If you are big on decking your home out for the holidays, now is the time to start thinking about your holiday decorating needs. October through January is a big season for outdoor decorating. Going big with lots of lights, inflatable snowmen or a scary scene all require the services of an electrician in Pasadena. It can be a lot of fun to have the best decorated house on the block, but it requires a lot of electricity to run all of the lights, air machines and moving figures. The team at The Electric Connection is ready to help you get your home ready for the best holiday display on the block.

All of those lights require a lot of outlets. Running extension cords across the lawn can be a bit of an eyesore as well as a safety hazard. Extension cords can get damaged by heavy foot traffic or be tripped over. If you can avoid using a lot of extension cords, it is a good thing. Your Pasadena electrician can help you do just that by installing multiple outdoor outlets around the yard and the house. This will allow you to plug your lights and decorations directly into an outlet without worrying about an extension cord. It will look better and be safer.

For those who like to go big, you have probably run into tripping breakers when somebody in the house wanted to use the microwave or run the furnace. If you have to sit in the dark inside the house while your light display is running outside, you probably need to call an electrician. Pasadena homeowners who do elaborate light displays should consider having an additional panel or dedicated breaker to run the lights. This ensures your lights will always be on—inside and out. Give The Electric Connection a call today and schedule your holiday home lighting upgrade.

If you recently had a pole building or shop put up on your property, you are probably debating to have it powered with electricity or stick with a generator. There are clearly some real benefits to a shop having electricity. If you are simply using the building to store items, than electricity is probably not a major concern. However, if you are planning to use your shop to work on various hobbies or use it to repair vehicles, electricity is extremely helpful. You will need a Burbank electrician to go about completing the wiring process. You can depend on the team at The Electric Connection to help you make your shop complete with electricity.

Depending on the amount of electricity you need in your shop, you may need to have a sub-panel installed. This is something your electrician will discuss with you and advise you on. If your home is already using the majority of the breakers available in your existing panel, you will need an upgrade or an additional panel installed to run the shop. The size and type of the tools you will use in the shop will influence your decision.

Once you have decided on the electric panel situation, the next stop is to discuss outlet placement with your electrician. Burbank shop owners can decide how many outlets they need in the shop. You may even need a 240-volt outlet to run certain heavy machinery or to plug in a Level II electric car charging station. These are all options for you to consider when you make the decision to hire an electrician. Lighting is yet another element you will want to think about. Typically, a single fixture is installed along the ceiling and then several lamps will be used to illuminate specific work areas. If you would like to discuss running electricity to your new shop, give The Electric Connection a call today.

It used to be that the moon and the stars were the brightest bulbs in the sky. But as anyone who’s flown across a city at night knows, these days, there are an awful lot of outdoor lights shining up from the ground.

Many people assume that an orange nighttime sky is just ugly, not harmful. But recently scientific studies have suggested that light pollution is more than an annoyance; it’s destroying wildlife, damaging human health and costing us a lot of extra money.

That’s why a growing number of cities and towns across the United States are drafting ordinances to try to bring the night sky back. They’re requiring that all new outdoor lighting fixtures that are installed – both commercial and residential – only shine light down onto the place that needs to be lit, not up into the atmosphere.

Known as the Dark Sky movement, these ordinances vary from town to town, but often the requirements are similar. No outdoor lighting fixtures can shine any light above a horizontal line. Instead, everything must shine down.

“We’re not saying you can’t have that aesthetic value, you just light it from the top down,” explains Johanna Duffek, Sections Coordinator with the International Dark Sky Association, a Tucson, AZ-based non-profit group that’s at the forefront of the movement.

Although the original purpose of The International Dark Sky Association was to keep the night sky pristine for astronomers, today the Dark Sky movement is gaining ground because more consumers are interested in reducing their energy usage, and when you’re not wasting light that’s going up into the sky, you can use a lower wattage bulb to achieve the same level of exterior lighting.

For example, if a homeowner used an outdoor sconce that had openings on the top and the bottom, he’d have to use a 100-watt bulb. But if he switches to a Dark Sky fixture that only allows light to shine from the bottom of the fixture, the homeowner could use a 40-watt bulb.

“It’s a more efficient use of light,” explains Tom Patterson, Director of Product Development at Hinkley Lighting, which already offers some Dark Sky light fixtures. “You can use a third of the wattage or half of the wattage and get the same amount of lumens.”

Patterson says consumer awareness of the Dark Sky movement is still very low, but he said awareness has been growing among local government leaders, and that is forcing the manufacturers to come out with more and more Dark Sky-friendly outdoor fixtures.

“Now in Arizona, in all the new construction, you’re going to have to meet the dark sky qualifications,” Patterson says. “It’s catching a little bit more momentum.” Hinkley, for example, advertises that it can make about 25 percent of its outdoor lighting fixtures Dark Sky compliant. Retailers are charged about $15 to $20 to change a regular fixture to a Dark Sky fixture.

Currently, there is no official government standard for a Dark Sky fixture, but the International Dark Sky Association has been in talks with the Department of Energy to incorporate the Dark Sky philosophy into the Energy Star program.

The International Dark Sky Association also independently evaluates fixtures from manufacturers and awards a seal of approval to all of those that meet its requirements.

So far, Duffek says the International Dark Sky Association has awarded Fixture Seals of Approval to 75 different lighting manufacturers, and while many of those have been commercial applications, Duffek says the organization is hoping to increase participation among residential lighting manufacturers.

Hubbardton Forge, for example, makes a sconce that has received the Dark Sky Fixture Seal of Approval that features a slate-colored ceramic shield around the light bulb that forces the light down. And the Minka Group has several outdoor lights with metal crowns that block the upward light.

Both Patterson and Duffek say the biggest resistance to Dark Sky fixtures isn’t coming from manufacturers but from homeowners who are afraid that less exterior lighting around their house will make them less safe.

But Duffek said homeowners need to understand that blocking light from going into the sky doesn’t mean blocking all exterior lighting. Duffek says the Dark Sky movement suggests homeowners buy outdoor lights with movement sensors that will go on if someone enters your yard, which can help alert you to danger and keep your energy usage down at the same time.

“When you keep the lighting on all the time, all you’re doing is lighting for the bad guys,” Duffek says.

Duffek says the biggest challenge now is to educate the public about the benefits of reducing light pollution and encouraging manufacturers to continue to design compliant fixtures.

“We always try to present it as a win, win, win solution,” she says.

There are many ways to generate electricity, including fossil fuels, solar and hydroelectricity. For the most part, all of these technologies rely on the same concept. In each of the above examples, except for solar, electricity is generated by spinning a turbine. In the case of hydroelectric power, this is accomplished by using moving water to move the blades of the turbine. For the most part, The Electric Connection and other Los Angeles electricians spend their time caring for the electrical needs of homes, businesses and other organizations. Without hydroelectricity and other forms of electricity generation, however, there would not be much for an electrician in Los Angeles CA to do.

Although hydroelectricity is not the main source of power in the United States, it is extensively used in areas such as the northeast, which generates electricity from Niagara Falls. Other important hydroelectric power plants include the Hoover Dam and the Chief Joseph Dam. This is a very popular form of energy creation because it is a very renewable resource, and very low in waste once construction is completed. Overall, hydroelectricity makes up 21% of the world’s renewable energy and 3.4% of its total energy. As with all types of energy, an electrician in Los Angeles is required to know the basics about hydroelectricity and why it is important.

How Does Hydroelectricity Work?

The most common type of hydroelectricity is generated through the use of dams. A large river or lake is dammed, and then connected to a hydroelectric plant. The dam then either funnels the flowing water through the turbines, or uses the water as it falls to spin them. Electrical circuits, which are connected to the spinning turbines, help to store and distribute the electricity to your home.

Another common way to generate hydroelectric power is to transfer water between reservoirs that are located at different elevations. This strategy is typically used to generate extra electricity during periods of high demand. Water is released from the higher reservoir through a turbine into the lower reservoir. Any extra energy generated from this process is used to pump the water back into the upper reservoir.

Tidal power stations are slightly different from the others, because they make use of the natural rise and fall of the tides. Under the proper circumstances, a tidal power source can be a very powerful addition to a city’s electrical grid.

Why Do We Need Hydroelectricity?

One of the greatest draws of hydroelectricity is that its cost remains relatively constant. It is completely self-contained. You do a web search for electrician Los Angeles give any electrical contracting company a call and they will tell you that a diverse range of electrical sources is important to the integrity of any electrical system. If one portion goes out, then other sources are ready to fill the gaps in order to keep things running smoothly.

Being an electrician in Los Angeles CA, means taking on a lot of responsibility. The technicians at The Electric Connection will quickly respond to your electrical service calls, perform electrical safety assessments, replace or install electrical circuits, custom lighting and more. They help keep everything running at your home or business as efficiently as possible, ensuring that you always have electricity when you need it.

A combination of availability and sustainability are key to keeping any residential electrical network safe and reliable is developing and caring for a variety of sources. This process begins at the power plant and ends at your home, where you should never take for granted the hard work each electrician Los Angeles CA has to offer.

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ballast-compatible LED T8 tube for office lighting, school lighting, hospital lighting, basement lighting, and more. The energy-efficient F32T8 tube light can be used in direct-wire fixtures or to replace T8 tubes in fluorescent fixtures without removing ballasts. Designed to last 50,000 hours—5 times longer than fluorescent tubes—the LED T8 tube reduces costly repairs, disposal fees, and the need for replacements. This energy-efficient LED light uses just 18 watts of power and is comparable to a 32-watt fluorescent tube light.