For anyone who is in control, manages, or even owns a facility that has a parking lot for either employees, customers and clients, or both; you know that security and protection of everyone is paramount.

With outdated, inefficient, and low quality output per watt, which is all that matters when it comes to getting the most efficient lighting. The reasons behind this is because let’s say you have two different LEDs products, one outputs 135 lumens per watt while the other is at 120 lumens / watt. To power a light that outputs at 18,000 lumens; the 120 lumen per watt fixture will take 150 watts to reach 18,000 total lumens. While the 135 lumen per watt fixture will only require approximately 133 watts to generate same exact amount of light that the other higher watt fixture products.

See the important of lumens per watt? It’s everything, and we believe

Here’s another project of ours where we retrofitted an existing fixture in a parking lot (before and after):

The image list could go on, but the gist is this: LED has and will always improve your facility’s lot. Just look at the images yourself for the proof!

By choosing LED parking lot products for your facility, you are choosing higher quality along with higher efficiency products. LEDs (more specifically MyLEDLightingGuide’s) offer a better Color Rendering Index rating talked about before is about lumen depreciation. Metal halide and HPS experience greater and quicker depreciation in lumen output than any LED product does. So while a brand new and freshly installed metal halide fixture may look the same as an LED to start off its life; give it a few years and watch the difference. LED is almost guaranteed to be brighter for longer.

On the topic of saving money, how about the final benefit that will make you fall in love with LED technology and what it can do for your business.

While you need to be careful which LED products you purchase and from where you buy them from; commercial LEDs are just as open to rebates as any other.

Something called DesignLights Consortium (DLC for short) qualifies products and lists them on their site if they pass vigorous tests set by them. They offer two types of listing: commercial rebates but they also prove to be lesser of quality. Think; if a company offers quality lights what’s their reason not to get qualified? There isn’t, and that’s exactly our point.

Thankfully there are many DLC qualified products out their on the market, including ours. You can always take a look around just to say hi!

It’s cold throughout MD, VA, and DC now, but the weather will soon start to change. Before you know it, it’ll become warmer, which means you should begin thinking about attic fan installation. An attic fan is a ventilation fan that regulates the heat level of a building’s attic by exhausting hot air. It is similar to a kitchen fan but located in the attic of a home. An attic fan is usually connected to a switch or string that you can access from the top floor of your home. You may be surprised to learn about all the benefits of installing an attic fan in your home.

Attic fans are key to maintaining an energy-efficient home. Your air conditioning unit will have to work overtime if you allow rising heat to stay in your home instead of routing it up and out. This ultimately reduces the unit’s efficiency. An attic fan is an excellent home cooling option that also keeps your energy bill down in hot summer months.

An attic fan helps reduce the humidity, or overall moisture level, in a house. Daily household activities—showering and cooking, for example—create moisture that rises and can build up in the attic if the space isn’t properly ventilated. If you don’t take any action and allow this moisture to sit in the attic for an extended period, it will eventually create mold in the insulation and possibly even in the wood structure of the attic. This moisture can be especially damaging during the wintertime (now!) when cold turns it to ice or frost. The expansion of ice and frost can seriously damage your roof.

An attic fan helps combat moisture and transfers it out of the attic before it can cause serious damage to insulation, wood structure, and roofing materials. Now is the perfect time for attic fan installation—it will help prevent ice or frost from forming and damaging your roof, and you’ll need an attic fan for the warmer months anyways. Contact Kolb Electric for attic fan installation.

Here’s a question: are you currently leaving the windows of your home closed? Doing so could trap gas from your furnace or oil heater in your house. These combustion gases can be removed with the help of an attic fan.

This really is the perfect time to schedule attic fan installation. We’ve been serving Baltimore and Bethesda, MD as well as Alexandria, VA and Washington, DC since 1925. You can count on our experienced electricians to get the job done right the first time. Call us or contact us online for installation.

Although your regular power supply is proven to be a steady source of electricity for your home, it’s also known how a major storm can knock out your electrical connections on occasion. Typically, it’s only a short time of power outage for an evening or maybe an afternoon, so you go to bed early or take a much needed nap and the power is back on when you wake up. Two situations result in situations that aren’t so cute. One, you have work to do that can’t be postponed even though your power is off for a couple of hours. Secondly, when power is out for several days so you know you need to cook all the food you kept frozen, but can’t cook it because the power is out.

Preparing for Natural Disasters

When a major storm approaches you’ve certainly seen long lines at the grocery store of people buying last minute needs in case they won’t be available over the upcoming days. A better idea is to prepare ahead of time so you have no worries should a storm take your power out for a few days. A flashlight, bottled water, canned goods, a heater with fuel and perhaps a camp stove are always good to have around in case of an emergency. Better yet is to have a generator so you can continue to run your home as a home and live your life according to how you live on a daily basis.

Generators and Solar Panels

Solar panels may seem like a perfect solution, but unfortunately they don’t work very well when the sun is blocked by the storm that knocked out your regular electric supply. Generators, on the other hand, are ready to run as long as you keep them fueled and can keep you going during a power outage. A temporary outage for thirty minutes won’t be a problem as the generator will turn on so you never know the power went out. You may need to conserve energy for an outage expected to last several days, but your basic needs of heat, refrigeration, and cooking will be met.

Battery technology has already made our lives more portable and convenient. From the disposable alkalines you used to use to power your Walkman to the modern rechargeable batteries in your cell phone and laptop, they allow us to take our work, entertainment and communication systems on the go. But batteries might have an even grander destiny: they could revolutionize the way we generate and use energy all throughout the home. Read on for a glimpse into our battery-powered future.

From Electric Cars to Your Living Room

Leading the charge into the brave new world of batteries is Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors. Musk recently launched Tesla Energy, a suite of batteries designed to facilitate flexibility for consumers and ultimately pave the way to an energy grid that doesn't rely on fossil fuels.

"Our goal," Musk said at a press conference, "is to fundamentally change the way the world uses energy."

Tesla used its expertise in designing batteries for electric cars to make batteries bigger and more powerful. The company’s new lithium-ion batteries are optimized to enable “homes, business, and utilities to store sustainable and renewable energy to manage power demand, provide backup power and increase grid resilience,” the company promises.

Energy at Any Time of Day

Because Tesla’s new battery technology allows residential and business users to store electricity until it’s needed, it creates the opportunity to purchase electricity during off-peak time, easing the stress on our electrical grid. It also helps users get more out of sustainable but intermittent fuel sources like wind and solar.

If the technology catches on, consumers can take better advantage of utility time-of-day pricing. Some utilities in North America sell electricity at cheaper rates during nights and weekends, when there is less demand. A homeowner could therefore charge a battery at night and use it during the day, which saves money for them and reduces the generation cost for the utility company by smoothing out the demand.

Furthermore, as solar and wind technologies become cheaper and more viable, the ability to store their output means that they can further cut into the market share of fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, reducing human impact on climate change.

Keep the Lights On and the TV Running

Another advantage of the enhanced storage potential is that homeowners will still have power in the event of a blackout or other disruption to the power grid. And people who want to go off the grid entirely with solar energy can do it without worrying about running out of power during the night.

The batteries are expensive, starting at $3,000 for residential models. If the program takes off, the price should fall and ever-better technologies will be developed to improve storage, capacity, transmission and other specifications.

For now, the Tesla batteries look like a useful, if expensive, addition to the energy-conscious homeowner's arsenal. If prices do continue to fall, however, the batteries could transform into something truly revolutionary.