- By Roger Ford, Safety and Training Coordinator
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) mandates that companies provide an electrically safe workplace for all personnel. To define what this means, OSHA turns to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and its NFPA 70E standard.
NFPA 70E continues to evolve as new thinking on electrical safety is introduced. The latest edition, NFPA 70E 2012, has changed significantly from the 2009 edition of the standard, and to help you understand how 70E 2012 impacts your company, D.L. Steiner has prepared this summary of …

- By Dan Steiner, PE, CEM, CDSM; President
Think for a moment about how much your facility pays annually for utilities: electricity, natural gas, etc. Now, think about taking one-fourth of an equivalent amount of money—and simply throwing it out the window!
Sure, this notion sounds crazy. But even in today’s cost-conscious world, that’s still essentially what American business does when it comes to the use of energy dollars. Recently compiled data by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (www.llnl.gov) shows that nearly one-fourth of the energy consumed by U.S. commercial and industrial …

A great way to start 2012 is by getting an accurate picture of your company’s energy usage and how you might become more energy efficient. And a great way to do this is with a free energy assessment currently being offered by D.L. Steiner.
D.L. Steiner’s energy assessment is a CEM-completed engineering study that uses your company’s historical energy data, an inspection of your facility, and comparisons with industry averages to identify areas where you can increase energy efficiency and conservation—and save money!
Contact D.L. Steiner at 419-222-6048 to schedule your …

By Ryan Zimmerman, Electrical Engineer
In the previous issue of the PCC Journal, we discussed how demand control can help companies lower their utility bills by smoothing out their electrical demand (the kW amount of electricity required for operations). This article looks at six great options for setting up an effective demand control program—and eliminating those costly demand charges!
Option 1: scheduled operations. Under scheduled operations, all operations are metered to determine their electrical load and then run at predetermined times, with some functions staggered so they don’t operate simultaneously. High-demand operations …

Power factor and power factor correction are familiar electrical terms, but just in case they are new to you, let’s do a quick review. As it relates to electrical energy, power factor is the ratio of working power to apparent power. Working power (kW) is the electrical energy you need to do useful things, namely, run production equipment. Apparent power (kVA) is the electrical energy your utility company must supply in order to deliver the working power you need.
These two energy values aren’t the same thing, and they aren’t necessarily …