News Updates for the Week of May 28

1.      Cooper Industries Sold to Eaton for $11.8 Billion - The acquisition will allow Cleveland-based Eaton, an industrial manufacturer, to further expand its power management reach and its electrical business.  The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2012, after which Eaton and Cooper will be combined as a new company, expected to be called Eaton Global Corporation Plc., incorporated in Ireland, where Cooper is currently incorporated. Alexander Cutler, Eaton’s CEO and chairman, will lead the combined company.  Based on 2011 revenues, Eaton and Cooper combined would have revenues of $21.5 billion that year. http://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2012/05/21/cooper-industries-sold-to-eaton-for.html

2.   Electric Rates Going Up in 2015 - Your electric rates are going up but not until 2015. That year, electric bills are set to be about $130 a year more than now, according to the results of annual auction that decides which electricity providers will be paid for committing to run their power plants so the lights stay on. 5/18 McClatchy-Tribune Regional News

3.   Coal Plant Closures Could Send Electricity Costs Soaring - Residential electricity prices are expected to spike by more than 10 percent beginning in 2015, with consumers paying between $150 and $330 a year more than this year, as coal plants, the least expensive producers of electricity, continue to close. 5/18 McClatchy-Tribune Regional News

4.      California Poised to Issue 2013 Title 24 Building Efficiency Standards - The California Energy Commission is in the final stages of adopting changes to the 2008 Building Energy Efficiency Standards contained in the California Code of Regulations (CCR), Title 24, Part 6 (also known as the California Energy Code). The revised standards were approved May 9, 2012 and are scheduled to take effect in January 2014. Mandatory requirements also include the use of daylighting sensors to adjust lighting systems near windows to produce more or less light based upon the amount of natural light entering the space. 5/21 Glass on Web

5.      Smart Buildings: Ten Trends to Watch in 2012 and Beyond - Demand for efficient HVAC and lighting systems, as well as other types of hardware like controls and submeters, is growing as the value proposition for energy efficiency is proven again and again.  In addition, advances in software for building energy management systems (BEMS) as well as for building design (through building information modeling, or BIM) are making it easier to design and maintain high performance buildings. This white paper report from Pike Research examines these trends worldwide. http://www.pikeresearch.com/research/smart-buildings-ten-trends-to-watch-in-2012-and-beyond

6.      Existing-Home Sales Increased 3.4% in April - According to the tally from the national Association of Realtors, there’s the beginning of a return to normalcy taking place across housing. Existing-home sales in April rose to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.62 million, up 3.4% from a downwardly revised 4.47 million in March. Compared with a year ago, existing starts are up 10.0%. The national median existing-home price for all housing types jumped 10.1% to $177,400 in April from a year ago; the March price showed an upwardly revised 3.1% improvement. 5/22 HCN

7.      JEDEC Publishes Five International Thermal-Testing Standards For LEDs - The JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, the standards organization based in Arlington, VA, has announced the publication of a new series of standards for component-level testing of high-brightness/power LEDs. Development within JEDEC’s JC-15 Committee involved LED industry leaders, and resulted in the new JESD51-5x series of standards aimed at thermal characterization of power LED components. The four standards, JESD51-5, JESD51-50, JESD51-51, JESD51-52 and JESD51-53, are in compliance with the International Commission on Illumination's (CIE) existing LED measurement recommendations. http://www.jedec.org/standards-documents/results/jesd51-5

8.      EC&M's Top 30 Rankings of Electrical Design Firms - The companies on EC&M’s 2012 Top 30 Electrical Design Firms list earned $1.1 billion in revenue related to electrical design services in 2011. By comparison, last year, 27 design firms reported $553.9 million in revenue related to electrical design services for 2010. In addition, the 17 design firms on this year’s list that also reported revenue related to electrical design services in last year’s survey averaged a year-over-year increase of 6.1%. http://ecmweb.com/images/205ecmCStable1.gif

9.      Speaking Out: LEDs: The Time is Now - LED usage in commercial lighting is expected to grow at an annual rate of 39 percent for the next three years, putting LED commercial lighting sales at $4.5 billion a year by 2015 (from a report published by the Strategies in Light conference). The overall market for LED products for applications such as backlighting for televisions, laptops and mobile devices is declining due to the saturation of the TV market, which will cause a flood of LED components into the commercial lighting market bringing lower prices and increasing adoption rates. In 2010, the global LED market—all products included—increased by 93 percent (Strategies in Light report). Such impressive growth rates for products using LED technology have brought major global attention from electronics manufacturers eager to enter large markets that previously had barriers to entry, such as the U.S. commercial and residential construction markets. http://ewweb.com/mag/electric_leds_time/

10.   NEMA Lighting System Index Jumps 5.2% - The National Lighting Bureau (NLB) reports that first-quarter 2012 NEMA Lighting Systems Index (LSI) performance bested fourth-quarter 2011’s by 5.2%, a gain that NLB Executive Director John Bachner characterized as “cause for optimism, especially in light of encouraging year-over-year data.” Bachner noted that year-over-year performance, while strong at 3.7%, was less robust than quarter-over-quarter performance because of “intervening quarterly fluctuations. Nonetheless, year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter performance, taken as a whole, is extremely positive.” http://www.nlb.org/Index.cfm?pid=10213