Enigin Update - U.S. DOE Ignores Its Own Advice
THE U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) web site publishes energy saving and efficiency advise – as you would expect, but the New York Times reports that it’s a case of “do as I say, not what I do” for the DOE
An internal audit revealed on Wednesday that many of the DOE’s offices still haven’t installed energy efficient lighting and are still relying on obsolete fluorescent bulbs, with very few switching to the most efficient LED (light-emitting diode) lighting, which they advise businesses to use.
As the DOE advises others, if they made just these changes they could make substantial savings, with a pay back within a couple of years – they should read their own web site.
The New York Times reports that in one case, when the DOE in 1997 moved into new buildings they installed timers to shut off lights at night, but they didn’t gain any benefit: as of March of this year, they had still not bought the central control unit needed to run the system.
“We are requesting people in the federal sector and the private sector to do the cost-benefit analysis and make the investment,” Gregory H. Friedman, the inspector general, said in a telephone interview with the Times. “We should do it ourselves.”
The Times also stated that a spokeswoman for the Energy Department, Stephanie Mueller, said regarding the report, “We can acknowledge there’s more work that needs to be done.”
The audit discovered that there was a lack of any department wide system to track or calculate the savings and the return on investment from the energy savings.
Seven sites were visited, but only one had a system in place for even identifying the savings, the auditors said.
According the report the DOE’s 9,000 buildings nationwide accumulates a huge electric bill of $190 million annually, with $76 million from just lighting, the report said.
Enigin Distributors across the States would be able to help the DOE to monitor their energy use in real-time and then install the right technology to control and make the savings they encourage others to make.
