Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

I thought programmable thermostats were a brilliant invention when I bought my first one back in 2003. That’s when I moved out of my Chicago condo, with its centrally controlled boiler, and into a single-family home. I liked the set-it-and-forget-it convenience of programing a week’s-worth of morning, evening and weekend temperature changes that just happened automatically.

When they were first launched several years ago, smart plugs seemed like just another new toy for the tech-obsessed. But, over time, many consumers have come to appreciate the convenience they can offer. For example, combined with a mobile app, they can take the place of the complicated timers you might have used to turn lights on and off when you’ve been away.

If you grew up like I did, in a home where thriftiness was highly valued, you likely heard the phrase “Turn off those lights!” on a regular basis. Leaving lights on in empty rooms was seen as a sign of laziness and wastefulness. Over the past decade, a number of energy codes have picked up on this message, with mandates for sensing and controls to help reduce electricity use and the greenhouse gas emissions that might be related to its production.

I’m currently in the process of planning a kitchen remodeling project and learning even more about LED lighting in the process. For example, one of the electricians looking over the room for an estimate noted that his company pretty much only works with dedicated LED downlights, now – in other words, fixtures that work with embedded LEDs, rather than more generic units that would work with LED bulbs – or any other kind of bulb, for that matter.

I'm not a spring chicken by any stretch of the imagination. But I'm not technology challenged, either. Fired up my first computer in the '80s, and I've had a love affair with tech ever since. Don't tell my wife, okay?

Seriously though, I do like my tech and use it to make life easier for me. I have high-speed internet in the 1 gigabyte range, flying over fiber optics supplied by my electric company.

There’s a lot of electrical work that goes on in our ceilings. Light fixtures, fans, smoke and carbon monoxide detectors – all of these devices often find a home above our heads. The trick for electrical contractors can lie in how to mount these products, given the broad array of ceiling conditions they can encounter.