can be—especially on a daily basis.

According to the National Safety Council, more than 600 people die of electrical accidents each and every year. In fact, electrocutions rank fourth in causes of industrial fatalities at 9 percent—behind traffic accidents, construction mishaps and violence.

With most of these accidents involving low voltage of 600 volts or less, it’s important to be aware and stay safe.

Keep in mind, some of the most common accidents include:

  • Use of defective & unsafe tools
  • Overloading outlets with too many devices
  • Not making sure the power is off when making repairs
  • Working in elevated positions nearby overhead lines

Be smart! Putting yourself in potentially dangerous situations can cost ultimately you your life.

Even the smallest amount of current can be fatal. For example, a small night light with a 6-watt bulb draws .05 amps of electrical current. This, too, can be potentially hazardous! It’s especially important to keep little fingers away from outlets. Investing in baby proofing supplies, such as outlet covers, can make a big difference.

But, what else can you do to stay safe? It’s easy:

  • Don’t use equipment that has been damaged or improperly modified
  • Cords should be never be used if showing signs of damage or deterioration
  • Use extension cords properly, temporarily & never outlet with too many devices
  • NEVER unplug cords by pulling on a wire—pull at the wall, from the base of the cord
  • Avoid wearing items such as jewelry & watches—these might could come in contact with exposed, energized parts
  • ALWAYS use equipment according to manufacturer’s specifications
  • Keep a minimum clearing distance of 10 feet from overhead power lines
  • Don’t operate electric tools by touching or standing on a wet surface
  • Do your research & be aware—if something feels dangerous, stay away

Always remember, if you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

Source: http://powergenerationinc.com/electrical-safety-101/

electrical contractor contractors

Solar Articles

On this page we will be listing article links and other writings of interest that we feel may help visitors to this blog learn more about renewable energy and sustainability: http://cleantechnica.com/2012/02/08/solar-power-to-pay-nevada-citys-debt-government-costs-for-decades/  Las Vegas Review Journal article on Boulder City, NV and the benefits of a green economy. http://runonsun.com/~runons5/blogs/blog1.php/aN5   This article was written (02/08/12) in remembrance [...]

Source: http://www.enlighten-electric.com/2012/02/solar-articles/

service electrical electrical jobs a electrical contractors contractors electrical electrical contractors in

Energy Audit

This article is an excerpt from an email to an energy audit client that I performed as a courtesy service to help clients become aware of easy ways to save energy at home: It was a pleasure meeting you in person today, thank you for the opportunity to help you lower your energy consumption. Just [...]

Source: http://www.enlighten-electric.com/2012/03/energy-audit/

electrical business electrical technician master electricians

Energy Eye™ HVAC Energy Management System

We are Kauai’s only: Factory Certified Installer Certified Technical Service Provider Distributor Energy Eye™ is helping hotels save from 15% to 35% on their guest room air conditioning expenses – GUARANTEED!   What is Energy Eye? It is an energy management system designed for hotel/resort rooms, offices, and condominiums to control your AC cooling based on room occupancy. […]

Source: http://www.blueskyelectric.net/blog/energy-eye-hvac-energy-management-system/

electrician companies industrial electrician electric contracting electrican electrical contractors company

29-page Report: US Solar Market Trends, 2013

 

Screen Shot 2014-07-29 at 9.08.51 AM

Just out (this write-up is dated a few weeks ago) — and free. Noteworthy trends:

  • California was the most important market in 2013.  Fifty-seven percent of U.S. capacity installed in 2013 occurred in the Golden State, and the capacity installed during 2013 was 161 percent greater than what was installed in 2012.
  • Residential capacity installed in 2013 grew by 68 percent in the U.S., fueled by the increasing use of leases and third-party ownership of these systems. Over 145,000 residential PV systems were installed during the year.
  • Utility sector capacity installed grew by 47 percent.  Ten PV installations, each larger than 100 MWDC, were completed in 2013.
  • Hawaii had the highest per capita installed capacity of PV systems. More than 75 percent of grid-connected PV system capacity installed in 2013 was concentrated in California, Arizona and North Carolina.
  • The most CSP capacity ever installed in the United States in a single year was in 2013. Three new CSP solar plants with a total capacity of 766 MWAC were completed, the first completed in the U.S. since 2010.

Above is from the write-up. To download the thing, click on the link in the final sentence (which takes you to the IREC website).

 

Source: http://electricalcontractor.com/?p=15170

electrical job electrical tools electric work

Electrical Contractor for South Florida – Electrician Fort Lauderdale

With over 35 years of electrical work in South Florida, Perfect Electric and Air raises the bar on what to expect form a electrical contractor company and its services. In this video, Bob Frank, owner of Perfect Electric and Air, explain why Perfect Electric is set a part from the other electrical companies. Holding a [...]

Source: http://www.perfectelectricrepairs.com/2013/electrical-contractor-for-south-florida-electrician-fort-lauderdale.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=electrical-contractor-for-south-florida-electrician-fort-lauderdale

electrical company electrical supplies electric repair contractor electrical electrical contractor in

EV Charging Stations

We believe the future of clean transportation lies with electric vehicles. Here’s an example of a charging station we recently installed.  

Source: http://www.enlighten-electric.com/2012/03/ev-charging-stations/

general contractor electrical supply electrical engineer

Central Air Conditioner DIY

Central air conditioners provide cooling for your whole house. With a centrally located furnace, a condensing coil, and an evaporating coil, your house will be equipped with the a capable cooling unit. Owning a central air condition can prove to challenging at times unless you keep up with the maintenance of the various parts of the unit and know how to keep it running efficiently. Before you install a central air conditioner, you'll need to know what the square footage of the house is. Sizing air conditioners is made easy in the following articles. Your air conditioner is your cooling friend, so take care of your friend and it will take care of you on those oh, too hot days of summer. Let's take a closer look at central air conditioning and how to maintain them properly.

...

Read Full Post

Source: http://electrical.about.com/b/2014/05/09/central-air-conditioner-diy.htm

electrical contractors electric services electrical companies companies electrical electrical work

Monday, July 28, 2014

Editorializing for Wind in Ohio: A Rebuttal

“We as Ohioans and Americans have to be able to see through the scheme, demand proof of net environmental and energy benefits of wind, or force the industry out of the state to save our tax dollars and our electricity-bill dollars the industry has been drunk on since 2008.”

The Lima News may not be a household name, but it is at ground zero in the local and state wind wars. Here in Ohio, Governor Kasich and the Republican-led House and Senate put the clamps on intrusive wind power projects on private land. And the Wind Lobbyists are mad at their rare defeat.

The editorial below (in red), “Politicians Must Revise Wind Rules,” takes issue with that rare victory for taxpayers, ratepayers, and landowners in the Wind Wars. I respond in indented black.

Republican candidates have made a killing on saying they want to remove obstacles for business owners.

“We must remove government interference” must be in the first three pages of the Grand Old Party’s playbook. Unnecessary regulations are often the target. Economic prosperity helps us all, they say.

Perhaps the party of Lincoln should review its playbook when it comes to wind energy projects right here in Northwest Ohio.

The Republican-led House and Senate passed, and Republican Gov. John Kasich signed, measures that changed Ohio from an attractive spot for alternative forms of energy to an unattractive one. And now we’re feeling the fallout.

Who is “we” other than a crony few?

Iberdrola Renewables has put its plans for a wind farm in Van Wert County and another in Putnam County on hold. Everpower doubts it will pursue any growth in Ohio once it’s done building its Scioto Ridge project in Hardin and Logan counties.

It mostly stems back to the sneakiest of political tricks, putting something into an appropriation bill without fully discussing it.

Which is how the PILOT was extended in 2012.

The Ohio House snuck language into the appropriation bill changing the setback rules for wind turbines. These rules are designed to protect neighbors in case the turbine’s base fell over.

The old rules would protect neighbors in case a turbine fell over.  The new rules are for additional protections – and still fall short of what the wind turbine manufacturers recommend for the safety of their own employees. (See document page 3 of 32 or PDF page 8 of 37) The author of the editorial is essentially complaining that wind developers can no longer use nearby properties as part of their safety buffer zone – for free. 

In general, in an area populated with industrial facilities, the machinery of those facilities is usually located inside buildings and commonly at or near ground level. Or if some machinery is outdoors, then it is typically fully enclosed (like a trash compactor, evaporative cooling tower, or air conditioning unit). Outdoor machinery is also typically stationary (like a cell tower, exhaust stack, or intake baffles) without exposed moving parts.  With industrial wind development, however, the machines are not within buildings, are not stationary, and not at or near ground level.  These differences magnify the effects of industrial proximity, while extending the radius of exposure to them. Wind turbine nacelles do have an insulated polymer skin but these are not “buildings”  and do not afford the same sound dampening as a solid building structure. Wind energy machines sit atop 300-foot-tall towers where the earth’s curvature or a row of trees fails in many cases to block it from view—or its sound and vibration from earshot.

Enormous blades are in awkward motion most of the time (as wind currents dictate) and, by necessity, open to the outside air.  Just one of these machines creates a massive industrial presence.  They appear prominently in the sky and in plain view for one to two miles around.  Within 1/2 mile the machines impose a dominating mechanical distraction overhead, which becomes foreboding the closer the approach. Wariness and unease of large things moving from above is buried deep in our psyche—part of our safety and survival instinct. Therefore, conditioning a non-response to such stimuli through years of exposure (the “you’ll get used to it” defense) is often not complete and effective, and this likely varies widely from person to person.

One or two hundred of these machines as a backdrop to a nearby turbine make for an additional cacophony of industrial repetition—each in uncoordinated motion to the others, and all together unmistakably unnatural. These unwieldy machines stand in stark contrast to any aspect of otherwise rural or rural-residential setting.

When a rural-residential property is offered for sale, natural surroundings, open space, and other rural amenities are almost always a primary selling feature and, in fact, normally a prerequisite to the suitability of such residential property to almost all potential buyers.  Put another way, the absence of surrounding buildings, lights, noise, traffic and asphalt is perceived as “respite” by most if not all rural-residential buyers.

If one is not bothered by living amidst a noisy area or an industrial setting, they may as well live within a town where employment, shopping and social opportunities are closer at hand and more affordable and convenient to access.  People who wish to live rurally wish to do so to escape the hustle, bustle and clutter of towns and cities.  They choose to enjoy natural surroundings as part of their home life.  They are willing to exchange some of their free time for added travel time, and to exchange some of their money to pay the added fuel and maintenance expenses.  They are willing because they value the open space and natural setting more than for any other reason.

But because of the height, and because of the enormous exposed moving parts, the mechanical sounds and vibrations and the moving shadows, industrial wind machinery permeates and neutralizes the rural amenity.  Industrial wind turbines should always be constructed in an area zoned for industry – and well away from people’s homes.

The previous rule said you had to have the turbine set back 1,125 feet from the tip of a turbine’s blades to the outer wall of the “nearest, habitable residential structure.” Now the rule says you have to be 1,125 feet from the property line, not just the neighbor’s house.

This is because people wish to maintain a right to safely and peacefully use their entire properties, and to have them conform in character to the prior prevailing zoning designation.  People have a right to not just the safe enjoyment of the inside of their house, but to the safe and peaceful enjoyment of their entire property. 

Instead of complaining about what is clearly a correction in a previously unfair law, wind boosters need to put up or shut up. Calculations suggest that wind developers could well afford whatever price a safety and industrial easement commands from all neighboring properties.  If it cannot, then it should never have pursued development in such a heavily residential area in the first place.   They can complain all they want, but reasonable Americans support personal property rights. The point is moot.

That’s akin to passing a law saying the very top of the tree in your yard can’t be allowed if it got tall enough that it toppled and crossed into your neighbor’s yard.

As explained this has nothing to do with a fall zone.  It has everything to do with machine noise, safety and industrial domination of the sky above nearby residential properties. Here we note the wind industry’s public relations tactic of trying to control (limit) the discussion to terms which cast the technology in an unrealistically benign light.

That vastly changes how many turbines the companies can put up on the land they lease.

Here is yet another myth the industry is drumming into every piece of news they can. This is an effort to pad investors’ wallets while hiding from their audience the fact that their real argument is to maximize developer profit margin—at the expense of the home equity of neighboring property owners.  The new law demands that wind developers are no longer allowed to collect unjust wealth transfers from innocent parties. As they persist to argue against the larger setback requirements enacted in Ohio, the credibility of the wind industry is wearing very thin among voters and elected officials.

For Iberdrola, the Van Wert project would shrink from 50 turbines to seven. For the Putnam County project, it would cut it from 75 turbines to three.

The reductions in turbine numbers exist only when holding the wind industry’s undeserved excessive profit margin constant.  For a price in fair compensation to neighboring property owners, the project could still contain 50 turbines. For example, for the cost of just ONE of the wind turbines (about $4 million), the developer could buy out THIRTY surrounding homes at a PREMIUM.  Thirty homes would allow an average 15  more turbines to be built.   So in other words, for a 6.7% premium on capital cost, the developer could build all the inefficient and intermittent towering wind turbines it wanted to.

The projects just can’t be profitable at that size.

That’s a lie, as debunked above, and the industry knows it.  They are simply trying to preserve their excess profit at the neighboring homeowners’ expense.  They persist and persist, and upon being fingered for lying they persist some more—only now using leaseholders, sympathetic editorial boards,  and over-the-top environmental zealots to carry their message to newspapers. 

We as Ohioans and Americans have to be able to see through the repeated schemes, demand proof of net environmental and energy benefits of wind, or force the industry out of the state to save our tax dollars and our electricity-bill dollars, which the industry has been drunk on since 2008.

Pair that with the two-year freeze on changing Ohio’s energy portfolio to rely more on renewable resources, and wind-energy companies are getting the idea they’re just not welcome in Ohio.

Yet again the wind industry wants to control what people hear at the expense of the truth. The truth is that clean energy sources that can pay their own way are and always have been welcome in Ohio.  Wind isn’t one of them, as their spokespersons clearly show by complaining that they should be allowed to impose their industrial sprawl on whomever they wish—without any compensation whatsoever.

We’re disappointed the legislature felt it necessary to infringe on landowners’ ability to use their property as they see fit.

The pot appears to be calling the kettle black, doesn’t it? In truth, the legislature did exactly the opposite.  They liberated residential landowners ability to use their property as they see fit and pushed back the land use overreach supported by the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation which should be ashamed.

We’re disappointed they replaced a common-sense requirement, like a demand that a falling turbine shouldn’t hit a house where people live, with an arbitrary one, like the falling turbine shouldn’t touch the tippy-corner of the neighbor’s property.

We know wind energy has its opponents locally. They cite a laundry list of concerns, about human and animal health alike. But even they must think this was an underhanded way to drive wind energy out of the state, especially when it came from the party purporting to reduce government interference in people’s ability to make a buck.

Nobody drove wind out of the state. Health concerns were never stated by the legislature or governor as justifications for SB 310 or HB 483. The industry is grasping at straws. 

A cynic might question why a political party would only want to help certain people be successful.

We couldn’t have said it better! The parties that were being ” helped” while hurting other parties were farmers and foreign already-wealthy investors.  Most rural homeowners rely on their homestead value for retirement and end-of-life income. They have been hurt in shadows of the two northeast Ohio wind energy complexes. The state wants to ensure such harms do not continue—not by “effectively banning” wind development, but by banning the industry’s practice of neighboring property value theft.

It is tragic that the rich and powerful have to be so greedy as to try to claim that they are being “made unsuccessful” at the expense of rural homeowners.  Frankly, it’s morally and politically repugnant.

We’ll be optimistic instead that it was a minor oversight from a hastily moved item, and these same Republicans will take the necessary steps to fix their mistake.

I think the proper response to the author of that sentence is, “Dream on.” The big questions here are who wrote this one-sided, shallow brief—and at whose bidding?

Source: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/07/editorializing-for-wind-ohio-rebuttal/

electric work electrical services electrical parts

The Danger of Aluminum Wire and FPE Electrical Panel – Electrical Contractor Broward

 Bob Frank, owner of Perfect Electric and Air, talks about the danger of having aluminum wire in your house and the need to perform a electrical service change. Also, Bob discusses the hazard in the FPE and Zinsko electrical panels and why the homeowner should consider the change. For more information clcik on Electrical Contractor [...]

Source: http://www.perfectelectricrepairs.com/2013/the-danger-of-aluminum-wire-and-fpe-electrical-panel-electrical-contractor-broward.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-danger-of-aluminum-wire-and-fpe-electrical-panel-electrical-contractor-broward

electrical business electrical technician master electricians electrical construction electrical works

GFCI Outlets–Why You Need Them Explains Electrician in Glendale

If you have never heard of or seen the outlets that are in new homes or office buildings, you are missing out on something that could potentially save you or a family member’s life. A GFCI outlet is an added layer of safety when it comes to dealing with two things that never mix well—water […]

The post GFCI Outlets–Why You Need Them Explains Electrician in Glendale appeared first on The Electric Connection.

Source: http://www.theelectricconnection.com/gfci-outlets-need-explains-electrician-glendale/

electrican electrical contractors company certified electrician

“More People, Greater Wealth, More Resources, Healthier Environment” (Part I: 1994 Julian Simon essay reprinted)

“Adding more people causes problems, but people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge, and the brakes are a) our lack of imagination, and b) unsound social regulations of these activities.

The ultimate resource is people – especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty – who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefit, and so inevitably they will benefit not only themselves but the rest of us as well.”

- Julian L. Simon, essay of February 28, 1994 (below).

This is the economic history of humanity in a nutshell: From 2 million or 200,000 or 20,000 or 2,000 years ago until the 18th Century, there was slow growth in population, almost no increase in health or decrease in mortality, slow growth in the availability of natural resources (but not increased scarcity), increase in wealth for a few, and mixed effects on the environment.

Since then there has been rapid growth in population due to spectacular decreases in the death rate, rapid growth in resources, widespread increases in wealth, and an unprecedented clean and beautiful living environment in many parts of the world along with a degraded environment in the poor and socialist parts of the world.

That is, more people and more wealth has correlated with more (rather than less) resources and a cleaner environment – just the opposite of what Malthusian theory leads one to believe.

The task before us is to make sense of these mind-boggling happy trends.

The current gloom-and-doom about a “crisis” of our environment is all wrong on the scientific facts. Even the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency acknowledges that U.S. air and our water have been getting cleaner rather than dirtier in the past few decades. Every agricultural economist knows that the world’s population has been eating ever-better since World War II. Every resource economist knows that all natural resources have been getting more available rather than more scarce, as shown by their falling prices over the decades and centuries.

And every demographer knows that the death rate has been falling all over the world – life expectancy almost tripling in the rich countries in the past two centuries, and almost doubling in the poor countries in just the past four decades.

The picture also is now clear that population growth does not hinder economic development. In the 1980s there was a complete reversal in the consensus of thinking of population economists about the effects of more people. In 1986, the National Research Council and the National Academy of Sciences completely overturned its “official” view away from the earlier worried view expressed in 1971. It noted the absence of any statistical evidence of a negative connection between population increase and economic growth. And it said that “The scarcity of exhaustible resources is at most a minor restraint on economic growth”.

This U-turn by the scientific consensus of experts on the subject has gone unacknowledged by the press, the antinatalist environmental organizations, and the agencies that foster population control abroad.

Here is my central assertion: Almost every economic and social change or trend points in a positive direction, as long as we view the matter over a reasonably long period of time.

For proper understanding of the important aspects of an economy we should look at the long-run trends. But the short-run comparisons – between the sexes, age groups, races, political groups, which are usually purely relative – make more news. To repeat, just about every important long-run measure of human welfare shows improvement over the decades and centuries, in the United States as well as in the rest of the world. And there is no persuasive reason to believe that these trends will not continue indefinitely.

Would I bet on it? For sure. I’ll bet a week’s or month’s pay – anything I win goes to pay for more research – that just about any trend pertaining to material human welfare will improve rather than get worse. You pick the comparison and the year.

Let’s quickly review a few data on how human life has been doing, beginning with the all-important issue, life itself.

The Conquest of Premature Death

The most important and amazing demographic fact – the greatest human achievement in history, in my view – - is the decrease in the world’s death rate. Figure 1 portrays the history human life expectancy at birth. It took thousands of years to increase life expectancy at birth from just over 20 years to the high ’20′s about 1750.

Then about 1750 life expectancy in the richest countries suddenly took off and tripled in about two centuries. In just the past two centuries, the length of life you could expect for your baby or yourself in the advanced countries jumped from less than 30 years to perhaps 75 years. What greater event has humanity witnessed than this conquest of premature death in the rich countries? It is this decrease in the death rate that is the cause of there being a larger world population nowadays than in former times.

Then starting well after World War II, the length of life you could expect in the poor countries has leaped upwards by perhaps fifteen or even twenty years since the l950s, caused by advances in agriculture, sanitation, and medicine. (See Figure 2)

Let’s put it differently. In the 19th century the planet Earth could sustain only one billion people. Ten thousand years ago, only 4 million could keep themselves alive. Now, 5 billion people are living longer and more healthily than ever before, on average. The increase in the world’s population represents our victory over death.

Here arises a crucial issue of interpretation: One would expect lovers of humanity to jump with joy at this triumph of human mind and organization over the raw killing forces of nature. Instead, many lament that there are so many people alive to enjoy the gift of life. Even regret death rate. And it is this worry that leads them to approve the Indonesian, Chinese and other inhumane programs of coercion and denial of personal liberty in one of the most precious choices a family can make — the number of children that it wishes to bear and raise.

Decreasing Scarcity of Natural Resources

Throughout history, the supply of natural resources always has worried people. Yet the data clearly show that natural resource scarcity — as measured by the economically-meaningful indicator of cost or price — has been decreasing rather than increasing in the long run for all raw materials, with only temporary exceptions from time to time. That is, availability has been increasing. Consider copper, which is representative of all the metals. In Figure 3 we see the price relative to wages since 1801. The cost of a ton is only about a tenth now of what it was two hundred years ago.

This trend of falling prices of copper has been going on for a very long time. In the l8th century B.C.E. in Babylonia under Hammurabi — almost 4000 years ago — the price of copper was about a thousand times its price in the U.S. now relative to wages. At the time of the Roman Empire the price was about a hundred times the present price….

So by any measure, natural resources have getting more available rather than more scarce. Regarding oil, the shocking price rises during the 1970s and 1980s were not caused by growing scarcity in the world supply. And indeed, the price of petroleum in inflation-adjusted dollars has returned to levels about where they were before the politically-induced increases, and the price of of gasoline is about at the historic low and still falling.

Concerning energy in general, there is no reason to believe that the supply of energy is finite, or that the price of energy will not continue its long-run decrease forever. I realize that it sounds weird to say that the supply of energy is not finite or limited; for the full argument, please see my 1981 book (revised edition forthcoming) (Science is only valuable when it arrives at knowledge different than common sense.)

Food is an especially important resource. The evidence is particularly strong for food that we are on a benign trend despite rising population. The long-run price of food relative to wages is now only perhaps a tenth as much as it was in 1800 in the U. S. Even relative to consumer products the price of grain is down, due to increased productivity, just as with all other primary products.

Famine deaths due to insufficient food supply have decreased even in absolute terms, let alone relative to population, in the past century, a matter which pertains particularly to the poor countries. Per-person food consumption is up over the last 30 years. And there are no data showing that the bottom of the income scale is faring worse, or even has failed to share in the general improvement, as the average has improved.

Africa’s food production per person is down, but by 1994 almost no one any longer claims that Africa’s suffering results from a shortage of land or water or sun. The cause of hunger in Africa is a combination of civil wars and collectivization of agriculture, which periodic droughts have made more murderous.

Consider agricultural land as an example of all natural resources. Though many people consider land to be a special kind of resource, it is subject to the same processes of human creation as other natural resources. The most important fact about agricultural land is that less and less of it is needed as the decades pass.

This idea is utterly counter-intuitive. It seems entirely obvious that a growing world population would need larger amounts of farmland. But the title of a remarkable prescient article in 1951 by Theodore Schultz tells the story: “The Declining Economic Importance of Land.” The increase in actual and potential productivity per unit of land have grown much faster than population, and there is sound reason to expect this trend to continue. Therefore, there is less and less reason to worry about the supply of land.

Though the stock of usable land seems fixed at any moment, it is constantly being increased – at a rapid rate in many cases – by the clearing of new land or reclamation of wasteland. Land also is constantly being enhanced by increasing the number of crops grown per year on each unit of land and by increasing the yield per crop with better farming methods and with chemical fertilizer. Last but not least, land is created anew where there was no land.

Increasing Scarcity: Human Time

There is only one important resource which has shown a trend of increasing scarcity rather than increasing abundance. That resource is the most important of all — human beings. Yes, there are more people on earth now than ever before. But if we measure the scarcity of people the same way that we measure the scarcity of other economic goods — by how much we must pay to obtain their services — we see that wages and salaries have been going up all over the world, in poor countries as well as in rich countries.

The amount that you must pay to obtain the services of a barber or a cook has risen in India, just as the price of a barber or cook — or economist — has risen in the United States over the decades. This increase in the price of peoples’ services is a clear indication that people are becoming more scarce even though there are more of us.

About pollution now: Surveys show that the public believes that our air and water have been getting more polluted in recent years. The evidence with respect to air indicates that pollutants have been declining, especially the main pollutant, particulates. (See Figure 5). With respect to water, the proportion of monitoring sites in the U.S. with water of good drinkability has increased since the data began in l961.

Every forecast of the doomsayers has turned out flat wrong. Metals, foods, and other natural resources have become more available rather than more scarce throughout the centuries. The famous Famine 1975 forecast by the Paddock brothers — that we would see millions of famine deaths in the U.S. on television in the 1970s — was followed instead by gluts in agricultural markets.

Paul Ehrlich’s primal scream about “What will we do when the [gasoline] pumps run dry?” was followed by gasoline cheaper than since the 1930′s. The Great Lakes are not dead; instead they offer better sport fishing than ever. The main pollutants, especially the particulates which have killed people for years, have lessened in our cities. (Socialist countries are a different and tragic environmental story, however!)….

 

Source: http://www.masterresource.org/2014/07/people-weatlh-resources-environment/

electrical testing commercial electrical electrical commercial electrician contractor contractor electrician