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Seven Cities and a Utility Company Team Up to Deliver Residential Energy Savings

Submitted by Joel Blaine on August 1, 2011 - 6:00pm

In 2010, seven cities in King County, Washington -- known as the C-7 New Energy Partnership -- joined forces with local utility Puget Sound Energy (PSE) and energy management software company OPOWER to help nearly 100,000 residents reduce their home energy consumption. The program, which was made possible in part by Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant funding from the Recovery Act, has become an easy and informative way for residents to understand their energy consumption, compare their household use against neighbors, and identify effective options to reduce their costs. 

Aggregated results from the first six months of the program show that the Home Energy Reports have helped residents save nearly $525,000 in energy bills and more than 5.2 million kWh of electricity – enough to power more than 435 homes for an entire year. 

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Where to Build in New York City? Team New York Looks Up

Submitted by Erin Pierce on July 22, 2011 - 10:07am

In honor of the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon -- which challenges 20 collegiate teams to design, build, and operate solar-powered houses that are cost-effective, energy-efficient, and attractive -- we are profiling each of the 20 teams participating in the competition.

New York City’s famously dense urban landscape presents a challenge to developers hunting for a bit of unoccupied space to build on. Team New York believes it’s identified the most underutilized real estate in the entire city -- flat rooftops, where space and access to sunlight are plentiful. 

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For 40 Years, Longtime Barber Brings Style, Savings to Department of Energy's Forrestal Building

Submitted by April Saylor on July 12, 2011 - 11:05am

Since long before the Department of Energy even existed, David Besenyei has been cutting and styling the hair of Washington officials in the Department’s James H. Forrestal Building in downtown D.C. 

Ron Wilson, left, cuts Joe Conklin's hair while David Besenyei prepares to give another customer a trim. | Courtesy of Hantz Leger, DOE

The D.C.-area native has cut and styled the hair of countless Energy Department employees in his nearly 40 years spent cutting hair in the building, which served as office space for the Department of Defense before it became the Department of Energy’s headquarters. While most of his clients are federal employees that work in the facility, several still come to him for their monthly trim long after they’ve left the Department. David has also cut and styled the heads of former Energy Secretaries Admiral James Watkins and Spencer Abraham.

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Move Over Transformers, Meet the REACON Team.

Submitted by Johanna Sevier on July 6, 2011 - 10:30am

Businesses in Stockton, California are increasing their bottom line by going green, thanks to the Greater Stockton Chamber of Commerce’s energy waste-fighting REACON (Recycling-Energy-Air-Conservation) Team. The REACON team swoops in to save the day with visits local businesses, offering suggestions on reducing waste, energy usage and other costly items.

During a typical visit, the REACON audit team will dive into dumpsters, reviews past utility bills with scrutiny and inspects appliances. Their research yields a series of suggestions, designed to increase the businesses’s earnings, save energy and enhance their status as environmental stewards.

"The program helps us reduce our carbon footprint and allows local businesses to reduce costs," said Stockton Mayor Ann Johnston. "We are excited about the impact that we will have on the entire region."

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10 Questions for a Physicist: Uwe Bergmann

Submitted by Niketa Kumar on June 23, 2011 - 1:55pm

While officially billed as a physicist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, our latest 10 Questions guest may be more aptly titled a scientific detective. In this fascinating addition to 10 Questions you’ll learn about how he used x-ray techniques to uncover historical mysteries from fossilized dinosaur remains to ancient mathematical texts. 

Question: Why did you decide to pursue a career in science?

Uwe Bergmann  | Credit: Brad Plummer, SLAC

Uwe Bergmann: I didn’t plan to do it. That’s the true answer. I started with physics. I had some friends in school and we thought it would be cool to study physics and somehow that stuck with me. None of my friends stayed in physics.

Q: What brought you to SLAC?

UB: The short answer is x-rays and water. Already at a young age I wanted to move to faraway places close to the sea, and from where I grew up the farthest big city in Germany was Hamburg. That’s where I got my Diplom (similar to a Masters) and my first taste of x-rays. I then moved across the Atlantic to Long Island doing my Ph.D. work at Stony Brook University and Brookhaven National Lab working at the National Synchrotron Light Source, the largest x-ray facility at the time. 
 
After a two year postdoc at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France, I moved to Lawrence Berkeley National Lab where I worked for seven years, developing and applying new x-ray spectroscopy techniques. In 2003, there was an opportunity for some research on water which I couldn’t do there and a very good friend and colleague of mine encouraged me to apply at SLAC. I started at SLAC working for several years at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource, and two years ago there was this incredible opportunity to move to the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the world’s first free electron x-ray laser. LCLS produces ultra-short ultra-intense x-ray pulses -- a billion times brighter than those produced in synchrotrons -- that we think will revolutionize how we will understand the atomic and nano world. It’s one of the most exciting places in science you can be right now, and I would have never dreamed to be here.
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