Saving Energy in 2007-In Your Home, Your Business, and Your Way of Life

By: Glenn Day


Your children recycle bottles in school, you and your family know to shut the lights off when leaving a room, and it's somewhat comforting to think that the coffee cup you drink out of every morning was made from 25% recycled paper. You constantly remind yourself "the little things add up" as you purchase the energy-efficient lighting for your recently redecorated living room and you made sure to shut off the heating to your home when your family took a trip to Europe for a month last year. You are a good citizen and you care about the future of the environment because you know that generations of your family in the future will have to deal with the results that your generation is causing today.

When use of energy is divided amongst residential, transportation, commercial, and industrial distribution of usage, the industrial and manufacturing use of energy is by far the largest chunk. These companies use about one-third of the energy in the United States alone. It's easy for a homeowner to change a few habits within their home and their day-to-day activities in order to save energy and promote recycling, but for larger businesses, the task can prove to be much more difficult. There are not many options for a business owner when it comes to designing and installing a refrigeration system for a certain food product that needs cold storage or an ice area that requires a consistent cold temperature at all times. Solar powered refrigeration on such a large scale is not always an option for these businesses, so they need to go with whatever alternative is the most energy and cost efficient.

These businesses also need to go with the safest choice in refrigeration to limit massive safety hazards. Ammonia is a product that you are likely to find used in industrial refrigeration, and ammonia itself is an extremely hazardous product. It corrodes skin if you touch it, it's flammable at certain levels, and can explode if it's ignited within an enclosed space. Companies that require industrial refrigeration or any large-scale refrigeration using ammonia must be aware of the safety precautions and training that their employees must undergo in order to work with such large-scale refrigerators. One wrong move and an entire system could shut down, ruining a week's worth of that company's product. Even worse than loss of revenue is potential loss of health or life that could happen if an employee is untrained or careless when working in an environment that consists of an ammonia refrigeration system.

There are a couple of new ways for businesses such as these to begin to preserve the energy that they use. Energy efficient windows can help to lock a temperature into an enclosed space and for companies who are relying on their refrigeration systems to maintain a large space or warehouse at a certain temperature, investing in these windows could be very cost-effective and would result in a smaller amount of energy needed to maintain the temperature. On a smaller scale, energy efficient windows can also be installed in your household for the same purposes; to preserve energy while saving you money.

Regardless of whether or not you chose to help preserve the energy and recycle in your household, going with an energy-saving device rather than a generic energy-sucking product that will simply get the job done is a decision that benefits both the investor and the environment that the investor's future generations will proser in.


Glenn Day, an Industrial Refrigerationprofessional, specializes in finding the perfect solution for their industrial refrigeration needs. He recognizes the importance of maintaining a well-designed industrial refrigeration system.