Switch to LED Christmas lights for free

The city of Visalia wants to help you save money on Christmas lights this year — and money on your energy bill every year — by giving away strands of energy-efficient lights.

A free exchange program on Saturday will let Visalia residents swap out old incandescent Christmas lights one-for-one with energy-efficient LED (light-emitting diode) lights, up to five strands per household.

"This is a partnership we have with Southern California Edison and the VIEW program that lets us have these lights to give to residents," said Nathan Garza, a natural resource conservation technician with the city.

VIEW is an acronym for Valley Innovative Energy Watch, a collaboration of Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas Company, the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization, and local governments in Tulare and Kings counties to help improve energy efficiency in the Central Valley.

This year, Garza said, the city has 500 strands of lights to give away, five times more than last year.

"We'll still run out, but not as quickly," he said.

be given to customers of Southern California Edison.

"And the important thing to remember is that [residents] must bring an old strand with them in order to get the new LED lights," said Nancy Loliva, the city's community relations manager.

The LED light strands each have 100 colored lamps and can retail for around $20 each.

The lights should last for 20 seasons, Garza said, and are safe for indoor and outdoor use.

"They don't generate heat, so they're safe for real and artificial trees," he said. "They're also brighter and have a sharper color."

The 74-foot-tall Norway spruce was illuminated by 30,000 lights during a ceremony that featured performances by Neil Diamond, Cee Lo Green and Carol King. Justin Bieber and Tony Bennett provided pre-taped performances.

It was the first time at the tree lighting for 13 year-old best friends Emily Solomon and Carmela Civello, of Brooklyn.

"It was beautiful," they said in unison.

Though they partially attended the lighting ceremony to see Bieber and were a bit miffed his performance was prerecorded and shown on monitors, they said they were happy to be there.

Tens of thousands of people were penned in on the streets surrounding Rockefeller Center, in midtown Manhattan. Most caught glimpses of performances on screens set up on street corners.

Paloma Diaz, 11, called herself a Bieber "believer" and attended to see him perform.

"I love him, but I also want to see the tree lighting," said the Queens resident, who was with her mother. "I've heard other people say it's really pretty when it lights up."

The tree-lighting ceremony happened on a day President Barack Obama was in town to raise money for his re-election bid. The combination of blocked-off streets and holiday visitors led to traffic jams across Manhattan.

Wearing Casio Watches Is Like Walking on Air, Get the Best Deals on Casio Watches

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Its specifications include: resistance to shock, water resistance up to 200meter, LED with greater intensity, larger area for digital display, Superior illuminator using Auto LED, Time of 4 different cities, Hour based time signal, Flash with buzzer alarms, countdown time –up alarm, 1/100 seconds stopwatch, pre programmed calendar up to the year 2099, accuracy of +/-15 Seconds per month, 1 year seller warranty.

Casio Watches are conspicuously fine-quality watches with a cut above the rest, maintaining their standard of Quality superiority. Each timepiece from Casio Watches incorporates the finest materials and mechanics that empower the accuracy and precision of these timepieces.

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Study Clarifies the Energy Savings in Retrofitted Buildings

While the practice of retrofitting buildings with energy-conserving technology like efficient boilers, high-quality windows and compact fluorescent light bulbs has been around for years, data on whether these changes result in any real savings has been virtually nonexistent. Now, a new study shows that these relatively straightforward fixes can significantly reduce spending on fuel and electricity.

Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, a philanthropic arm of the German bank, and Living Cities, a nonprofit partnership of 22 foundations and financial institutions, commissioned the report, which will be released later this month. It examined nearly 19,000 affordable housing units in New York City that had undergone energy efficiency retrofits and found that these changes resulted in a 19 percent savings on fuel bills and a 10 percent savings on electricity across the portfolio. This translates into $240 in fuel savings and $70 in electrical savings per apartment every year.

“We have been looking for the secret sauce,” said Ben Hecht, the president and chief executive of Living Cities. “This study is definitely the first foray into data, and that is going to be critical to convince owners and lenders of the importance of retrofitting buildings.”

At Terrific Tenements, for example, an 88-unit, two-building affordable housing complex on West 48th Street in Manhattan, the installation of new boilers and heating controls reduced fuel costs by 50 percent. At one of the buildings, at 425 West 48th Street, there was a fuel saving of $551 a year per apartment, while at the sister building at 527 West 47th Street, the saving was $355 annually for each unit.

 “These buildings are prewar classics and are representative of a pretty broad swath of the city’s housing stock,” said Marc Zuluaga, a vice president and director of the multifamily energy services group at Steven Winter Associates, a building consultant in New York. The company, along with HR&A Advisors, an economic development and real estate consulting firm, conducted the study.

 The retrofits at the Terrific Tenements “was not achieved with any particularly exotic technologies” like solar panels or a green roof, Mr. Zuluaga said. Rather, this is the simple story “of how an owner took the worst-performing building type in the city and turned it into one of the best-performing buildings in the entire city.”

 Jeffrey I. Brodsky, the president of Related Management, an arm of the Related Companies, the landlord of Terrific Tenements, said: “This study proves that the assumption that you can’t rely on savings when doing a retrofit isn’t true. It may not be perfect or exact, but you will see savings.”

 The company does energy audits on all of its New York City buildings, where building engineers examine the utility usages to expose any opportunity for increased efficiency and savings, he said.

 Another project examined in the study is Riverview II in Yonkers, also owned by the Related Companies. The 343 apartments at Riverview, at 47 Riverdale Avenue, were heated with electricity, and the landlord was responsible for paying all of the tenants’ electrical bills. The Related Companies started an electrical savings program, including better windows, lighting upgrades and Energy Star refrigerators, that helped reduce overall electricity usage by more than 25 percent.

 In addition, each apartment was responsible for paying its own electric bills, giving tenants an incentive to conserve electricity. As a result, the changes translated into $808 in annual savings for each apartment.

Only E23 000 to fix Somhlolo lights

This comes after a number of games were stopped at the venue due to the malfunctioning floodlights yet government through the ministry of sports, culture and youth affairs had reportedly set aside a whopping E750 000 in their last financial year to fix the lights but in vain.

The ministry is in charge of the venue hence the task of fixing the lights has been placed solely on the ministry until the PLS came to their rescue.

Information gathered by this publication yesterday is that the PLS forked out the said amount to purchase bulbs to be used in boosting the lighting system at the venue.

Staffers from the ministry of works and transport that are in charge of the maintenance of the lights were hard at work for the better part of yesterday fixing the lights.

This was ahead of tonight’s MTN Premier League match pitting Correctional Services side Green Mamba and capital city giants Mbabane Highlanders which is billed for this venue.

An engineer from the works ministry confirmed that the lights are now far better than they were in the past.
Meanwhile, PLS Acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Zwelonke ‘Sport’ Dlamini, when reached on the matter, did not want to reveal the figures involved in the whole project.

“I cannot reveal figures but can confirm that we had to use a certain amount to purchase what was needed to fix the lights. We will be able to reveal the figures at a later stage,” said Dlamini.

Dlamini further said they would be touring the stadium to assess the lights this morning ahead of tonight’s clash.  

He assured that the venue, whose functioning of floodlights is suspect, will be ready for the encounter as already the lights are being fixed.   

The CEO also revealed that the return match will then be played in Kinshasa, DRC on the following Tuesday, November 15, starting at 3pm.

Mngomezulu said soon after next Friday night’s match, Sihlangu would then get ready to leave the country either the following day or day after to be in time to honour the return match. “It is becoming normal for national teams to play like this just like in Europe.

“We are hoping the squad will do quite well during both encounters in order to qualify for the next round of the qualifiers,” Mngomezulu said.

Sihlangu have been using the Mavuso sports centre in recent official games but Mngomezulu insisted that Somhlolo is one of the stadiums that were assessed and given thumbs up by FIFA.

Green Business: Ecotricity

Dale Vince, the founder, of Ecotricity, didn't start out planning to build a business worth an estimated 100 million. In fact his primary concern, living out of a van on top of a hill in Stroud in 1991, was generating enough electricity to meet his own needs. Two decades later, he is the hippy who decided to 'drop in', sole owner of a major green electricity company and, surprisingly, a dedicated speed nut who owns a supercar. Perched atop that hill in the early 1990s, Vince could be sure of one thing at least - that there was plenty of wind. He was already using a small portable turbine to charge batteries, but decided that he wanted to build something bigger, which would provide for all of his - and others - energy needs.

First, though, he explains over the phone from Ecotricity's headquarters - the company is based in Stroud to this day - he discovered that he would need a monitoring tower, to work out exactly how powerful the wind on his hill was. 'When I decided to build big windmills in 1991,' he says, 'I found out that I needed a wind monitoring tower. I didn't have the money to buy one, so I made my own.' The monitoring tower Vince built was such a success that other companies working on wind power soon came knocking at his door, asking him to build similar equipment for them.

This led to the foundation of Western Windpower, now Nexgen, which sold wind measurement instruments from 1992 onward. The wind measurement business supported Vince's efforts to build his first large-scale wind turbine, which was commissioned in 1996. However much of a hippy he may claim to be, Vince clearly has entrepreneurial blood - he was selling renewables-generated electricity a year before he even started up that first turbine, linking up a local wind producer with local demand. 'We became what we still believe was the first supplier of green electricity in the world,' he says.

'It was mostly skepticism,' he says of the initial reaction to Ecotricity's plans. 'Potential customers were worried that we wouldn't be able to keep the lights on. We got there slowly. It took doggedness, sheer force of will. It's like one of those exponential curves. We hit 50,000 customers in July. Recent growth has been just phenomenal. The next step is to do it at scale. Let's be the seventh biggest energy company in the UK. And we think that within the next 10 years we could do that.'

The company currently produces 52MW using 51 wind turbines and is in the process of planning and building a further 200MW of renewable electricity generating capacity. In July 2011, Ecotricity's first solar energy generating capacity, a facility at Fen Farm in Lincolnshire came online, generating 1MW of energy via 5,000 solar panels.

Vince is almost totally unique among green entrepreneurs in that he has not had to sell a stake in the company, building it slowly to begin with, faster lately, and investing most of its profits into building new capacity. He thinks that the idea of selling an equity stake in companies to help them grow doesn't work. 'I think the orthodoxy is wrong,' he says. 'The reason people sell stakes or go to IPOs is that they are looking for an exit. I'm not like that.