Special Report

TEDMAG:  LIVE FROM THE NECA SHOW
Seattle, September 13th-15th

The NECA show -- which is now the electrical/datacom industry's biggest tradeshow -- is in Seattle this year.  It opened yesterday,  Sun. Sept. 13th. Here's a recap of what I learned and observed on the first day-- come back for daily postings tomorrow (Tuesday) and Wednesday.

SOCIAL NETWORKING @NECA THIS WEEK
Twittering, Facebook + blogging

NECA is Twittering and Facebook-ing on its own convention and show -- see this release.

Additionally, Beth Marguiles, NECA's PR director, is blogging from the site -- see http://blog.necaconvention.org . Included in the first day's blog:

• NAED  takes home NECA's 2009 Industry Partner Award
• NECA's student chapter at the U. of Washington (which I have learned, out here, is called "U-Dub") took home the first-ever Green Energy Challenge  prize.
• See also Ginger Wilson's post on LEDs.

ENERGY AUDITS: NECA'S NEW COURSES
A national educational effort?

I attended a piece of an 110-minute session on Energy Auditing, featuring Bernie Kotlier. Funding from NECA/IBEW California (a local Labor-Management Cooperation Committee) and Electric 21 ("The Foundation") helped produce a special, designed-for-ECs, course of study on auditing.

Kotlier, who is an expert on ECs and energy efficiency/renewable energy, also served on a Green panel at the last NAED Leadership Summit and spoke about what contractors would learn if they took the courses.  Here are course details:

1. An 8-hour "screening survey" course, which teaches attendees how to do a quick survey of an end-user's building to "identify opportunities."

2. A 24-hour course on how to conduct a preliminary energy assessment, an effort that (it is hoped) leads to EE retrofit work.

"We want to be in position to be advisors, counselors," to the building owners, Kotlier urged. He stressed that EE retrofits SHOULD come before any consideration of PV or wind (renewables) installations.

Other facts from the 45 minutes I listened in on:

• There are 74.8 billion sq. ft. of space under roof in commercial, industrial, and institutional buildings. Most of that has not undergone an energy audit.
• There is a 100% likelihood that a building 30 years old can benefi from an EE retrofit -- but you probably already would have guessed at that. What caught my eye was Bernie's claim that 30% of buildings tha are 10 years old can benefit from EE.
• As a case-in-point, Bernie talked about an (unnamed) EC who did the electrical work on a big parking lot. Within 2.5 years, the EC came back and pitched the building owner on an EE retrofit -- which saved the owner big bucks.

GRAYBAR'S GRIFFITH ON DATA CENTERS
Biz is down, but this segment is up 5%
 
Graybar's Karl Griffith presented a session on data centers. Like Kotlier's, it was well-attended. When I last talked with Karl, he was the  company's datacomm guy; now he's running the "Data Center Initiative."

Chock full of statistics, there was literally too much in the presentation to cover, so here are some items of interest:

Karl asked, at the very start, how many attendees had "BIM Competency." BIM = building information modeling and, thus far, I think the ECs are ahead of the manufacturers and distributors on this. He said he asked the question as research on Graybar's behalf. For the record, at least one-third of the contractors in attendance raised their hands.

Graybar's data center sales volume is up about 5% in 2009, Griffith said. Any segment that's up this year is worth learning more about! 

Data center opportunities are NOT going to be receding, Griffith contended. He backed up that assertion with all kinds of numbers. For example, he presented data showing that 32% of data centers now in operation will relocate, 45% will make improvements, and 53% will expand -- with 50% of the total now in existence requiring "some action" in the next 12 months.

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This is the best of 3 photos I took of Karl Griffith. I apologize to him, and to you.

In what I saw as "the glass half full/half empty" piece, Griffith noted that Network World magazine turned the news that a survey showed 43% of IT department budgets would decrease in 2009 into a headline. BUT, he pointed out to the contractors, that meant that in a pretty mediocre year, 57% of IT budgets were either static or increasing. That, he said, was pretty good. Which, you have to admit, is a pretty good point!

Stray factolito: "46% of data center managers don't know how much they spent on power and cooling." That led  me to ask "how could that be?" Karl didn't know, but his remarks indicated that while someone in the company MUST know what the electricity use is -- and pay the bills! -- that info apparently does not make it to the DC mgr.

He presented data, from earlier in this decade, showing that the electricity piece of a data center's cost of operations is about 42%. But in his travels (he regularly visits DC owners, he said), Griffith discovered that the consensus is that, right now, that number is closer to 50% to 55%.

The gentleman with his arms folded, listening to visitors to the Graybar booth, is CEO Bob Reynolds. As an NAED board member, Reynolds also accepted the NECA Partner of the Year award on behalf of NAED during the convention.

Other data: In 2010, data center owners will spent 70 cents on heating and cooling for every dollar spent on hardware. By 2012 (that's not very far away, is it?), it will be even-steven -- a buck for a buck. Electricity consumption already has the attention of these people; it's going to become more intense.

What was the point of all this? The EC, Griffith maintained, could become a hero to the DC owner. With the kind of savings an EC can bring to the DC, he/she can get high-level ("C-suite") access -- and deliver on some pretty impressive promises.


GEXPRO'S JOHNSTON ON GREEN 
Pinch-hitter delivers in the clutch

Jim Johnston, who is an energy specialist in Gexpro's Pacific Division, spoke during a technical session about "Finding Green Projects." Even though he was a last-minute substitute for another speaker, his perspective was very interesting. He pointed out that lighting, in addition to being "the low hanging fruit," is not the big payoff in EE work. An EC can differentiate himself/herself, he said, by tying in other retrofits -- saving the client more money, probably grabbing more of the available rebates, and be a hero to the client.

An example from Johnston: A project in which the lighting portion of the job offered a 7-year payback. And the lighting was important: It offered Gexpro (and its contractor/customer) the point-of-entry into the end-user's business. But once there, they found major savings possible in MOTORS -- such that the payback on that piece of the job came in one year. And, Johnston reported, the
motor part of the job was 27 TIMES bigger than the lighting segment (in $$$).

Another wonderful point: People offering proposals to customers on renewables (here he spoke about Solar Photovoltaics) aren't doing it correctly. The proposals generally take the average local commercial electrical rate -- the "blended" rate the commercial rate-payers pay -- and calculate the return on investment based on that. So if the average rate in the area is 11 cents/kWh, that's what the proposal includes.

What's wrong with that? A lot -- and I'm not proud to admit I never previously thought about this. Commercial rate-payers in an area with an 11-cent blended rate are probably paying 14 to 18 cents per kWh during peak hours. Well, it so happens:  

a. Most of their usage takes place during peak hours, doesn't it?

b. They pay DEMAND charges as well as USAGE charges. If you don't understand
this, you need to spend some time reading a non-residential electric bill.

c. The sun makes a great contribution to REDUCING THE DEMAND during the high-rate
peak times -- thus also reducing the demand charge.

Maybe, I thought, I'm the stupid one and Johnston's point is well-known and used by many. But then again, the guy highlighted this in his presentation, and he has seen a lot of EE and solar PV proposals. It would seem that this rather obvious point is being overlooked by many people, not just journalists who write for distributors.

In other words, not only am I stupid beyond belief, but so are some people writing serious proposals for PV installations. I don't necessarily feel better about having missed this.

Johnston made a number of other interesting points. He held the Gexpro/Rexel promotional stuff to an absolute minimum (one slide). The final few minutes of his presentation were on how an electrical distributor can help an EC in doing EE/renewable work; the points he made were general and could apply to any distributor (I copied them down as fast as I could, but I might have missedsomething, or garbled what's here): 

• New product training on energy technologies (example: "lunch & learns")
• Distributors could help create opportunities for ECs with existing technology (example: induction lighting)
• Technical explanations.
• Joint sales/marketing calls.
• Work with ECs on existing end-user relationships.
• There was something about competitive pricing advantages (for ECs) through economies of scale. 

• EPAct provisions allow a company to take tax benefits going back to tax years 2003 and 2004. This assumes the end-user company has posted losses in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008. I hadn't heard that in previous presentations on EPAct.
• Legislation now being considered by Congress would provide a $25-per-HP energy efficient credit to buyers of energy-smart motors.

Of course tED magazine was among the NECA Show's exhibitors. In the booth at a moment when I wandered by Michael Martin, publisher, who was demonstrating tED's new digital version.

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
9 years later, I'm still here

NECA's convention and show last came to Seattle in September 2000. 9/13/00 is a very meaningful date to me. Just back from a vacation in Spain, I was headed to the Seattle NECA's show when my wife encountered me babbling and bleeding from the head (which I apparently had used, in a delirious state, to try to knock over the fireplace).  Thanks to my wife's intervention,  instead of going to the Washington that September, I ended up in Virginia's Fairfax Inova hospital. The excellent doctors & nurses there found that I had Legionnaire's Disease -- and, if not treated, I would die in a few hours.

Lots of contractors, exhibitors, and others seemed happy to be here this week in Seattle. In fact, CEO Bob Reynolds of Graybar noted to me that folks generally seem upbeat (surprising).  But no one's enthusiasm about "being here" in Seattle at a NECA Show could possibly come close to exceeding mine!

MORE TOMORROW

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