In the electrical design world, we NEED examples to point to to sway customers. To me, this is great for that reason alone. Even if they don’t go with hydro, giant successful renewable projects still push the perception of feasibility of the ancillary renewables.

Energy Codes are becoming more stringent every 3 years. As our tech gets better, the next level of building code and energy consumption standards can be aggressively lower than the last iteration. Sometimes so aggressively that manufacturers legitimately don’t have proper solutions for them. (An example is about a decade ago, when LEDs were less reliable and efficient, IECC set an aggressive lumens per watt threshold that was, at the time, not feasible. Nowadays they blow past it in efficiency)

But ya know what? It forces them to TRY. If there’s enough pushback because the new standards can’t be met, it at the very least opens the dialog.

I guess I’m ranting a bit, but after getting a new perspective with my employment, I do earnestly believe the scientific professionals ARE trying to push for a more environmentally approach to new construction, but we need regulation to drive innovation. Otherwise innovation stalls, in my opinion. Im sure I’m philosophically incorrect on that point, but its what I’ve noticed from my experience talking to customers, equipment manufacturers, and engineering leads.

CleanTechnica

Heh