Advanced Energy

According to Berkeley Lab, in a report published in 2021, there are more than 50 million electric motor systems greater than 1 horsepower across the U.S. commercial and industrial sectors. And over a two-year period, about 5% of those motors — 2.5 million of them — were rewound. A concern when rewinding or repairing a motor is that it can lose efficiency, and this can be costly for a facility. Around 96% of the lifetime cost of a motor stems from its ongoing operation; expenses related to purchasing and maintenance account for only about 4%. Therefore, maintaining high motor efficiency through repair can lead to significant energy savings. One way commercial and industrial facilities can be confident that their motors will keep their efficiency through a rewind is by using a motor service center with third-party accreditation, including from EASA’s Accreditation Program or our Proven Efficiency Verification (PEV) program. When inspecting a service center for accreditation, these programs check for two main criteria. First, they assess whether the service center follows processes and standards, such as EASA/ANSI AR100 or NEMA MG-1, that will ensure that a repaired motor will sustain its reliability and efficiency. Second, they confirm whether the service center’s equipment is calibrated annually, indicating that it will provide consistent results. Once accredited, service centers can see several benefits, including the following. 🔁 Demonstrate consistency in processes and procedures that lead to quality motor repair 🙂 Earn customer confidence that their motors will be repaired to industry best practices and standards that maintain efficiency and reliability 🔧 Reduce warranty repairs internally and externally 🎛️ Ensure all test equipment is calibrated thanks to an annual calibration process 🧑🎓 Promote continual education at all levels 🧑🏭 Get an advantage when bringing on new staff 💯 Emphasize a commitment to excellence By earning third-party accreditation from groups like EASA and Advanced Energy, repair shops unlock a significant opportunity to showcase their dedication to quality and their customers. If you have questions about motor quality assurance programs, reach out to Ronnie Alford.

For Carolina Country Magazine, we write articles about tools and strategies that can improve people's homes and lives, whether it be through energy savings, comfort or convenience. But there are products and services that can be made to sound too good to be true, or that at least require careful consideration before pursuing. Here are several we've come across. ⚡ Household Power Savers/Electricity-Saving Boxes: These proclaim to save energy just by being plugged into a wall. From our testing and research, they don’t appear to do anything at all. 🖌️ Insulating Exterior Paint: The idea here is that certain types of paint can reflect enough heat that your cooling system won’t need to work as hard. Commercialized versions are still relatively young (the technology was originally invented by NASA to protect space shuttles), but most of the research to date suggests they don’t live up to the hype. 🧹 Duct Cleaning: It makes sense to want to keep your ducts clean. Unfortunately, if not done properly and carefully, duct cleaning can do more harm than good. 🛠️ General Improvements: Home improvements can certainly help save energy while boosting comfort, convenience, and home integrity and durability. But claims about savings in particular can be exaggerated, and an upgrade that saved a lot for one person may not for another, as many factors can play a role. 🪟 Windows: New windows can enhance a home’s appearance, comfort and energy efficiency, but the energy savings usually won't cover the expense. Instead, consider repairing your windows and incorporating energy-efficiency steps along the way, or adding window coverings or treatments like storm windows. ☀️ Home Solar: Any sound bites about solar totally eliminating energy bills should immediately raise suspicions. While rooftop solar can provide many benefits, it's an investment that requires significant consideration and research, as well as proper installation and maintenance. With new products coming out every day, people will likely continue to try to take advantage of unsuspecting homeowners. Before committing to anything that makes grand promises, it pays to do some digging to ensure you won’t regret your purchase later.

There's been some discourse about declining electric vehicle (EV) sales, but reality paints a different picture. Stephen Lapp is here with data from Atlas Public Policy and the NC Department of Transportation to back it up. Overall, EV sales are increasing year over year, with 2024 bringing the three highest U.S. sales months to date. 🔋 December 2024: 167,000 registrations 🔋 September 2024: 145,000 registrations 🔋 November 2024: 140,000 registrations For comparison, here are 2023’s top-performing months: 🔋 December 2023: 138,000 registrations 🔋 July 2023: 134,000 registrations 🔋 September 2023: 124,000 registrations In terms of market share, EVs have hovered around 10% and peaked at almost 12% nationally — this metric has about doubled from what it was a few years ago and continues to increase each year. In North Carolina, we exceeded 100,000 EV registrations in 2024. Almost 20% of all EVs on the road were purchased last year and roughly half have been purchased in the last two years. In other words, North Carolina didn’t have 50,000 EVs until September 2022, and we added another 50,000 in just 23 months! Our state's EV market share has also consistently grown. In 2024, it hovered around 7%, with a jump to almost 8% in Q4. This EV adoption, in many cases, is happening where you might think: in and around major metro areas. However, there are many more-rural counties also showing significant growth. So, EV sales are doing just fine, and we’re excited to see the 2025 numbers roll in. You can find visuals and more of the data at the link in the comments.

On April 1, our subsidiary, NC GreenPower, is opening up the application for its Solar+ Schools program. Solar+ Schools provides grant funding to North Carolina K–12 public schools to install 20-kW roof-mounted solar arrays. In addition to a fully funded array, awarded schools receive: 🏫 STEM curriculum and materials 🧑🏫 Teacher training 🌤️ A weather station 🎛️ Data monitoring equipment Solar+ Schools has been around since 2015. Since then, 95 schools across 50 counties have saved about $170,000 cumulatively in electricity expenses, and the STEM and solar curriculum training has benefited more than 300 teachers and 63,000 students. The solar arrays serve as a great instructional tool, offering a way for younger generations to get firsthand exposure to clean energy. Please spread the word about this opportunity to anyone who might be interested. The program is open to schools in Tier 1 and Tier 2 counties as designated by the NC Department of Commerce. More information is available at https://lnkd.in/gQP5Cbt5, and you can also contact Davis Reed with questions.

We're really excited about the EV chargers we just added at our new office to support our fleet and employee vehicles -- we know how important workplace charging is to encouraging EV adoption.   Thanks to Brandon and the rest of the SWTCH team for their assistance throughout the process!

We're really pleased with our new office sign from Lightship Neon. It's a great addition, and we loved working with them!

Approximately 15% of homes built in the U.S. each year have crawl space foundations, though that number is substantially higher in the Southeast. For a long time, crawl spaces were almost always constructed with wall vents, with the hope that these vents would allow outside air to control moisture. In 2001, however, we initiated research with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to evaluate the effectiveness of closed crawl spaces, spaces not ventilated with outside air. The idea of closed crawl spaces wasn’t new, but the approach hadn’t yet been systematically studied in our region. Our research, in the eastern North Carolina town of Princeville, examined 12 identical homes save for one key difference: their crawl spaces. 🏡 Four of the homes had traditional wall-vented crawl spaces 🏡 Four had closed crawl spaces with wall insulation 🏡 Four had closed crawl spaces with floor insulation The team tracked the spaces’ moisture content and the homes’ energy usage, and the results were clear: The closed crawl spaces performed better than their vented counterparts. A parallel, complementary investigation assessed existing wall-vented crawl spaces to document problems and common challenges, and to better understand the connection between air in the living space and air in the crawl space. This analysis found that the two environments are not distinct and that contaminants from the crawl space likely affect the living space, potentially influencing health, comfort and safety. The findings from this body of research were impressive on their own, but their impact was just getting started. Our studies led to the North Carolina Building Code Council making properly closed crawl spaces an allowable option under the state’s building code. Simultaneously, we collaborated and shared our research with building code officials and countless individuals from industries that all worked with or in crawl spaces, including builders, heating and cooling contractors, home inspectors and pest management professionals. These groups went on to incorporate closed crawl spaces into their own operations — or created new business models to support them — and the market blossomed. Today, many thousands of people across North Carolina work, in some form, with this building system. We’re honored to have contributed to an industry that is creating jobs and, more importantly, solving real-world problems for North Carolinians. Thanks to everyone who played a role in getting us here!

With the diversity of industrial machines and demands of different industries, power quality issues — fluctuations in available and reliable power that can impact facility equipment — are varied and potentially complicated. Concerns come in different forms: ⚡ Voltage sags and swells: Momentary interruptions that produce dips or increases in voltage ⚡ Under or overvoltage: Delivered voltage that fails to reach or exceeds the voltage requested by a customer ⚡ Voltage unbalance: In facilities with three-phase service, when one phase is substantially higher or lower than the others ⚡ Voltage transients: Very brief changes in voltage, on the order of microseconds ⚡ Harmonic distortion: The presence of additional sine waves (harmonics) in an electric system that are not the fundamental frequency (first order harmonic) Even brief power quality events can cause problems, sometimes severe, for a business, including: 📠 Equipment damage 🔧 Increased maintenance costs 💊 Scrapped product 🕰️ Lost production time 💭 Need for mitigation strategies We worked with a North Carolina pharmaceutical manufacturing plant to navigate power quality events that disrupted medicine production. The upgrades we recommended solved what accounted for an estimated 880 lost labor hours and the accompanying lost product. https://lnkd.in/e9FSaG4j If you have questions about power quality at your facility, reach out to us for support!

It’s been years since the heyday of nuclear power plants. In the 1970s, hyperboloid cooling towers rose across the U.S., but today, over a dozen states maintain moratoria on new nuclear plant permits. However, nuclear power appears poised for a comeback, driven by a new generation of technology. Reliably and safely meeting the anticipated surge in electricity demand from manufacturing, electrification, artificial intelligence and data centers will take many energy solutions, balancing cost, availability, carbon intensity and responsiveness. Traditional nuclear plants are best suited to providing a constant baseload for the grid — the energy source stands out for its low carbon footprint and 24/7 reliability. Plants being designed today offer the same low carbon footprint and reliability while adding attractive new features. Major technology companies are already investing in nuclear power as an answer to their energy-intensive operations. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Meta, for example, have announced plans to incorporate nuclear power into their energy strategies. Small modular reactors (SMRs) represent the latest innovation in nuclear energy. Designed to be smaller, safer, more flexible and more cost-effective than traditional large-scale nuclear plants, SMRs are heralded as a key solution to growing energy demands in a decarbonizing world. Their modular design allows multiple reactors to be combined to form larger-capacity plants that can adapt to grid needs by ramping up or down. Unlike conventional nuclear plants, SMRs can respond dynamically to fluctuations in grid demand and are well suited for decentralized energy generation. They also have additional safety and operational benefits — with passive safety systems that automatically cool reactors in emergencies without operator action — and are expected to have smaller emergency planning zones. Read more from Casey Stone, with perspective from Ken Canavan, about the state of nuclear power and SMRs across the world and right here in North Carolina. https://lnkd.in/eGNme7d8

We're grateful for our staff every day, but today is Employee Appreciation Day, so we wanted to give a special shout-out. Thanks to all of our team members for the work they do to help ensure that energy is clean, affordable, reliable, efficient and safe for all people. Here are some shots of us in our element and having fun at staff and community events.