Saturday, December 3, 2011

Electric Tankless Water Heaters - The Shocking Truth

!±8± Electric Tankless Water Heaters - The Shocking Truth

I have recently been doing some pretty intense research into Electric Tankless Water Heaters.  I did a 2 part series about Tankless Water Heaters in general a while back, but I didn't talk much about Electric tankless except to say that they don't seem to make much sense.

Well, at the risk of making all the Electric tankless manufacturers mad, what I found out in my research just confirmed that they really don't make much sense.  I just have more information now as to why not.  Since tankless water heaters are being marketed so heavily right now, I wanted to give you the bottom line on what the marketing may not tell you.  Then at least you will be able to make an informed decision if you are considering tankless.

Tankless Basics

First of all, it is important to understand the basic operation of a tankless water heater.  All tankless heaters, whether electric or gas, use the same basic process to heat water.

1)When a hot water faucet is opened this causes water to flow through the tankless unit.

2) When the volume of flow is enough to trigger the unit to come on it begins heating water.

3)The amount of water that the heater allows to flow through is regulated by the desired outlet temperature.

4)This is, in turn, affected by the temperature of the incoming water.  The colder the incoming water the more heat the heater has to create.

Temperature Rise and Gallons Per Minute

That's why the performance of tankless water heaters is measured by how many gallons per minute (GPM) the heater will deliver at a desired Temperature Rise.  The greater the desired Temperature Rise, the less Gallons per Minute of hot water can be produced.

How many GPM a tankless heater can deliver is entirely dependent on how much energy (either electric or gas) the unit has available to heat the water.  If you want more hot water you have to use more energy.  In a gas tankless this means more BTUs.  In an electric tankless this means more kilowatts, which also means a bigger amperage draw.  There is no way to get around this, it's just the way it is.

Electric vs. Gas

Since we are talking  about electric tankless, the only thing I will say about gas models is that they almost always have better performance than electric models.  The "largest" electric tankless heaters can't match the output of a "standard" gas tankless unit.  For the record, "regular", tank type water heaters have the same differences.  Gas units just heat water faster than electric, tankless or otherwise.

How Much Hot Water Is Enough?

Now that you know the basic concepts, here's why I don't think an electric tankless is a good idea:

The largest unit I could find is only capable of delivering around 5 GPM (gallons per minute) at a modest 50° temperature rise.  At a 60° rise this drops to 4.3 GPM.  By the way, the only people I know who recommend using a 50° temperature rise when sizing a heater are the tankless manufacturers themselves.  Every plumber I know uses 60° as a minimum, real world figure.  Another thing to keep in mind: the Plumbing Code requires "hot water" to all fixtures for "bathing, washing, culinary purposes...etc.  The Code defines "hot water" as "greater than or equal to 110° F".

OK, if all of these numbers are making your head hurt here's the bottom line.  A standard shower head uses at least 2.5 GPM (gallons per minute).  The biggest residential electric tankless can deliver less than 5 GPM at a realistic temperature rise.  That means if two shower heads are running at once they will have less than full flow.  Since one of the most common complaints I hear is that the showers don't have enough pressure already, this is just a recipe for dissatisfaction.

But that's not all.  This lackluster performance comes with a price.

How Much Electricity Is Enough?

Electric tankless water heaters require an enormous amount of electricity as compared to any other equipment in the home.  The largest models require a whopping 160 amps. With most new homes having a 200 amp electrical service, that's 80% of the total electrical capacity of the home.  Many older homes don't even have a large enough electrical service to power the tankless, much less the rest of the house.

In case you think I'm just ranting, I'm not alone.  Electric Utilities hate electric tankless water heaters.  Since they make money selling electricity you would think they would love them.  It seems that they use so much power that they can overload the system.  Check out this excerpt from one power company's website on tankless:

"o  The new load of a tankless water heater can sometimes equal the load of an entire new home!

o  ...if a customer installs a tankless water heater, the increased electric demand may exceed the design specifications of the system and require an upgrade of the cable and transformer. ... will be charged directly to the customer. & If a customer installs a tankless water heater, the customer is required by approved tariff in both the Carolinas and Florida to pay the full cost to upgrade their facilities (including cable and transformer) to meet the need.

o  Customers complaining about a voltage fluctuation or flickering lights may be seeing the impact of a tankless water heater in their neighborhood. It is important to note that this voltage fluctuation may be noticed by other customers in addition to the customer with the tankless water heater - since several customers often share a single transformer. An investigation of all customers on the transformer may be necessary to determine the source of the problem.   If voltage problems exist because of a tankless water heater and a facility upgrade is necessary, the customer with the tankless water heater is required to pay the full cost to upgrade prior to construction."

I don't know if this is actually enforced but it is pretty plain to see that this Power Company is definitely trying to discourage the use of electric tankless water heaters.

Look, I do not have an axe to grind against the electric tankless industry.  There are even a few situations where a small electric tankless might make sense.  I just don't think they are a good choice for a whole house water heater.  I also want to make sure that you can count on me to give you the real, no hype truth.  And, in this case,  I think electric tankless water heaters are a bad choice in most cases.


Electric Tankless Water Heaters - The Shocking Truth

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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

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Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The Collapse of Enron: Managerial Aspects

!±8± The Collapse of Enron: Managerial Aspects

Executive summary

Its revenues made up US 9(4) billion, assets equaled () billion, and the number of employees reached more than 30,000 people in 20 countries around the world.

While Enron Corporation was so highly praised by the outside observers, internally it had highly decentralized financial control and decision-making structure, which made it practically impossible to get coherent and clear view on corporations' activities and operations. Of course, the problem was not exclusively due to poor managerial performance, all the departments of the corporation were involved in the ruining corporate ethical values and principles, but executives and managers bear primary responsibility for the absence of corporate culture, clear accountability and transparence of the company. If operations management worked properly, in its full force, and if it was given possibility to work in such a way, there could be a chance of escaping the tragedy.

Enron Corp brief history

Enron Corporation was one of the largest global energy, services and commodities company. Before it filed bankruptcy under chapter 11, it sold natural gas and electricity, delivered energy and other commodities such as bandwidth internet connection, and provided risk management and financial services to the clients around the world.

Enron was based in Houston, Texas, and was founded in July 1985 (though company with Enron name emerged still in 1930 (Swatz, Watkins, 2003)) by the merger of InterNorth of Omaha in Nebraska, and Houston Natural Gas. Enron Company quickly developed from merely delivering energy to brokering energy futures contracts on deregulated energy markets. In 1994, the company started to sell electricity, and in 1995, it entered European energy market. By the middle 2001, Enron employed about 30,000 people globally (McLEan, Elkind,2003).

Questionable accounting methods and techniques provided Enron with possibility to be listed as seventh largest United States company and was expected to dominate the market which the company virtually invented in the communications, weather and power securities (Bryce, 2002). But instead the corporation became the largest corporate failure in the global history and an example of well-planned and institutionalized corporate fraud. Enron became wealthy due to its pioneering marketing and promotion of power and communications bandwidth services and risk management derivatives, including such innovative and exotic items as weather derivatives.

In 1999, Enron launched an initiative of buying and selling access to high-speed Internet bandwidth, and also Enron Online was launched as a Web-based trading site, making Enron e-commerce company. In 2000, the reported revenues of the company made 1 billion. It had stakes in almost 30,000 miles of gas pipelines, either owned or accessed 15,000 miles of fiber-optic network and had stakes in global operations on generating electricity (Thomas, 2002).

In the result, for five years in a row, from 1996 to 2000, Enron was named "America's most innovative Company" by Fortune magazine, and headed the list of Fortune's "100 best companies to Work for in America" in 2000. Enron reputation was undermined by rumors on bribery and political pressure with the objective of securing contacts in South and Central America, Philippines and Africa. The Enron was blamed to use its connections with Clinton and Bush administrations to express pressure in their contracts. The events were followed by a series of scandals involving irregular accounting methods bordering on fraud which involved Enron and Arthur Andersen accounting firm and led Enron on the verge of undergoing the largest bankruptcy in economic history in November 2001 (Emshwiller, Smith, 2001).

Since Enron was always considered a blue chip stock, the bankruptcy was a disastrous and unprecedented event in the global financial world. Enron's downfall was definite when it was found out that a considerable share of its profits resulted from deals with so-called special-purpose entities, limited partnership under control of Enron. It resulted in the possibility of not reporting many of the company's losses in its financial statements. The final plan of Enron's bankruptcy included creation of three new businesses which would be spun off the company.

The reorganization process started in 2003 with the creation of three companies - CrossCountry Energy, Prisma Energy International, and Portland General Electric. CrossCountry Energy was sold to CCE Holdings L.L.C., with the money to be used for the repayment of the debts, while Prisma Energy International and Portland General Electric should emerge as independent companies descendant of Enron (Swatz, 2003).

Operations management scope of functions

To understand the reasons of this bankruptcy and the level of managerial implication in the quality performance of the company, particularly that of operations management, it is necessary to outline the main functions of operations management and impact it should have of functioning of the organization.

The principal task of operations management is effective transformation of inputs into "desired outputs" of the company (Shafer, 1997). The outputs are traditionally understood in manufacturing and profit-making context within the organizations. But recently it has been recognized that operations management is a discipline which is not limited with such narrow functions; it can be deployed in practically any area where the organization aims at achieving its objectives (Barnett, 1996). For instance, non-profit or public sectors have to learn to optimize their internal operations and processes in the situation of limited resources; service companies come to conclusion that by reappraising their delivery process they can revolutionize and significantly improve their approach to manufacturing companies and their marketplace. Robin Wood (2001) gives the example of such operations management implication in Daewoo company, which understood that it can specialize and differentiate its product by adding definite bundle of benefits to its product which includes additional supporting services. Operations sector is the heart of these changes that are made by leading companies to improve their performance and increase customer base.

The survival of commercial company depends on ability of the organization to focus and shape its operational resources to meet the expectations of its stakeholders: customers, employees and shareholders, expressed in organizational strategy (Russel, 1995) . Irrespective of economic sectors the company operates in, the ability of operations management of this company to fulfill those above-mentioned tasks depends on their understanding that it is necessary to make trade-offs. They cannot avoid the situation of working under constraints and have to understand their capabilities and constraints to provide significant inputs into strategic decision-making process involving further resources of the organization.

Operations managers in the organizations are not empowered to make strategic decisions, but they play important role in shaping the organization's strategy and contribute to the strategic thinking ( Pasternack, Viscio, 1998). Operations managers should be able to translate strategic aims and objectives into clear operational objectives and actions and to implement, design and improve the products of the company themselves and the processes of their delivery. They have to know how changes incorporated to external factors influence the operation and how changes in one aspect of the operating system influence other aspects.

Also, operations managers need to know how technological changes impact organization's capability of delivery, and to incorporate their conclusions into strategic process (Peters, Waterman, 1982). Therefore, the heart of operations thinking includes the ability to think dynamically and systematically across time and space (Miller, 1998). Besides traditional tasks of operation management, new perspectives and objectives emerge connected with the emergence of new trends and developments of operations management, such as total quality management, shop floor control, global supply chain management, manufacturing planning software, and others.

Total quality management has become one of the most important developments of the operations management. The quest for higher level of products and services quality is caused by the globalization of markets, on the one hand, and increasing litigation over service or product failure. The relationship between quality and market share performance is doubtless. Those firms that fail to understand the issue of quality find themselves on the bottom of their industry hierarchy. A significant share of the responsibility for quality standards rests on the operations manager. Global supply chain management is another very important component of operations management. The world economy is becoming more global than ever. Looking for lower production costs, more flexibility and local risk reduction, companies are seeking to outsource and produce services and products on global scale (Heizer, 2004). Operation managers are responsible for fulfilling the task. Project management is yet another task of the operations management department. Operation managers bear responsibility for numerous projects which range from considerable capital projects to specific ones such as installation of new information system.

Effectively managing projects involves fulfillment and delivery them in timely manner and within the budget (Stevens, 2001). In a word, operations management is indispensable component of the organization, since it fulfills numerous important functions of the company. Operations manager handles daily running and functioning of the organization.

The implication of poor managerial performance for the collapse of Enron Corporation

Now it is necessary to find out and analyze whether operations management of Enron Corp performed all the functions mentioned above and what was the quality of their activity.

The Enron did have operations management department, which, according to their official source, fulfilled the following functions: setup accounts and notify utilities, agency agreement from customer, verify the format of invoice, setup invoice data transfer, test algorithms of invoice and file transfer to the customer, determine the reporting requirements of the customer (Enron Energy Services, 2000). As it is seen from the source, the functions of very operations management department are very limited. There are other management departments which perform the functions of operations management stated above: operations facility management, commodity management, energy asset management, financial operations, and capital management. Though, most of functions performed by these departments, according to the source, are purely executive and lack integration, systematic vision, responsibility, control and creative aspect. Besides limited scope of functions assigned to operations management in Enron Corporation, another important point concerns the quality of their performance and overall corporate culture and atmosphere created within corporation. As it was mentioned above, ideally, the functions of operations management include creating ethic values, integrity, competence and clear accountability within the organization. Enron's management failed to comply with these tasks.

Read the full version of this article here.


The Collapse of Enron: Managerial Aspects

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Friday, October 21, 2011

Electric Toothbrush Reviews - Oral B Triumph and Oral B Sonic Complete DLX

!±8± Electric Toothbrush Reviews - Oral B Triumph and Oral B Sonic Complete DLX

When it comes to teeth we all have them and some of us could do with spending a little more time looking after them. With increased concerns over health in general and teeth being linked to a number of other health conditions, it is no surprise that people are looking a little deeper into teeth care. This would probably explain the increased number of electric toothbrushes being released into the market place.

Dental care brands like Oral B are producing some toothbrushes that are set to revolutionise the way we brush our teeth. It has led to a range of new and exciting developments and innovations in toothbrushes utilising different types of brush head. Oral B is the major producer of these innovations so lets take a look at some of the advances they have made.

The Oral B Triumph with Smart Guide is a fairly innovative toothbrush. It is pretty much a regular electric toothbrush which is said to be slightly better than brushing your teeth with a regular brush. The thing that makes this brush innovative is the Smart Guide. On first impressions this can seem like a bit of a gimmick but customer reviews report that it is incredibly useful. The Smart Guide wireless comes with a pressure sensor that can detect when you are brushing too hard which can damage teeth enamel. It also has a brushing timer to make sure you brush your teeth for long enough and it reminds you when you need to replace the Oral B FlossAction brush heads. This makes the Oral B Triumph an affordable and effective electric toothbrush.

The Oral B Sonic Complete DLX is an electric toothbrush that is proven to whiten your teeth by 25% more than other leading electric toothbrushes. It certainly does and when it is combined with the sonic brush heads it proves it. The toothbrush heads are designed with angled crisscross bristles and power tip bristles that reach deep between your teeth to ensure a thorough clean. Like the Triumph it also comes with a 2-minute timer and a quadrant timer that beeps every 30 seconds to remind you to change the area you are cleaning. The toothbrush is also proven to hold its charge for over 2 weeks, a point which many customers have focused on.


Electric Toothbrush Reviews - Oral B Triumph and Oral B Sonic Complete DLX

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Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Customer Service Cover Letter Sample

!±8± Customer Service Cover Letter Sample

The customer service cover letter sample below shows the principles of good cover letter writing. It is longer than the conservative standard. The sender begins by saying which job she is applying for. She also pays a few compliments to the company. In the second and third she highlights her skills and accomplishments. The last paragraph of the customer service over letter sample sets the stage for an interview.

Customer Service Cover Letter Sample

Dear Mr. Smith,

May this letter find you well. I read in your web site that you are in need of a customer service representative. I have been in this field for six years and presently am employed with ____ in its sales department. Having heard of your recent acquisition of ____, I see that yours is a fast-growing company with a bright future; I would be happy to render my skills at your service.

My warm, friendly and charming personality helped win the loyalty of our clients. I am proud to say that since I started working for my current employer, the number of returning customers has doubled!

Besides customer care, I also worked as public relations officer for the Office of the Mayor. Attending to people and listening to their concerns so that we may work out a solution is natural to me. My experiences have taught me that for any business or organization to thrive, it must always maintain an open and active line of communication with its patrons. It is the task of customer service representatives like me to secure this for you.

For your reference, I have attached my resume which details my work history, training and seminars, and awards. But I think I would be able to tell you more about my qualifications in an interview. Please do not hesitate to call me so that we may schedule a meeting.

Thank you for your consideration.

Yours sincerely,

Jane Henry


Customer Service Cover Letter Sample

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Friday, October 14, 2011

Transforming Smart Meters with Service Management

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