Some consider working directly with the suppliers themselves. Suppliers are only really interested in large-volume deals, and do not necessarily benefit from getting their customers the best price for energy, particularly without competing offers. If they don’t have to beat another price, they have no incentive to offer you a better price. They’ll supply your energy, but they’re not likely to be transparent about the process. Supply costs can also get high, and fees tend to rise with energy consumption.
Working with a solution provider requires re-evaluating how your organization and staff think about energy procurement. Energy procurement often isn’t given the same level of attention as other equally critical parts of the enterprise. The experts can watch the markets for opportunities, and the software can automate alerts and parts of the reporting process. However, your organization will need to approach energy procurement the same way it procures other valuable resources.
Light output versus heat waste. “LED” stands for “light-emitting diode.” While we won’t get into the nitty-gritty about how they work, LED's are vastly different from incandescent bulbs in terms of the light output compared with the heat produced. Taylor Jantz-Sell, an Energy Star lighting program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, says that LED technology converts 95 percent of the energy to light and only 5 percent is wasted as heat.
Incandescents are pretty much the opposite. They convert only 10 percent of the energy into light, while 90 percent is wasted as heat. Heat produced by LED lights is absorbed into an integral “heat sink,” which prevents the bulb from overheating. Incandescents just throw all that excess heat directly into the room, which can place added stress on air conditioning systems during the summer. That’s probably why incandescent light bulbs are being phased out: An almost complete ban on their sale started in 2014 and will take full effect in 2020. Simply put, they waste a lot of energy and don’t last very long.
We will have access to solar energy for as long as the sun is alive – another 6.5 billion years according to NASA[1]. We have worse things to worry about; in fact, scientists have estimated that the sun itself will swallow the Earth 5 billion years from now.
The potential of solar energy is beyond imagination. The surface of the Earth receives 120,000 terawatts of solar radiation (sunlight) – 20,000 times more power than what is needed to supply the entire world.
An abundant and renewable energy source is also sustainable. Sustainable energy sources meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. In other words, solar energy is sustainable because there is no way we can over-consume.
Harnessing solar energy does generally not cause pollution. However, there are emissions associated with the manufacturing, transportation and installation of solar power systems – almost nothing compared to most conventional energy sources. It is clear that solar energy reduces our dependence on non-renewable energy sources. This is an important step in fighting the climate crisis.
Solar energy is available all over the world. Not only the countries that are closest to the Equator can put solar energy to use – Germany, for example, has by far the highest capacity of solar power in the world.
With the introduction of net metering and feed-in tariff (FIT) schemes, homeowners can now “sell” excess electricity, or receive bill credits, during times when they produce more electricity than what they actually consume.