As we roll into a new year, you may already be thinking of the changes you would like to make on a personal level and maybe around your home. A new year gives us a new perspective and human nature is to start fresh. It gives us motivation to change things up and freshen up our surroundings. Home improvements and renovations are one way you can get that change you are longing for without having to pull up the stakes and move. An electrician in Santa Monica can work with you to make some of the those minor changes that have major results. The team at The Electric Connection has been helping homeowners just like you for years and is ready to help you.

The laundry room in your home is probably not one you enjoy spending a lot of time in. This particular area in the house tends to be the place where lost socks go to die and the clutter can be a little overwhelming. As part of your new year’s resolution, cleaning up and organizing the laundry room is the first step. The next step is to brighten the place up or maybe even make it a little bigger. A Santa Monica electrician will be needed for any expansions or renovations. The electrician can install additional outlets and change out the light fixtures to help give the space a facelift.

Putting down new flooring is fairly easy and adding a fresh coat of paint in a light, airy color will all help make the room a little more open and airy. Once you have done some browsing and come up with a plan, call your electrician. Santa Monica homeowners will love the changes to their laundry room and find it gives them a great deal of satisfaction and motivation to make more changes around the house. The team at The Electric Connection is standing by, ready to help you with the changes this new year.

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.

Home automation is the latest trend in electrical installations; it allows you the functionality to control various devices in your home, via a mobile device from any location (in your city or even from across the world). It’s true that the term home automation could be used for various programmable devices such as sprinkler systems and thermostats.

However, home automation is much more than that, and it encompasses a number of things in a home including:

All of these are connected to a network that can be remotely controlled. From the perspective of home security, this includes fixtures such as the alarm system in your home, as well as the windows, doors, smoke detectors, locks, the CCTV cameras as well as the other sensors that are connected to it.

Even up until the recent past, it was only commercial systems and high-end homes that had automated centrally-controlled systems. Typically, these included only the heating & cooling systems, lighting systems and they hardly ever provided anything more than just the standard controls, monitoring functions as well as scheduling actions. In addition, these were accessible only from certain control points from within the very same building.

While this was a definite convenience and advantage, home automation takes this concept and technology one step further; and is popularly called the – ‘ Internet of Things’. In this type of system, everything has a specific IP address that can be accessed and monitored remotely.

Smart devices and various smart appliances are the most obvious things that get connected to the LAN via Wi-Fi or Ethernet. However, it’s possible to incorporate electrical outlets and light switches into your home automation network.

In addition to the convenience factor, the energy efficiency factor is what makes home automation such an attractive option. While modern appliances provide convenience and comfort, many of them are also power guzzlers; home automation systems also address this issue. Thermostats help monitor the heating and cooling system in your home; similarly the lighting systems can also be programmed and set for various target temperatures.

This helps keep energy usage at the minimum levels during the times when you aren’t really going to be using them. In fact this scheduling can be broken down at a more micro level to distinguish between the seasons of the year and the weekends etc., in some instances. If required, ‘macros’ can also be programmed into the system and these can be controlled remotely as required.

In fact, you can add settings – like “coming home” etc. that can activate various appliances, equipment and installations at the tap of your smartphone and you can have the opposite set as a “leaving home’ event. This ensures you use only as much energy as required, which adds to the overall energy efficiency of your home.

If you are considering getting smart automation solutions for your home, it’s important that you get experienced and credible electricians to handle the job for you. We at Allround Electricals are a company that has been operating in this space for a number of years and know what it takes to provide our customers with the kind of solutions they need.

For any more information about home automation or simply speak with the experts at our company. You can take our advice on various aspects of electrical and wiring installations. The number to call is – 1300 169 263. You can also write to us at this email address.

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We all know or at least heard that converting from Metal Halide (High Intensity Discharge) to LED will save you money.

But how much? Are there any other reasons or difference you should know about?

In this article, we break down all the factors that you should be aware of before making a decision to convert from Metal Halide to LED. Here are the 9 reasons we think LED wins over Metal Halide.

Let’s take a look at the information on a typical 400 watt metal halide bulb. While specifications may vary, a visit to a popular online website that sells Metal Halide bulbs shows that a brand new bulb has the following specifications:

We have just as many customers wanting to convert to LED because of maintenance savings as they do for energy savings. Think about what we discussed, over the life of the LED retrofit kit, a customer would have to do 5-6 Metal Halide replacements. The higher the installation height, the higher the cost of replacement. And if you have a facility loaded with lights, this becomes a significant budget amount every year that you must take into consideration. Now, we know that reduced maintenance time on lights does not translate into dollars saved because it is highly unlikely that people will lose their jobs over the fact there is much less work to do. However, these people will have time to now work on things that matter, like fixing the machines that make the company money instead on replacing lights that cost the company money.

When you take a measurement of light with a light meter, it reads lumens. And this measurement of all the lights that contribute to the light at that location creates a measurement called foot candles. But let’s think about that light that is being measured. Metal Halide creates all sorts of light, in all spectrum’s, visible or otherwise. This includes UV and IR spectrum’s, visible to the measuring device but not visible to the human eye. LED, on the other hand, does not produce UV and IR. Therefore, its readings using the same light meter is only picking up visible spectrum’s.

So there is a fun little test you can do. Have 2 light sources, LED and Metal Halide. And first ask, which one is brighter? And if the right LED source was selected, they should say LED. And then use a light meter, and the light meter may say the Metal Halide area is producing more foot candles. And so now you know part of the reason, but wait, there’s 2 other pieces of information you need to know.

Click here to see our infographic on Retrofitting vs Replacing.

Conclusion