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Co-ops Search for Best LEDs By Michael W. Kahn, Electric Co-op Today
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By Derrill Holly, Electric Co-op Today
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at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Michigan to help develop LPN Optimal Resiliency Model software, Spiers said. “The tool will identify the most costeffective upgrades that utilities can make to improve grid resiliency.” Plans call for completion of the project by the end of the 2018 fiscal year. “Modernizing the U.S. electrical grid is essential to… keeping the lights on,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz in a prepared statement announcing funding for a number of grid improvements and research projects. Moniz added that public-private partnerships are key in strengthening the nation’s electrical infrastructure for the decades ahead. —ECT.coop
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Figuring out which LEDs to buy can be harder than assembling IKEA furniture. “There are a lot of LED options out there, and options are often viewed as a luxury to have. But the only problem is you have to sift through them, because there are better LEDs than others,” said Joshua McGhee, strategic communications manager at Touchstone Energy. Electric co-ops around the country are working with their local municipalities and other governmental units on updating street lighting and other outdoor lights with LED lamps. It is important for the co-ops to recommend what is going to work best for the situation and be most cost effective because outdoor lightening is a big expense for cities, towns and schools. “What I would encourage is informed skepticism. You’ve got to know the right questions to ask,” said David Korow, senior lighting specialist at the General Electric Lighting Research Center. “And then you need to be able to verify what was said.” A key issue is life span. Many in the industry base it on LED lumen maintenance, a measure of how well a lamp maintains its light output over time. Korow likened that to “basing the life of your computer on the backspace key. “What about everything else?” he asked, rattling off a long list including drivers, controls, connections, gaskets and housings. Korow said GE’s research shows the weak link in the system is not the LEDs. Instead, researchers are finding that the driver often goes first. Korow suggested testing LEDs and getting public feedback, which is what Poudre Valley Rural Electric Association did when Windsor city officials approached the co-op about replacing some 550 streetlights. “We had samples provided by the vendors,” said David White, member relations manager at Fort Collins-based PVREA. After a review by co-op engineering and operations staff, the samples were deployed, mainly in parks. The town put a map of where to find them on its website. This was to raise public awareness of what the co-op and town planned, White said. PVREA really encouraged residents to take a look at these different lights and share their views on the amount and color of light. “The public really got to participate,” White said. “We received a lot of positive feedback.”
Electric cooperatives are playing a key role in developing strategies to reduce economic losses caused by weather-related power outages while improving the resiliency of the nation’s power grid. Under a $1.8 million U.S. Department of Energy grant, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association is helping develop open source software designed to identify cost-effective upgrades for electric grid components to reduce damage and speed recovery from extreme weather events. “With more than 2.5 million miles of distribution line and transmission components serving 47 states, our member cooperatives face every weather extreme common to North America,” said Jim Spiers, NRECA’s vice president of business and technology strategies. NRECA will work with research partners
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