Welcome to EfficientDataCenters.com, an Emerson supported Web site that we hope you will find relevant to your work within the IT, facilities, or energy / environmental communities. This blog is my personal touch on this Web site where I hope to bring up some of the more interesting aspects of what we do for a living as well as how it may very well relate to not only business in general but our personal lives and the world around us.

So a little background on me to help you understand where some of these opinions and wild ideas come from. Of course, I work for Emerson in the Emerson Network Power group as the director of energy initiatives, which means I spend a lot of time with some really smart people around the word working on energy efficiency, policies, and related technologies and research. I live and work in Southern California – well, not if you ask my wife, who keeps better track of my frequent travels than the airline mileage clubs do. So you are more likely to see me at 30,000+ feet, your facility, someone's facility, a conference, tradeshow, or factory than in my So Cal office.

However, living and working in Southern California does give one an interesting perspective on all things energy and environmental. For the most part this is where it all starts – all that "green" stuff, anyway, like recycling, reclaiming, reusing, energy optimization, etc. And having cut my teeth working in, around, and with solar, wind, micro-hydro, and fuel cell technologies as well as building ultra-high MPG (104+) vehicles, this energy efficiency business is standard operating procedure for me.

Putting it all into perspective — I live what I preach. My office computer, monitor, printer, and a few other accessories are all on a single power strip that is turned off every night when I leave. All my "phantom" loads (phone and BlackBerry® chargers) are unplugged when not in use. The office has a timer on the lights just in case I either 1.) forget, 2.) fall asleep, or 3.) get stuck on a long boring conference call – see #2. Three and a half of our family vehicles achieve 30+ MPG. (Disclaimer: my wife's car isn't even rated for 30 MPG, but I can baby that thing along and sometimes reach that level. All but six light bulbs in our entire house are compact fluorescent. (Note: Do NOT use CFLs in your garage door opener unless it's one of the new belt drive or low-vibration models. I tried CFLs in our opener only to have them fail from vibration within a few months. When they do fail, use proper recycling techniques for CFLs.)

Our house is so full of ENERGY STAR® rated appliances that the EPA has asked to put us on an energy tour. Okay, so we only have ENERGY STAR ceiling fans, TVs, dishwasher, clothes washer, refrigerator, and freezer, all of which are soon to be joined by a high-efficiency ENERGY STAR air conditioning system. The list could go on but I will spare you all the details until they relate to a topic at hand.

Finally, lest I forget, I have teenagers (a girl and a boy) living at home and a dog. An Australian Cattle Dog who gives validity to those bumper stickers claiming "My dog is smarter than your honor student." But it is the teenagers that you will hear a lot more about in the future as teenagers, if not children in general, can teach us a lot about energy management policies and/or the lack thereof.

For now, thank you for joining us.

Jack

Contact me at: jack.pouchet@emerson.com