What has the DOE been up to lately?

Posted by tED magazine on Tuesday, February 21, 2012

By Joe Salimando

Here’s a quick run-down, with links, of what our federal Energy agency has been doing that might be of use to electrical distributors:

Advances in white OLED lighting: The DOE, for the fifth straight year, provided an award for OLED accomplishments to Universal Display Corporation. Release.

Budget for 2013 seeks $2.27 billion for efficiency & renewables: That’s according to a 2/15 post to the EERE Newsletter.

Builder’s Challenge: DOE said on 1/12/12 that more than 10,000 homes now standing were built meeting the energy-efficiency specs of the “voluntary Buildings Challenge initiative.”

Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. to remain below 2005 levels: Through 2035, according to projections of the Energy Information Administration (found in this release on Annual Energy Outlook 2012).

Distributed wind energy systems: DOE has posted new online tools to help those who want to deploy these wind machines.

50% more energy-efficient retail buildings: The DOE in early January released an Advanced Energy Design Guide on retail buildings, available for free download.

LED lights on the National Mall (D.C.): LED lights donated by Osram Sylvania (and installed by the local utility) will cut streetlamp energy use by as much as 65%. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar did the ceremonial switch-flipping; that’s Chu at right in photo below. See: Release on Energy.gov.

LED workshop report: A 3-page PDF from the DOE’s Solid-State Lighting Program provides a brief summary of what went on in Atlanta at the SSL R&D Workshop, held in late Jan./early Feb. Here’s one paragraph (more in the PDF, and a promise of a fuller report to be posted soon to the DOE’s SSL website):

“Emphasizing that the success of SSL depends on more than one-dimensional parameters like energy savings and price, Steve Paolini of Lunera Lighting focused on the spectrum tunability of LEDs.

“He made the point that the common combination of red, green, and blue DOEs not produce white light of a sufficiently high quality, and that combining five LED colors instead is a preferable alternative. Steve noted that good results are already being obtained by under-driving five-color LED combinations.”

More sockets per household: From a DOE release on the 2010 U.S. Lighting Market Characterization report:

“The total number of light bulbs installed in U.S. stationary applications grew from just under 7 billion in 2001 to more than 8 billion in 2010. Most of this growth occurred in the residential sector, primarily because of an increase in the number of households, which increased from under 107 million in 2001 to more than 113 million in 2010, and a rise in the number of sockets per household from an average of 43 to an average of 51.”

Solar installations: 40% or more of costs are soft: That’s a DOE estimate relayed in a “Green” blog on the NY Times’ website. The agency’s SunShot Initiative has targeted reducing these costs by 75% by the end of 2019.

2013 Solar Decathlon: It will be held in Irvine, Calif. More.