The smart grid can be thought of as national and personal all at once. On a personal level, the smart grid connects all of the electronics in your house, letting them communicate on an internet for electronics. This electronic internet also communicates with you via your smart phone or computer in real time, letting you monitor your electricity usage.

Your appliances will talk to each other and organize times of non-peak electrical usage for them to complete cycles that use a lot of energy. Your home will talk to you, letting you know if you’ve left your television running or if the light in the garage is still on.

On a national level, your home will be tied into the national grid like it is already, but two-way communication will happen with the power plant. If your home has solar panels installed by an electrician, any extra energy you produce will be sold to the power plant. The power company will be able to monitor your electrical usage too. They will use this information to create a picture of your neighborhood. This tells them exactly how much energy needs to be sent in your direction.

This system will be a replacement for our current power grid, and it will allow two-way communication between the power plant and your home. The meters for this system will report themselves. You won’t need a stranger tromping through your yard once a month to read your meter anymore.

This system will create a more efficient use of electricity by sending it where it needs to be. It will also report problems as soon as they happen. Before you could find a flashlight during a blackout, the power company will know exactly what wire went down and why. This will cut repair times. Since everything will operate more efficiently, there will be less cost to keep everything operating, which will translate into cheaper power prices for you.

Maintenance for your home will be easier. Having an electrician wire your house for this system will let you know exactly what your home is doing. If your water heater sees problems that could indicate a breakdown, you will get a text message alert. This will let you drain it before it turns your basement into a hot tub.

While you will need to replace your current electronics with applicances designed for this new grid, the cost will be worth it. The power grid will be more reliable, which means fewer blackouts. Your house can even report suspicious electrical activity to you, creating increased security. You may find yourself pressured to have an electrician install solar panels, but the power company will pay you for the extra energy. It will be an improvement for everyone involved.

Economy settings have become a standard option on nearly all modern appliances. They purport to put the decision about energy conservation in the consumer's hands: Do you run the machine in its normal mode, or use the most economical setting to burn up less power and marginally reduce your contribution to carbon pollution and climate change? Eco-settings give manufacturers bragging rights that they are doing their part to produce more efficient electrical work. However, some people question whether economy settings really do anything to reduce our electricity consumption, and suspect they might even be counterproductive. Read on to learn why.

Economy vs. Standard Settings in Your Electrical Work

You see economy buttons on all kinds of electrical devices and appliances these days, from televisions to video game consoles to bigger-ticket items like washing machines and dishwashers. These settings offer energy savings of 10 percent or more, and generally are legitimate; although there have been isolated reports of manufacturers attempting to deceive energy testing measures, usually the economy settings are included in good faith, with companies preferring to avoid legal or reputational consequences if they are caught manipulating the tests.

However, eco-modes only save energy if people use them. And in many cases, people choose not to, for a variety of reasons. For one thing, the performance of various appliances under eco-settings might simply be unsatisfactory. For example, some people complain that reduced power settings on their television leave them barely able to see the screen. There are also reports of clothes dryers that don't dry clothes and dishwashers that don't wash dishes. Reduced power settings don't save any energy at all if you have to run the appliance twice.

Don't Be Fooled into Buying an Inefficient Device

That's not to say that all economy modes don't make the grade, but their overall reputation can suffer from a few bad apples. If consumers hear that the lowest power setting in a neighbor's dishwasher doesn't get the job done, they might be reluctant to try that option in their own unit, even if it's a different make or model.

What's more, the ratings system used by the federal Energy Star program takes into account the economy setting mode when making its decisions. That means you could purchase a piece of equipment that has the coveted Energy Star certification, only to find out that you don’t like the conservation settings and are less than satisfied with the purchase.

Finding the Most Efficiency in Your Electrical Work

One way to ensure that you are buying an appliance whose economy setting meets your needs is to read online reviews, in lieu of simply relying on the Energy Star rating. If you need help picking out high-efficiency appliances, or need help with any other electrical work, contact a trusted local electrician today.

LED Technology is not just about efficiency, power and light color temperature. Luminous flux performance over lifetime and color rendering index, accordingly the spectrum, are important as well. A lot of people recognize cheap LED versions in any shops or retail stores that seem to be bluish and illuminate the space quite palely.

The manufacturing process is accompanied by variations in material and action itself. The results are white light LEDs with different characteristics. Binning systems have been introduced to support the performance of LEDs and LED products. Binning is focusing on LEDs chromaticity (light color) or luminous flux (brightness) and can be described as the grouping of the LEDs into samples with the same or closest light color or brightness.

LED Light Color – Binning System.

In a nutshell, recent studies tested different compositions of lighting spectra and found an influence on human condition. People who are sensitive to their surroundings tend to complain about headache, dizziness and even nausea when exposed to imbalanced spectra. Long term exposition is even expected to have a negative impact on human health. When buying LED light sources, retrofit kits and products have a look at the CRI or spectrum. The more balanced, the better for the people working under it.

We live in a wired world, appliances, lights, computers, and more need to  be plugged in.  All of those wires can become unsightly  depending on where they need to be run.  Think of a flat screen TV with the mess of wires hanging behind it, instead of being hidden—which would look better?

Unfortunately, phone and cable providers generally will not run wires based on a homeowner’s preference, and many of these companies will only wire on the exterior of a home. They will do things the easiest way possible, which usually involves running cables on the outside of the house and drilling in at the point of use. This may leave you with wires and cables placed along your walls not to your preference.

Some homes have certain wires—phone lines, typically—that are built in, but very few homes have cables for TV or other networks hardwired.    These phone and cable wiring issues could cause problems with connectivity and performance of certain devices.