ProPhotonix Ltd raises cash, targets new LED markets
Although best known for machine-vision products, ProPhotonix Ltd is looking to expand into other markets, such as medical and illumination, after raising cash from the sale of shares.
ProPhotonix Limited, a designer and manufacturer of LED light-engines and laser-diode modules with operations in Ireland and the UK, has raised approximately GBP 3.255 million before expenses from the sale of 23.25 million new shares.
The company said in its press release that the funds would be used to "capitalize on the opportunities available in our chosen markets through the application of our proprietary technology and expertise in relation to LED-based lighting applications and in developing our laser-module business."
Best known as a supplier of light sources for machine vision, ProPhotonix has recently expanded into the medical-equipment and homeland-security markets, and says it intends to develop and market a high-power LED light-engine product line for the industrial illumination market.
COBRA Slim linescan illuminator provides extreme brightness in a slim form-factor and is available in any length up to 5 metres.
FIG. 1. COBRA Slim linescan illuminator
In October 2009, StockerYale, Inc. sold its North American operations, including its specialty-optical-fiber division, to Coherent, and about nine months later StockerYale changed its name to ProPhotonix Limited. Its shares are traded on the AIM (PPIX and PPIR) and OTC (STKR.PK) stock exchanges.
Based in Salem, New Hampshire, the company has two operating subsidiaries, an LED operation in Cork, Ireland and a laser operation in the UK. ProPhotonix Ireland is the company’s center for LED research, design and production of LED arrays and light engines for various markets.
This part of the company began as a spin-out from University College Cork, which developed what has become ProPhotonix’s proprietary COBRA chip-on-board (COB) LED technology. As the name implies, COB manufacturing places unpackaged LED chips directly onto the circuit board. “We buy chips and mount them very close together in thermally-efficient packages,” says Mark Blodgett, ProPhotonix’s chairman and CEO. “We offer a very strong engineering capability, and a lot of our products are custom-made.”
Blodgett says that the company’s production capacity was increased three-fold in the fourth quarter of 2010, adding automated capabilities for pick & place, die bonding and encapsulation. “We have sufficient capacity for 2011,” he says. “Despite their banking woes, we’ve found Ireland to be an incredibly creative engineering environment with many highly qualified engineers available.”
Applications
Among ProPhotonix’s LED products are COBRA and COBRA Slim (Fig. 1), which addresses complex linescan illumination needs; and Lotus, a highly reliable replacement for fluorescent machine-vision applications.
2011年7月20日 星期三
Lighting project seeks to change the color of downtown
Lighting project seeks to change the color of downtown
Downtown Le Mars may soon be more colorful at night, if a joint venture between the Le Mars Area Chamber of Commerce and the Le Mars Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is undertaken.
The two groups are proposing to install permanent LED lighting on the top of buildings in a five-block area of downtown, as well as lighting the trees downtown.
The proposed designated first phase area would include Central Avenue from the Le Mars Beauty College to Bamboo Village - both sides of the street and on Plymouth Street from Bixenman Insurance to Sherwin Williams.
Estimated cost of the project is $56,000 and will be paid for by fundraising events held by the Chamber and CVB.
A public meeting on the project will be held Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the lower level of Primebank.
Those attending are asked to use the north doors of Primebank. Business owners, building owners and Le Mars citizens are invited to come to the meeting to learn more about the possible project.
A presentation by Bill Kahler, of Channel Brite Lighting, of Dakota Dunes, S.D, will demonstrate the lighting system and answer questions about the project.
The Channel Brite Permanent Outdoor LED Lighting System was developed to provide year-round lighting that is attractive and long lasting, according to Mary Reynolds, Main Street manager, Le Mars Chamber of Commerce.
The system is energy efficient and it only needs to be put up once. The system is virtually unnoticeable when not turned on, and can easily be changed to celebrate any occasion.
Le Mars is looking at the color combination of red, green and amber.
"We like this color combination because it color coordinates with (red) Le Mars Community School, (green) Gehlen Catholic and (amber) a good off-season color," Reynolds said.
The city of Clarion was among the first to use Channel Brite to light its downtown. Reynolds and Main Street Organizational and Design Committee members have been exploring the possibility of doing a similar project in Le Mars for two years.
If the project proceeds, one business in each block will house a controller mechanism for the block. Business owners in the block would share the cost of electricity. The City of Le Mars will pay the cost for lighting the trees, according to Reynolds.
"We'll also be able to coordinate our color scheme with Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Fourth of July, Christmas, Memorial Day along with lots of other school events," said Jessica Lingren, CVB manager. "You can change the pattern and speed so that you can have a different light display every night! It's going to add a lot to our downtown atmosphere."
"We feel this project, along with the wonderful downtown we have, will create a warm and welcoming space," said Reynolds.
Downtown Le Mars may soon be more colorful at night, if a joint venture between the Le Mars Area Chamber of Commerce and the Le Mars Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) is undertaken.
The two groups are proposing to install permanent LED lighting on the top of buildings in a five-block area of downtown, as well as lighting the trees downtown.
The proposed designated first phase area would include Central Avenue from the Le Mars Beauty College to Bamboo Village - both sides of the street and on Plymouth Street from Bixenman Insurance to Sherwin Williams.
Estimated cost of the project is $56,000 and will be paid for by fundraising events held by the Chamber and CVB.
A public meeting on the project will be held Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. in the lower level of Primebank.
Those attending are asked to use the north doors of Primebank. Business owners, building owners and Le Mars citizens are invited to come to the meeting to learn more about the possible project.
A presentation by Bill Kahler, of Channel Brite Lighting, of Dakota Dunes, S.D, will demonstrate the lighting system and answer questions about the project.
The Channel Brite Permanent Outdoor LED Lighting System was developed to provide year-round lighting that is attractive and long lasting, according to Mary Reynolds, Main Street manager, Le Mars Chamber of Commerce.
The system is energy efficient and it only needs to be put up once. The system is virtually unnoticeable when not turned on, and can easily be changed to celebrate any occasion.
Le Mars is looking at the color combination of red, green and amber.
"We like this color combination because it color coordinates with (red) Le Mars Community School, (green) Gehlen Catholic and (amber) a good off-season color," Reynolds said.
The city of Clarion was among the first to use Channel Brite to light its downtown. Reynolds and Main Street Organizational and Design Committee members have been exploring the possibility of doing a similar project in Le Mars for two years.
If the project proceeds, one business in each block will house a controller mechanism for the block. Business owners in the block would share the cost of electricity. The City of Le Mars will pay the cost for lighting the trees, according to Reynolds.
"We'll also be able to coordinate our color scheme with Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Fourth of July, Christmas, Memorial Day along with lots of other school events," said Jessica Lingren, CVB manager. "You can change the pattern and speed so that you can have a different light display every night! It's going to add a lot to our downtown atmosphere."
"We feel this project, along with the wonderful downtown we have, will create a warm and welcoming space," said Reynolds.
2011年7月14日 星期四
THE HUMAN COMEDY
GATES OF LIGHT & THE HUMAN COMEDY
Lyonel Feininger began his career as a cartoonist and illustrator -- a very successful one and a very original one. He was so successful that in 1906, after working for a dozen years in Germany, he was offered a job as a cartoonist at the Chicago Tribune, the largest circulation newspaper in the Midwest. He worked there for a year, inventing what became the standard design for the comic strip: in the words of John Carlin, “an overall pattern. . . that allowed the page to be read both as a series of elements one after the other, like language, and as a group of juxtaposed images, like visual art.”(1) His originality did not end there: he went on to become one of the great abstract painters. Like Kandinsky, music was his model, but Kandinsky only knew music from the outside -- as a listener (inspired initially by Wagner, then by Schoenberg) -- while Feininger knew it from the inside. He was born into a musical family -- his father was a violinist and composer, his mother was a singer and pianist, and at the age of 16 he left New York, where he was born (1871), to study music and visual art in Germany, from where his parents emigrated.
He studied violin with his father, and by the age of 12 he was performing in public, but he also drew incessantly, most notably the steamboats and sailing ships on the Hudson and East Rivers, and the landscape around Sharon, Conn., where he spent time on a farm owned by a family friend. Steamboats and sailing ships appear again and again in his later work. So do the “Connecticut hills against the Western sky” -- with its setting sun. But now its “wide valleys and solitary farms, barns, and the great old trees, amongst which the village church is nestled,” have been transposed to rural villages of Germany, as Feininger himself remarked.
The later works are nostalgic, but more to the artistic point they are illustrational as well as abstract -- abstract illustrations, even more pointedly, populist abstractions, that is, abstractions that appealed to the same masses who read the comic strips as well as to the esthetic cognoscenti who despised them. Comic strips were too “vulgar” to be taken seriously as art, but Feininger’s abstract images were esthetically precious despite their illustrational character. But the taint of being a people’s art -- an art that had broad rather than specialist appeal -- hung like a cloud over Feininger’s abstractions, which is why they have never been fully respected by the “purists.” Greenberg ignores them, and Mark Rosenthal didn’t bother to show them in his Guggenheim exhibition of "Abstraction in the 20th Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline," presumably because they weren’t risky, free, and formally disciplined enough -- that is, they weren’t totally, ruthlessly abstract.
They were always second best; however formally refined, their subject matter stood out like a sore thumb, as it were, poking one in the eye with its offensive self-evidence, and with that its commonplaceness. Its ordinariness was not masked sufficiently by extraordinary art, however extraordinary Feininger’s art was -- which was apparently not extraordinary enough, because its subject matter remained too obvious: thus the vicious circle in which his art was caught. However “modernized” into Cubo-Futurist obscurity, the Clouds above the Sea I, 1923, the sailboats in X 54, 1929, and the Church at Gelmeroda XII, 1936, remain all too recognizable, and, worst of all, accurately described. The works were “pictorial,” and as such seriously flawed from the prevailing abstract perspective. They were scenic pictures, however abstractly scripted. Purity for Feininger was an instrument of precision, not an end in itself, which perhaps explains the oddly engineered, not to say Bauhaus look of his abstract images. (He was associated with the design school until it closed, and designed the optimistic Cathedral, 1919, that appeared on the brochure advertising it. The dramatic image, seamlessly integrating elements of Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism and Constructivism in a new artistic structure -- a consummate avant-garde architecture, yet, ironically, one which used traditional sacred architecture as a template, even Platonic ideal -- symbolized “the new structure of the future,” and with it the reconciliation of the warring avant-garde factions, their working in the name of a common artistic and social cause, that Gropius celebrated in the brochure’s manifesto.)
Feininger’s paintings may not have seemed up to abstract par when they were made -- he never had the pride of pioneering place that Kandinsky and Gropius had (in a 1926 group photograph of the Bauhaus Masters, Gropius and Kandinsky stand in the center, their right arms raised in a quasi-Napoleonic pose, while Feininger and the other masters stand in more relaxed, passive poses, their arms lowered, as though submitting to the authority of the leaders) -- but they have gained a new lease on importance now that purity has become passé, not to say peculiarly ridiculous. Hygienically sacrificing familiar content to unfamiliar form -- paring content away until there is only consciousness of form -- backfired into staleness and sterility. It led to short-lived esthetic success -- the so-called “new lyricism” that Braque spoke of -- but it became a failure of creative imagination, however initially creative.
Feininger realized this, perhaps more than any other abstractionist of his time. He never lost his imagination, that is, his imaginative response to external, consciously perceived reality -- unlike Kandinsky, who argued that abstraction existed to evoke internal reality, to make us conscious of unconscious content (suggesting that he was not equal to external reality, as his so-called “Impressions” of it confirm, and, as his “Improvisations” suggest, he had no sense of the logic of the unconscious, but rather regarded it as a sort of Pandora’s box of illogical feelings, exciting and surprising but finally incoherent and incomprehensible, and as such absurdly autonomous ends in themselves).
Lyonel Feininger began his career as a cartoonist and illustrator -- a very successful one and a very original one. He was so successful that in 1906, after working for a dozen years in Germany, he was offered a job as a cartoonist at the Chicago Tribune, the largest circulation newspaper in the Midwest. He worked there for a year, inventing what became the standard design for the comic strip: in the words of John Carlin, “an overall pattern. . . that allowed the page to be read both as a series of elements one after the other, like language, and as a group of juxtaposed images, like visual art.”(1) His originality did not end there: he went on to become one of the great abstract painters. Like Kandinsky, music was his model, but Kandinsky only knew music from the outside -- as a listener (inspired initially by Wagner, then by Schoenberg) -- while Feininger knew it from the inside. He was born into a musical family -- his father was a violinist and composer, his mother was a singer and pianist, and at the age of 16 he left New York, where he was born (1871), to study music and visual art in Germany, from where his parents emigrated.
He studied violin with his father, and by the age of 12 he was performing in public, but he also drew incessantly, most notably the steamboats and sailing ships on the Hudson and East Rivers, and the landscape around Sharon, Conn., where he spent time on a farm owned by a family friend. Steamboats and sailing ships appear again and again in his later work. So do the “Connecticut hills against the Western sky” -- with its setting sun. But now its “wide valleys and solitary farms, barns, and the great old trees, amongst which the village church is nestled,” have been transposed to rural villages of Germany, as Feininger himself remarked.
The later works are nostalgic, but more to the artistic point they are illustrational as well as abstract -- abstract illustrations, even more pointedly, populist abstractions, that is, abstractions that appealed to the same masses who read the comic strips as well as to the esthetic cognoscenti who despised them. Comic strips were too “vulgar” to be taken seriously as art, but Feininger’s abstract images were esthetically precious despite their illustrational character. But the taint of being a people’s art -- an art that had broad rather than specialist appeal -- hung like a cloud over Feininger’s abstractions, which is why they have never been fully respected by the “purists.” Greenberg ignores them, and Mark Rosenthal didn’t bother to show them in his Guggenheim exhibition of "Abstraction in the 20th Century: Total Risk, Freedom, Discipline," presumably because they weren’t risky, free, and formally disciplined enough -- that is, they weren’t totally, ruthlessly abstract.
They were always second best; however formally refined, their subject matter stood out like a sore thumb, as it were, poking one in the eye with its offensive self-evidence, and with that its commonplaceness. Its ordinariness was not masked sufficiently by extraordinary art, however extraordinary Feininger’s art was -- which was apparently not extraordinary enough, because its subject matter remained too obvious: thus the vicious circle in which his art was caught. However “modernized” into Cubo-Futurist obscurity, the Clouds above the Sea I, 1923, the sailboats in X 54, 1929, and the Church at Gelmeroda XII, 1936, remain all too recognizable, and, worst of all, accurately described. The works were “pictorial,” and as such seriously flawed from the prevailing abstract perspective. They were scenic pictures, however abstractly scripted. Purity for Feininger was an instrument of precision, not an end in itself, which perhaps explains the oddly engineered, not to say Bauhaus look of his abstract images. (He was associated with the design school until it closed, and designed the optimistic Cathedral, 1919, that appeared on the brochure advertising it. The dramatic image, seamlessly integrating elements of Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism and Constructivism in a new artistic structure -- a consummate avant-garde architecture, yet, ironically, one which used traditional sacred architecture as a template, even Platonic ideal -- symbolized “the new structure of the future,” and with it the reconciliation of the warring avant-garde factions, their working in the name of a common artistic and social cause, that Gropius celebrated in the brochure’s manifesto.)
Feininger’s paintings may not have seemed up to abstract par when they were made -- he never had the pride of pioneering place that Kandinsky and Gropius had (in a 1926 group photograph of the Bauhaus Masters, Gropius and Kandinsky stand in the center, their right arms raised in a quasi-Napoleonic pose, while Feininger and the other masters stand in more relaxed, passive poses, their arms lowered, as though submitting to the authority of the leaders) -- but they have gained a new lease on importance now that purity has become passé, not to say peculiarly ridiculous. Hygienically sacrificing familiar content to unfamiliar form -- paring content away until there is only consciousness of form -- backfired into staleness and sterility. It led to short-lived esthetic success -- the so-called “new lyricism” that Braque spoke of -- but it became a failure of creative imagination, however initially creative.
Feininger realized this, perhaps more than any other abstractionist of his time. He never lost his imagination, that is, his imaginative response to external, consciously perceived reality -- unlike Kandinsky, who argued that abstraction existed to evoke internal reality, to make us conscious of unconscious content (suggesting that he was not equal to external reality, as his so-called “Impressions” of it confirm, and, as his “Improvisations” suggest, he had no sense of the logic of the unconscious, but rather regarded it as a sort of Pandora’s box of illogical feelings, exciting and surprising but finally incoherent and incomprehensible, and as such absurdly autonomous ends in themselves).
Efficient Active Power Factor Correction in a 900-Watt Power Supply
Power Integrations' New HiperPFS(TM) Design Enables 97%-Efficient Active Power Factor Correction in a 900-Watt Power Supply
Power Integrations /quotes/zigman/56928/quotes/nls/powi POWI -4.52% , the leader in high-voltage integrated circuits for energy-efficient power conversion, today published a new design example report (DER-274) describing a 900-watt power supply with 97%-efficient active power factor correction (PFC). Based on the company's HiperPFS(TM) family of highly integrated, high-efficiency PFC controller ICs, the design offers a smaller, lighter, higher efficiency alternative to passive PFC solutions for white goods, blowers, computers/servers, power supplies, and motor control drives.
The HiperPFS family of PFC controllers incorporates a continuous conduction mode (CCM) boost PFC controller, gate driver, and high-voltage power MOSFET in a single, low-profile eSIP(TM) package. Suitable for PFC applications from 85 W to 1 kW, HiperPFS devices employ an innovative control scheme that optimizes efficiency over the entire load range of the converter, particularly at light loads. This variable-frequency control technique also significantly reduces EMI filtering requirements due to its wide-bandwidth, spread-spectrum effect. Compared with designs that use discrete MOSFETs and controllers, HiperPFS devices dramatically reduce component count and board footprint, while simplifying system design and enhancing reliability.
The power supply detailed in DER-274, based on HiperPFS part number PFS729EG, is a general-purpose, high-efficiency evaluation platform that operates from 180 VAC to 264 VAC input and provides a regulated 380 VDC output voltage and a continuous output power of 900 W at 25C.
Comments Edward Ong, product marketing manager at Power Integrations: "The HiperPFS family stands apart from competing PFC solutions for the high efficiency and high power factor that can be achieved across the load range, as well its ease of use and low external parts count. Designers of white goods, blowers, and water pump applications can use HiperPFS to meet high power factor and line harmonic standards."
HiperPFS ICs include Power Integrations' standard set of comprehensive safety features, such as integrated soft-start, undervoltage, overvoltage, brown-in/out, and hysteretic thermal shutdown protection. HiperPFS also provides cycle-by-cycle current limit for the power MOSFET, power limiting of the output for over-load protection, and pin-to-pin short-circuit protection.
This design example report (DER-274) is free to download now from the Power Integrations website at www.powerint.com/sites/default/files/PDFFiles/der274.pdf . The HiperPFS product introductory video, data sheet, application notes, and other design examples are available on the company's website at www.powerint.com/hiperpfs .
About Power Integrations
Power Integrations is the leading supplier of high-voltage integrated circuits used in energy-efficient power conversion. The company's innovative technology enables compact, energy-efficient power supplies in a wide range of electronic products, in AC-DC, DC-DC, and LED lighting applications. Since its introduction in 1998, Power Integrations' EcoSmart(TM) energy-efficiency technology has saved an estimated $4.9 billion of standby energy waste and prevented millions of tons of CO2 emissions. The company's Green Room web site provides a wealth of information about "energy vampires" and the issue of standby energy waste, along with a comprehensive guide to energy-efficiency standards around the world. Reflecting the environmental benefits of EcoSmart technology, Power Integrations' stock is included in The Cleantech Index(R) and the NASDAQ(R) Clean Edge(R) Green Energy Index. For more information, please visit www.powerint.com .
Power Integrations, HiperPFS, eSIP, EcoSmart, and the Power Integrations logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Power Integrations, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Power Integrations /quotes/zigman/56928/quotes/nls/powi POWI -4.52% , the leader in high-voltage integrated circuits for energy-efficient power conversion, today published a new design example report (DER-274) describing a 900-watt power supply with 97%-efficient active power factor correction (PFC). Based on the company's HiperPFS(TM) family of highly integrated, high-efficiency PFC controller ICs, the design offers a smaller, lighter, higher efficiency alternative to passive PFC solutions for white goods, blowers, computers/servers, power supplies, and motor control drives.
The HiperPFS family of PFC controllers incorporates a continuous conduction mode (CCM) boost PFC controller, gate driver, and high-voltage power MOSFET in a single, low-profile eSIP(TM) package. Suitable for PFC applications from 85 W to 1 kW, HiperPFS devices employ an innovative control scheme that optimizes efficiency over the entire load range of the converter, particularly at light loads. This variable-frequency control technique also significantly reduces EMI filtering requirements due to its wide-bandwidth, spread-spectrum effect. Compared with designs that use discrete MOSFETs and controllers, HiperPFS devices dramatically reduce component count and board footprint, while simplifying system design and enhancing reliability.
The power supply detailed in DER-274, based on HiperPFS part number PFS729EG, is a general-purpose, high-efficiency evaluation platform that operates from 180 VAC to 264 VAC input and provides a regulated 380 VDC output voltage and a continuous output power of 900 W at 25C.
Comments Edward Ong, product marketing manager at Power Integrations: "The HiperPFS family stands apart from competing PFC solutions for the high efficiency and high power factor that can be achieved across the load range, as well its ease of use and low external parts count. Designers of white goods, blowers, and water pump applications can use HiperPFS to meet high power factor and line harmonic standards."
HiperPFS ICs include Power Integrations' standard set of comprehensive safety features, such as integrated soft-start, undervoltage, overvoltage, brown-in/out, and hysteretic thermal shutdown protection. HiperPFS also provides cycle-by-cycle current limit for the power MOSFET, power limiting of the output for over-load protection, and pin-to-pin short-circuit protection.
This design example report (DER-274) is free to download now from the Power Integrations website at www.powerint.com/sites/default/files/PDFFiles/der274.pdf . The HiperPFS product introductory video, data sheet, application notes, and other design examples are available on the company's website at www.powerint.com/hiperpfs .
About Power Integrations
Power Integrations is the leading supplier of high-voltage integrated circuits used in energy-efficient power conversion. The company's innovative technology enables compact, energy-efficient power supplies in a wide range of electronic products, in AC-DC, DC-DC, and LED lighting applications. Since its introduction in 1998, Power Integrations' EcoSmart(TM) energy-efficiency technology has saved an estimated $4.9 billion of standby energy waste and prevented millions of tons of CO2 emissions. The company's Green Room web site provides a wealth of information about "energy vampires" and the issue of standby energy waste, along with a comprehensive guide to energy-efficiency standards around the world. Reflecting the environmental benefits of EcoSmart technology, Power Integrations' stock is included in The Cleantech Index(R) and the NASDAQ(R) Clean Edge(R) Green Energy Index. For more information, please visit www.powerint.com .
Power Integrations, HiperPFS, eSIP, EcoSmart, and the Power Integrations logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Power Integrations, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
2011年7月7日 星期四
Volvo Trucks Leads the Charge for Industrial Energy Savings
Volvo Trucks Leads the Charge for Industrial Energy Savings
Volvo Trucks' New River Valley (NRV) manufacturing plant in Dublin, Va. reduced its energy intensity by nearly 30 percent in just one year, making it the first company to meet a 10-year challenge set by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Save Energy Now LEADER Program in Oct. 2009 as a challenge to the U.S. industrial sector. Volvo Trucks in North America and 31 other major companies pledged to reduce their intensity of energy per unit of production by 25 percent over a decade.
"Volvo met the Save Energy Now target in one year instead of ten," said Chief Operating Officer Patrick Collignon, who served as vice president and general manager of the NRV plant during the time in which the target was met. "This accomplishment exemplifies our commitment to our core value of environmental care. Thanks to the engagement of employees across the organization, we're lowering energy use while at the same time operating more efficiently."
The plant reduced its MMbtu per truck (the DOE metric for energy intensity) from 79.64 in 2009 to 60.42 in 2010 – a reduction of 29.6 percent.
"Just as important as the DOE metric is our significant reduction in total energy use at the plant," Collignon added. "We reduced our total electricity consumption by 28 percent and natural gas consumption by 35 percent since the energy team was started."
Every Volvo truck sold in North America is assembled at the NRV plant.
"Volvo is delivering the cleanest trucks in the world, we're making them in the U.S., and we're doing it in a way that shrinks our carbon footprint," said Ron Huibers, senior vice president – sales and marketing.
To reach the aggressive energy reduction goals, Volvo Trucks established a dedicated energy team at the NRV plant. Team members agreed to pursue many small energy-saving tactics and also to attack the biggest energy-consuming process: the paint operation.
"To use a financial analogy, it's not always easy to come up with an idea that saves $1,000, but it is usually possible to come up with 1,000 ideas that save one dollar each," said Collignon. "In our case, we did both."
Company-wide efforts include the use of a building automation system to control building temperatures and turn off lighting, a passive solar wall and photovoltaic solar panels. Skylights, new light fixtures (including LED), infrared heaters and solar water heaters were installed. As cost savings were found, those funds were re-invested in other energy reduction strategies.
"Energy reduction is becoming a permanent part of our culture and operations," said Collignon. "All of us at Volvo Trucks commend the Department of Energy for creating the Save Energy Now LEADERS Program. It's provided us with additional tools, a new group of colleagues across industries, and the extra boost we needed to tackle this issue head-on."
Volvo Trucks North America's operations and products are guided by the company's three core values: Quality, Safety and Environmental Care. Volvo engines for North America are assembled in Hagerstown, Maryland. Both the Hagerstown and NRV plants are certified to ISO14001 environmental and ISO9001 quality standards.
Volvo Trucks' New River Valley (NRV) manufacturing plant in Dublin, Va. reduced its energy intensity by nearly 30 percent in just one year, making it the first company to meet a 10-year challenge set by the U.S. Department of Energy.
The Department of Energy (DOE) launched the Save Energy Now LEADER Program in Oct. 2009 as a challenge to the U.S. industrial sector. Volvo Trucks in North America and 31 other major companies pledged to reduce their intensity of energy per unit of production by 25 percent over a decade.
"Volvo met the Save Energy Now target in one year instead of ten," said Chief Operating Officer Patrick Collignon, who served as vice president and general manager of the NRV plant during the time in which the target was met. "This accomplishment exemplifies our commitment to our core value of environmental care. Thanks to the engagement of employees across the organization, we're lowering energy use while at the same time operating more efficiently."
The plant reduced its MMbtu per truck (the DOE metric for energy intensity) from 79.64 in 2009 to 60.42 in 2010 – a reduction of 29.6 percent.
"Just as important as the DOE metric is our significant reduction in total energy use at the plant," Collignon added. "We reduced our total electricity consumption by 28 percent and natural gas consumption by 35 percent since the energy team was started."
Every Volvo truck sold in North America is assembled at the NRV plant.
"Volvo is delivering the cleanest trucks in the world, we're making them in the U.S., and we're doing it in a way that shrinks our carbon footprint," said Ron Huibers, senior vice president – sales and marketing.
To reach the aggressive energy reduction goals, Volvo Trucks established a dedicated energy team at the NRV plant. Team members agreed to pursue many small energy-saving tactics and also to attack the biggest energy-consuming process: the paint operation.
"To use a financial analogy, it's not always easy to come up with an idea that saves $1,000, but it is usually possible to come up with 1,000 ideas that save one dollar each," said Collignon. "In our case, we did both."
Company-wide efforts include the use of a building automation system to control building temperatures and turn off lighting, a passive solar wall and photovoltaic solar panels. Skylights, new light fixtures (including LED), infrared heaters and solar water heaters were installed. As cost savings were found, those funds were re-invested in other energy reduction strategies.
"Energy reduction is becoming a permanent part of our culture and operations," said Collignon. "All of us at Volvo Trucks commend the Department of Energy for creating the Save Energy Now LEADERS Program. It's provided us with additional tools, a new group of colleagues across industries, and the extra boost we needed to tackle this issue head-on."
Volvo Trucks North America's operations and products are guided by the company's three core values: Quality, Safety and Environmental Care. Volvo engines for North America are assembled in Hagerstown, Maryland. Both the Hagerstown and NRV plants are certified to ISO14001 environmental and ISO9001 quality standards.
Education column: Elementary schools getting facelifts
Education column: Elementary schools getting facelifts
Continuing with news from the Clovis Schools' Operations Department and their summer activities:
The front of Barry Elementary got a facelift recently. The multi-colored rocks and plants replaced the long row of juniper trees along the front of the building. The new look is cleaner, crisper and there's no more chance of junipers blowing over or collecting everything that blows by.
Also, a new driving and turn-around area was added to the south side of the building, making student pickup more fluid. A glance at Barry's playground (as well as other schools’) will show the metal equipment repainted in a soft, southwest sand color.
Although bright, primary colors seem cheerful and reminiscent of school playgrounds, those darker colors chip easily and break down quickly, but more importantly become extremely hot to the touch. The light, neutral colors wear extremely well, look neat and clean and are friendly to little fingers.
Construction on the Arts Academy at Bella Vista will begin shortly, in early July. This school site will be getting a much-needed new multipurpose/performing arts center that will be located on the southwest side of the building, currently a parking lot.
On the northwest corner a new wing will house 12-14 new classrooms. In addition, the existing building will be remodeled in four stages, to make it as easy as possible for the work overlapping returning staff and students.
Drive by La Casita Elementary when you get a chance. The major construction taking place at this site is transforming this school. The new multipurpose room is taking shape, as is the structure for the new addition.
If you were to walk along the corridors inside, it would be unrecognizable; just a stripped-down skeleton of a building. The reconstruction has allowed the abatement team to comb the site to locate and remove any traces of asbestos from former days.
Work at Parkview Elementary is finished for now. Inside, the main office has been enclosed by a glass structure above the counter to improve not only energy efficiency, but also expedite more efficient communications flow. Some of the carpets have been pulled, and floors have been tiled. Shelving has been added in classrooms where needed, as well as the computer labs.
Outside, Parkview's shade structures are up and outside LED lights have been added for strategic lighting in shadowed areas and to improve energy efficiency.
While the day-to-day maintaining and repairing of our school buildings is very likely lacking in glamour, the importance of its role is supporting the framework of education is impossible to measure.
As we have just celebrated the Fourth of July, words of former president James Abram Garfield come to mind: “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”
Continuing with news from the Clovis Schools' Operations Department and their summer activities:
The front of Barry Elementary got a facelift recently. The multi-colored rocks and plants replaced the long row of juniper trees along the front of the building. The new look is cleaner, crisper and there's no more chance of junipers blowing over or collecting everything that blows by.
Also, a new driving and turn-around area was added to the south side of the building, making student pickup more fluid. A glance at Barry's playground (as well as other schools’) will show the metal equipment repainted in a soft, southwest sand color.
Although bright, primary colors seem cheerful and reminiscent of school playgrounds, those darker colors chip easily and break down quickly, but more importantly become extremely hot to the touch. The light, neutral colors wear extremely well, look neat and clean and are friendly to little fingers.
Construction on the Arts Academy at Bella Vista will begin shortly, in early July. This school site will be getting a much-needed new multipurpose/performing arts center that will be located on the southwest side of the building, currently a parking lot.
On the northwest corner a new wing will house 12-14 new classrooms. In addition, the existing building will be remodeled in four stages, to make it as easy as possible for the work overlapping returning staff and students.
Drive by La Casita Elementary when you get a chance. The major construction taking place at this site is transforming this school. The new multipurpose room is taking shape, as is the structure for the new addition.
If you were to walk along the corridors inside, it would be unrecognizable; just a stripped-down skeleton of a building. The reconstruction has allowed the abatement team to comb the site to locate and remove any traces of asbestos from former days.
Work at Parkview Elementary is finished for now. Inside, the main office has been enclosed by a glass structure above the counter to improve not only energy efficiency, but also expedite more efficient communications flow. Some of the carpets have been pulled, and floors have been tiled. Shelving has been added in classrooms where needed, as well as the computer labs.
Outside, Parkview's shade structures are up and outside LED lights have been added for strategic lighting in shadowed areas and to improve energy efficiency.
While the day-to-day maintaining and repairing of our school buildings is very likely lacking in glamour, the importance of its role is supporting the framework of education is impossible to measure.
As we have just celebrated the Fourth of July, words of former president James Abram Garfield come to mind: “Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained.”
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