Greenbuild Tradeshow - Phoenix

If you're in Phoenix this week, come by the Greenbuild trade show at the convention center.  I'll be in the EnOcean booth with the Illumra guys all day Wednesday helping to show the sustainable energy harvesting wireless technologies.  While not every installation makes sense for wireless equipment, many do, saving time, wiring, minimizing out-of-service time for hotels, commercial and/or residential energy management systems.

It looks like it's going to be a very busy show this year, with a lot of great events.  I'd love to stay an extra day and walk the show floor, as there are many amazing products being shown.

When less (energy) is more

Here's one risk to upgrading your lighting to higher efficiency fluorescent (or CFL, or LED): People don't worry as much about turning off the lights any more. See this blog posting for a comment from an actual user of a Cree LED fixture - "I don’t worry about turning them off all the time." I think it's a lot like the "sugar-free" syndrome. If you get a "sugar-free" or "low-calorie" food, I think people tend to eat more of it.
I think automated control systems help keep unused loads off any time they are not needed, but I'm rather biased, since that's what I design.