Most Maryland, Virginia, and DC homeowners pay little attention to their main electrical circuit panel until something goes wrong, such as a tripped circuit breaker. However, when the areas around your outlets have darkened and/or heat is coming off of your main circuit box, these can be indications that something is wrong with your wiring system even if the circuit breaker doesn’t trip.

Since there are more than 370,000 house fires in the U.S. each year, causing around 15,000 deaths and injuries, paying attention to your electrical panel is more than just a good idea; it’s essential. Catching issues like a hot circuit breaker early can not only help to keep you and your family safe, but can keep the cost of fixing the problem in check and prevent property damage.

There are a number of things that can cause your circuit breaker to give off heat. Some of the more common include:

Electrical work is too dangerous to work on yourself. It’s important to hire a licensed electrician to make sure your wiring is handled properly and safely.

Kolb Electric has the experienced, licensed electricians you need to keep your home and your family safe. If you have questions or concerns about a hot circuit breaker or other wiring issue in your home, call us for an evaluation. Our staff has experience in a variety of home wiring projects, from re-wiring an entire home to fixing loose electrical connections. We’ve been helping Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington, DC area homeowners with their electrical needs since 1925. Call us at 877 287-1179 to schedule an appointment today.

The world is getting more connected, and machines are collecting massive amounts of data about consumer habits. In the energy sector, the rise of big data is poised to revolutionize the way utility companies provide electricity to homeowners. That's good news for you – the more information you have at hand, the more opportunities you’ll have to save money. Read on to find out how big data may affect you in the near future.

Machines Learning the Patterns

Analyzing the patterns inside the enormous amounts of information provided by big data is known as machine learning. By letting computers do the heavy lifting, analysts can discover trends and efficiencies that no one would ever think to look for. Ultimately, what we learn from data analysis will trickle down and impact your interactions with any appliance or device that is electrical. Work conducted by machines will show humans the best way to move forward.

IntelligentUtility.com recently listed seven ways that machine learning can affect the relationship between you and your utility provider:

In the meantime, if you need tips about how to save energy or need electrical work performed on your home, call a qualified electrician today.

The energy consumed by a single building or business can prove to be a huge overhead cost, especially for those buildings of a much larger size.

Starting the initiative to reduce energy consumption is becoming more and more common as the benefits become more and more clear. The benefits of reducing energy consumption is often times for one major reason, and that is to reduce overhead costs. By making switches (such as those listed here), you could realize a 50% or more reduction in overall energy usage in your facility.

Sound interesting? Learn how you can do that with the tips below…

Whatever lighting technology you have right now, if it isn’t LED, then you are probably consuming more energy than you have to be when it comes to your lighting system.

By converting to LED from a technology like fluorescent, you will easily realize a 30% reduction (on average) in energy consumption from your lights. Now, if you have lights such as metal halide or HPS (often used outside or in high ceiling lights), then you could realize even greater savings (by up to 75%)! This, in and of itself, can prove to be a major way to reduce energy usage in your buildings.

facility manager is, but it’s just a fact. Think, who knows more; someone who works with all the equipment everyday or someone who overlooks said worker? Probably the former, and that’s okay! But, just remember to ask them to be on the lookout for things and get them on-board with your efforts to reducing energy in your building. It will help a lot with your efforts!

Planting save energy in your building, but they are definitely the huge players that eat up a lot of energy. By changing just these 9 things, you will be able to put your efforts to the highest reward type initiatives.

Once you’ve switched these major energy consumers, you can then work on smaller areas of your building that are inefficient, just not as much as these 9 things.

What is one thing not listed here that you find to be a huge energy consumer? Comment it down below so we are all aware of it!

The jargon in the lighting world can often get mixed up. Color rending index (CRI) and color temperature are one of the most to be confused with each other. This post is going to clarify what the different between CRI and Color Temperature is so we can end this confusion.

Here is a short explanation why the CRI is more important to focus on before deciding for a color temperature. The color rendering index is the most important feature in certain applications as it determines the appearance of objects, faces and spaces. If this aspect is not relevant, the CRI can be as low as 60 or even 40.

The color rendering index (CRI) is a numeric evaluation of the light color accuracy with the reference of daylight (numbered 100). Sunlight and its broad spectrum will enable a person with normal vision to see 68 different colors in a color chart, but if the chart is illuminated by a light source of one wavelength only, each color from the color chart will appear as a different brightness of that one color. Some activities, such as walking or operating a vehicle, do not require the accurate perception of surface colors while others such as product selections in shops benefit from better color rendering features. Look at the application of the lighting installation. If the visual tasks are easy to perform the CRI doesn’t need to be high. In areas like offices, handcraft manufacturing and surgery, the requirements for visibility, contrast, visual guidance as well as face recognition need to be provided by a lighting system with a good CRI of >80 or even >90.

How much is the light color affecting the space? The term color temperature describes the temperature of objects by which they emit light, modeled through the “blackbody radiator”. When increasing the temperature of a “blackbody”, it starts to emit visible light in a continuous spectrum. The filament of a 60W incandescent lamp heats up to about 3000°F, as a result the lamp emits light with a color temperature of 3000K. Many of our artificial light sources do not create light by heating up a material until it glows like an incandescent lamps. Instead of creating a continuous spectrum, they generate an assortment of color emission lines. A blackbody color temperature cannot be directly given to this non-blackbody type of emission, generated by high intensity discharge and fluorescent lamps for example. For those light sources, a correlated color temperature (CCT) is indicated, based on the blackbody color temperature. A cool white fluorescent lamp has a CCT of about 5000K. The lamps light spectrum is different from a blackbody one but has the same temperature.

The light color influences the atmosphere in a space. The more cozy the ambiance the warmer the light color (lower color temperature) should be and the more dynamic the scene the cooler the light source (higher color temperature). The CRI is the most important factor to watch when choosing light sources. How good is the light source representing faces, colors and contrasts? The easier the visual task and perception the lower the CRI can be. The color temperature needs to be watched second, it is supporting the space’s atmosphere.

Conclusion

There you have it; an explanation of both the Color Rending Index and Color Temperature.

Have anymore questions or thoughts? Comment them down below!