Electrical Industry Articles and Stories

According to the latest information from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Americans have made a big change in how they use electricity – specifically, they’re using less of it, year after year. In fact, between 2010 and 2017, average electrical consumption fell 9.5%, with a similar drop in electricity bills, after accounting for inflation.

Emerson says it has introduced the world’s first hybrid panel board designed to serve as a single point of control for both power and fiber communications to serve the burgeoning Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) market.

The company’s Appleton PlexPower Fiber Panel is specifically designed for hazardous locations such as petrochemical plants, chemical plants, wastewater treatment centers, pulp/paper facilities, corrosive indoor and outdoor environments and other locales where flammable gases or vapors are present.

One fact is hard to miss if you’ve spent any time on electrical jobsites lately – electrical contractors are getting older. In fact, according to Electrical Contractor Magazine’s 2018 survey of electrical contractors, contractors’ average age has topped 58 years old, up a full year since the publication’s 2016 poll.

Van Meter Inc. Distribution Center and Office Building
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Van Meter’s employee-owners are passionate about their workplace. So much so that for eight consecutive years it has ranked as one of the top workplaces in Iowa. This is what can happen when you understand that your people are the most valuable aspect of your business, and you treat them that way.

Kids. You've got to love the little rug rats. It's so much fun to watch as they scoot around the floor. For years, my wife ran a childcare service from our home.

We also have three grandkids of our own, all of them girls. The oldest is seven (going on 15) and the other two are four-year-old twins.

Commercial building owners pondering renovations are quickly learning that building energy codes are getting stricter. Those codes are based on national standards that are increasingly focused on how lighting is controlled. The upshot is that any new lighting installations have to include some form of sensing to ensure that light fixtures aren’t turned on when they aren’t needed.