Every summer, more and more homes experience outages in their electric systems. As a top Dallas Electrician, my electricians and I see the effects of these outages every day. They can be devastating, and cause a lot of damage.  In fact, the insurance industry pays out over $1 billion in damages annually in claims caused by outages and power surge damage. Most outages are caused by the weather, but there are different kinds of weather can cause an outage. This even includes weather that doesn’t produce lighting damage like the massive ice storms we saw during Super Bowl week this year that left hundreds of thousands without power (and, more importantly, without heat!) during one of the worst winter storms in years. Summer storms can produce devastating tornadoes that can knock out power for miles around the area they touch down in, and many hurricanes begin to build in the summer and early fall, causing catastrophic results even outside of the disaster zone. Hurricane Ike left over two million people without power when it hit southeast Texas in 2008, and not all of them were in the impact zone.

Not every outage comes from something as dramatic as a hurricane or tornado.  A lightning strike, even as far as half a mile away, can potentially cause damage to your delicate electrical equipment and appliances. Often, large-scale outages can occur when lightning strikes a transformer.

Outages don’t just occur because of bad weather:  many outages are caused by power equipment switching to accommodate the heavy load people put on the power grid.  Our power grid is already having trouble with its current load, and the problem only grows as more and more people use more and more electricity.  Summer in Dallas and Fort Worth is the perfect examples.  It’s when people are running their air conditioners constantly. This puts an incredible load on local and state power grids.  This leads to government agencies putting out warnings almost every summer about potential power outages, threatening brownouts and blackouts unless people conserve energy.

These outages aren’t damaging in themselves, but they leave open the possibility for electrical power surge damage.  You’ve probably noticed that when the power comes back on after an outage, it often flickers on and off quickly as the power grid attempts to get the electricity flowing back into your lines.  This stop-and-start action creates surges that can easily damage unprotected electronics or appliances.  Having a nice TV damaged like this is a very expensive hassle, and you can imagine how much more expensive and uncomfortable it could be if the surge takes out your air conditioner and refrigerator!

So, what can you do to keep power outages and power surges from affecting you?

Some of these options can even help you save money on your electric bill without the hassle of gas, fumes, or noise pollution.

The times, they are a-changin'. President Obama recently announced the details of his highly anticipated Clean Power Plan, a measure aimed at reducing the country's harmful fossil fuel emissions and limiting our contribution to climate change. The plan, when fully implemented, should reduce carbon emissions by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Read on to learn more about the Clean Power Plan and what it means for you.

Lower Prices at the Meter

The Clean Power Plan was developed by the Environmental Protection Agency, under the authority granted by the Clean Air Act. It imposes sharp limits on the types of energy production that power the nation's electrical work, but grants flexibility to states in how they act to meet those limits. In general, the plan encourages a shift away from burning coal during energy generation, while states have the option of upping their renewable energy production, using nuclear energy, increasing their efficiency or relying more on natural gas.

The good news for homeowners is that the plan is projected to decrease the bills you pay to power your residential electrical work. An analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council found that the average home electricity bill could fall by as much as 8 percent, and consumers could save up to $37.4 billion overall in electricity by 2020. The rationale for the savings is that renewable fuel sources cost less to run over time once the initial infrastructure is in place. Also, the plan encourages investments in household energy efficiency, which means that you may come to be less reliant on your home electrical work without substantially changing your behavior.

Clean Air for Breathing

The Clean Power Plan has another ancillary effect that has nothing to do with electrical work: it should cut down on air pollution and create a healthier breathing environment. For example, while we rely on the ozone level high in the sky to block harmful sun rays, ozone at ground level is known by another name – smog. It is created when sunlight interacts with pollutants and can be very harmful to our health. The plan should reduce smog levels and provide us with cleaner air to breathe.

Furthermore, one of the biggest signs of climate change is unusually hot and dry weather in certain parts of the country, which can lead to out-of-control wildfires and harmful particulates that damage your lungs. Strange weather patterns have also been blamed for an increase in allergies this year. By slowing the pace of climate change and keeping harmful pollutants out of the air, the Clean Power Plan can help you breathe easy.

If you have any concerns about the effect the Clean Power Plan will have on your energy prices or electrical work, call a knowledgeable electrician today.

If you want to achieve flexibility of loading different electrical appliances in your home, implement the following approaches. The electrical conduits practices recommended here meet NEC guidelines guaranteeing proper load growth for both commercial and residential buildings.

If you expect the load on your house, office, establishments, or other buildings to increase in future, consider using at least 12 AWG conductors. Ensure that they have protection of 20-amp circuit breakers and are designed with a 15-amp load standard each.

In addition, consider implementing these measures on wires and cables to increase the optimal performance of your circuit conductors.

To allow the normal length of lamp cords and other wire cables, the NEC Code recommends more than six feet of distance between the point on a wall and an appliance receptacle. In applications such as kitchen countertops, electricians should wire receptacle outlets some twelve feet or four feet apart.

The biggest challenge here is the difficulty in predicting how items such as furniture in your house will be arranged. Additionally, there may be an inadequate number of outlets at various locations. Evidence for this can be seen in the outlet power strips that today’s equipment use.

In locations where you can expect a huge load, such as computer workstations, offices, and home entertainment, the use of Quadruplex receptacles is an ideal solution. Reducing the number of receptacles that a single circuit uses will limit the installation and use of sensitive equipment. It also positively affects circuit conductors, voltage drop, chance of interaction, and reduces the likelihood of harmonics accumulating to harmful levels.

If your home has a large kitchen and multiple bathrooms, you need additional circuits that go beyond the minimums of the NEC Code. This effectively maintains the high-capacity appliances that characterize these rooms.

In addition, limit the number of use receptacles per circuit. For example, a 15-amp circuit can run 1800 Volt Amps when working at 100 per cent rate. While NEC recommends using circuits at 80 per cent rate, this translates to 1440 Volt Amps.

For some reasons, NEC requires a high number of circuits for use in most commercial and residential buildings. The Code recommends that sensitive electrical appliances, high-capacity loads, and equipment that cause poor quality of power obtain power from individual circuits. This separation eliminates the interference with equipment on a common circuit.

Where individual branch circuits are installed, the harmonicas generated in other circuits are shielded from coming in contact with sensitive equipment. In addition, this prevents the high neutral currents from sensitive electronic appliances to those circuits, effectively eliminating the likelihood of incorrect operation and voltage drop.

Raceways provide the ease of upgrading conductors efficiently and give electricians the freedom to pull conductors through a building. Therefore, let spare raceways and safety electrical material is installed during construction to allow an easy installation of conductors in the future.

As appliances and equipment advance over time, the lighting and switching mechanisms in your house or building should anticipate future modifications. For example, motion detectors and other electronic lighting devices require a small standby current to remain in their optimal state.

Therefore, install the following solutions for safety switches and lighting appliances right from building construction.

These applications are necessary if you want to reduce the load on the circuits in your house. If you have not implemented them yet, call a reputable electrician today to overhaul the electrical conduits. While this protects the electrical wiring from possible hazards, it also safeguards the assets in your house or building.