Our good news this Friday comes courtesy of Fox Business Channel. A common thread running through these posts has been that conservation is always preferable to new generation of power. Fox reported on the Power Efficiency Corporation, whose specialty is motor controllers. These devices do exactly what the name implies: by controlling the output of the motor to match the instantaneous load being drawn from it, the overall efficiency is enhanced, often dramatically. This includes motors used in washing machines, escalators and elevators, refrigerators, and virtually any other appliance that uses electric motors.
There are two ways to accomplish this: one is to use analog circuitry (transistors etc) and the other is to use digital circuitry (IC chips etc) to sense the load and adjust the motor. The advantage of analog has always been in high-current applications like escalators. But rapid progress in silicon circuitry in the past two decades has made digital control of motors much easier; plus, the digital circuitry can be ‘programmed’ for different applications, whereas analog controllers tended to be a unique design for each application.
With ‘tens of millions of new washers, dryers and refrigerators sold each year,’ each getting efficiency gains of ‘9-27%,’ the potential energy savings in just home appliances could be as much as $1.6 billion. (How many wind turbines does that represent?) I take great encouragement from the fact that companies are working just as hard on this sort of efficiency improvements as others are at new generating technology. Separately, conservation and generation each can do a large part of solving the many energy problems. Together, they can make all the difference.
Check out the article at Fox Business.
