“It is cheaper to save energy than make energy”

“It is cheaper to save energy than make energy”


Considering a Utility Audit
Every year, Businesses, co-ops and condos in Los Angeles pay millions of dollars in utility expenses, including electric, water/sewer, gas, steam and telecom. Are you certain your business/building is paying the correct amount? What if it isn't? Without an expert audit, you may never know if your building is due refunds, savings, and credits from overcharges that appear in a surprisingly large percentage of utility bills.
A whole business sector has grown to supplement your management company's efforts and delve further into the highly specialized area of utility cost recovery to obtain funds on your behalf. The following is an objective look at whether this service is right for your building, and a primer to help you make the best selection of an auditor.
What Do I Have to Lose?
That depends upon certain factors:
Does the auditor work on a contingency fee basis? Some companies charge a fee for their service, regardless of whether they effect savings. The benefit of this arrangement is you know what the cost will be. The downside is that you pay for the service whether your building saves money or not, and there is no financial incentive for the provider to dig as deep as possible to effect savings. The auditor gets paid the same amount of money whether they save you significant dollars or no dollars at all.
Many auditors are paid only when they recover refunds, savings, and credits. In this case there is absolutely nothing to lose, with the potential - and their incentive - to secure significant savings.
Is It Too Good to Be True?
Possibly - if you don't work with a quality company. Do your due diligence; find out about the company you choose before selecting a utility auditor. Ask yourself:
• How large is their staff? What is their background?
• What technology does the company use?
• Do they look to recover funds and savings on existing structures as well as on future billings? What is their track record in each area of savings?
• Do they just recommend solutions, or do they implement them as well?
• How far are they willing to go? Would they appeal the utility companies' decisions?
• Who are their clients and how much have they saved other buildings? Get references.
• Are there any other charges?
• Finally, find out how easy is it to cancel the agreement.
Can't Our Managing Agent Do This Him/Herself?
Managers have more than a full-time job dealing with managing the building. Also, utility bill auditing and cost management is a very complex, time-consuming, and specialized field. One needs to navigate through the bureaucratic environment that envelops most utility companies and through the mass of unwieldy tariff and regulatory rules and regulations to implement your savings.
Are There Other Benefits?
A utility bill auditor should be able to provide you with a cost breakdown and understanding of your bills. They should even be able to provide reporting, in paper or electronic format, with detailed information about historical usage, billing and payment as well as graphs that set forth trends in usage. This is useful for budgeting and cost control purposes. Finally, they can help you wade through the sea of choices of third-party marketers that deregulation offers,
How Do I Choose the Right Auditor?
First, there is the choice of fixed fee versus contingency (see above).
Within contingency, there are differences in the level of the share of the savings. Typically the smaller companies with fewer resources will ask for a smaller share of the savings. They may also find fewer savings than a company with larger resources to do the following:
• Apply the services and knowledge of highly-skilled legal and tax experts, former high ranking utility executives, seasoned auditors, and tariff specialists to remove charges that are embedded in the basic rate structure and not openly disclosed in a utility bill.
• Offer proprietary advanced technology to analyze the utility data to identify utility cost savings.
• Work through all appropriate agencies or utilities to implement all changes and obtain all refunds, savings and credits available.
• File and pursue cases or complaints with the appropriate regulatory authorities or through the courts.
Your building's decision makers should focus on the magnitude of results and depth of auditing expertise a firm can offer to maximize the largest refunds, savings and credits for their building.
In Conclusion"¦
You have the potential to save tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars for your building. The risk is either a fixed cost or no cost, and a small amount of time and effort on the part of the property manager to provide the information and access necessary to allow the auditors to do what they do best. Utility auditing may be well worth a try for your building community.


YJay Draiman


"Paying for utility costs without using a Utility Auditor and Monitor is like driving a car at night with the lights turned off" For all you energy, telecom and utility needs “It is cheaper to save energy than make energy

YJ Draiman for Mayor of LA 2013

YJ Draiman for Mayor of LA

Statement to the voters

It is important that the office of city councilman be responsive and must represent every resident/stakeholder in his district; the councilman’s operation must be transparent and not selective. We cannot have it business as usual and ignore our residents/stakeholders of District 12.

We must make Los Angeles more business friendly, more conducive to bring new businesses and overcome the lack of financing that is hurting business and homeowners.
We must make Los Angeles more business friendly - a place where everyone who wants a good job can find one. This transition has to take place without delay, less talk and more action. We need to streamline our policies and reduce red tape that is strangling and hampering the private-sector in Los Angeles. The city of Los Angeles is starving for new business; our taxpayers are paying too much tax. What we need is to instill confidence in our citizens. We need to develop a series of very tough-minded, market-driven, strategies that deliver in the marketplace."
By increasing the new businesses in our city, we will increase revenues to the City and the State.
Our citizens are concerned about jobs and a roof over their head. We must address those issues.
Our education system needs to be revamped and improved.
The city budget must be balanced – reduce waste and increase efficiency.
We must address public transportation expansion and reduce traffic congestion.
Business ethics are deteriorating – we must improve and regain the consumers trust.
I am your candidate, a businessman with varied life experience, that can relate to the voters concerns and life struggles.
Do you want to eliminate waste? – Elect – YJ Draiman
YJ Draiman for Mayor of LA
(March 5, 2013 Election)
Contact: draimanformayor@yjdraiman.org 818-366-

Alternative Energy & Sources

Alternative Energy & Sources

The modern human community is depended greatly on the use of focil fuel like coal oil, gas and Nuclear fission. as sources of energy. But these sources of energy firstly polluting our the environment very fast secondly they are getting extinct and ultimately our existance in this universe is shortened.

Energy is the ability to do work. While energy surrounds us in all aspects of life, the ability to harness it and use it for constructive ends as enconomically as possible is the challenge before mankind. Alternative energy refers to energy sources which are not based on the burning of fossil fuels or the splitting of atoms. The renewed interest in this field of study comes from the undesirable effects of pollution (as witnessed today) both from burning fossil fuels and from nuclear waste byproducts. Fortunately there are many means of harnessing energy which have less damaging impacts on our environment. Here are some possible alternatives: 1.Solar 2.Wind Power 3.Geothermal 4.Tidal power 5.Hydro power 6.Bio mass


1.Solar energy:

Solar energy is one the most resourceful sources of energy for the future. One of the reasons for this is that the total energy we recieve each year from the sun is around 35,000 times the total energy used by man. However, about 1/3 of this energy is either absorbed by the outer atmosphere or reflected back into space (a proccess called albedo)1.
Solar energy is presently being used on a smaller scale in furnaces for homes and to heat up swimming pools. On a larger scale use, solar energy could be used to run cars, power plants, and space ships (like the picture you see above) .
Click to learn more………….(A)
2.Wind power:

Wind power is another alternative energy source that could be used without producing by-products that are harmful to nature. Like solar power, harnessing the wind is highly dependent upon weather and location. The average wind velocity of Earth is around 9 m/sec. And the power that could be produced when a wind mill is facing the wind of 10 mi/hr. is around 50 watts.1


How a Basic Windmill Work
The fins of a windmill rotate in a vertical plane which is kept perpendicular to the wind by means of a tail fin. As wind flow crosses the blades of the windmill, it is forced to rotate and can be used to generate electricity. Another type of wind power generator is the two hollow half-drum-type wind collectors. This wind collector rotates in a single vertical axis, making this device independent of the wind direction, which may generate more electricity.

Here some information sites:

Wind Techology
Building the Best Windmill
Windmills at Work
Kollitz Energy Systems
Frisse Wind


3. Geothermal Energy:


What is GEOTHERMAL ENERGY ???
Geothermal energy is an alternative energy source, although it is not resourceful enough to replace more than a minor amount of the future’s energy needs. Geothermal energy is obtained from the internal heat of the planet and can be used to generate steam to run a steam turbine. This in turn generates electricity, which is a very useful form of energy.

The radius of the Earth is about 4000 miles, with an internal core temperature of about 4000 degrees celsius at the center. The mantle surrounds the outercore and is only about 45 miles below the surface, depending on location. The temperature at the mantle-surface crust boundary is about 375 degrees, celsius. (This is too deep to get to…as of today)

The centre of the Earth is around 6000 degrees Celsius – hot enough to melt rock. Even a few kilometres down, the temperature can be over 250 degrees Celsius.

In general, the temperature rises one degree Celsius for every 36 metres you go down.

In volcanic areas, molten rock can be very close to the surface.

Geothermal energy has been used for thousands of years in some countries for cooking and heating.

The name “geothermal” comes from two Greek words: “geo” means “Earth” and “thermal” means “heat”.

So…what???
So, how does this help us? It turns out that if we drill down only three miles we can reach temperatures of 100 degrees, celsius, which is enough to boil water to run a steam-powered electric powerplant. Drilling three miles through the earth is possible, but not easy, so luckily there are easier routes to access this power source, known as geothermal hotspots.

What’s a Hotspot?
Geothermal hotspots are volcanic features which are found all around the world. Basically a hotspot is an area of reduced thickness in the mantle which transmits excess internal heat from the interior of the earth to the outer crust. These hotspots are well known for their unique effects on the surface, such as the volcanic islands of Hawaii, the mineral deposits and gyesers in Yellowstone National Park, or the hotsprings in Iceland. These geothermal hotspots can easily be used to generate electricity.

How do Geothermal-Energy Systems Work?
Some systems pump hot-water into permeable sedimentary hospots found underground and then use the steam to generate electricity. Then the used steam is condensed and sent back down to the permeable sedimentary stream. Another system utilizes volcanic magma which is still partly molten at around 650 degrees, celsius, to boil water which would generate electricity. Also there is a system which uses hot dry rock, which is just hardened magma, but still is extremely hot. To recover this heat from these rocks, a system is used which circulates water through the rock and transfers the heat up to a steam generator. The first system listed here is not as useful as other methods because of the acidic nature of the fluids found under the ground. These acidities require a lot of maintenance and upkeep on the equipment, and this cost reduces the economic effectiveness of the system. Therefore, geothermal energy systems are more inefficient than other alternative energy sources because of the costs required in upkeep and the shortage of potential sites.

For more information on geothermal energy we can visit the following web sites

Geothermal Heat Pump Consortium National Information Resource Center
International Geothermal Association
Geothermal Information System
Government agencies

Click to learn more about Geothermal Energy

4.Tidal Power:




Even the power of the tides can be harnessed to produce electricity.
Similar to the more conventional hydroelectric dams, the tidal process utilizes the natural motion of the tides to fill reservoirs, which are then slowly discharged through electricity-producing turbines. The former USSR produced 300 MW in its Lumkara plant using this method.
for more information..look into Sustainable Ocean Energy Sources.


5.Hydroelectricity

Hydroelectricity comes from the damming of rivers and utilizing the potential energy stored in the water. As the water stored behind a dam is released at high pressure, its kinetic energy is transferred onto turbine blades and used to generate electricity. This system has enormous costs up front, but has relatively low maintenance costs and provides power quite cheaply. In the United States approximately 180,000 MW of hydroelectric power potential is available, and about a third of that is currently being harnessed.

Here is more imformation on hydroelectricity:

Hydroelectic Home
US Army Core of Engineers
Hydro Data for Columbia & Snake River Projects
Reclamation’s Role In Hydropower
BC Hydro Power System Map

6.Biomass Energy


Biomass is plant matter such as trees, grasses, agricultural crops or other biological material. It can be used as a solid fuel, or converted into liquid or gaseous forms, for the production of electric power, heat, chemicals, or fuels. By integrating a variety of biomass conversion processes, all of these products can be made in one facility, called a biorefinery. NREL is working to develop cost effective, environmentally friendly biomass conversion technologies to reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, improve our air quality, and support rural economies. Learn more about biomass.