The bold and the beautiful 2012 Cadillac Escalade ESV

One of the major draws on this Escalade is the space it offers. Competition in this area is with the Lincoln Navigator or the smaller Infiniti QX or Mercedes GL-Class.

The ESV version of this Escalade is actually the extended wheel version of the regular Escalade and it comes in four trims: base, Luxury, Premium and Platinum Edition.

With the base trim you get 18-inch wheels, adaptive suspension dampers, rear parking sensors, power-folding and heated mirrors with driver auto-dimming, a roof rack, automatic xenon headlights, fog lamps, a power liftgate, running boards, remote ignition and keyless ignition/entry, a tri-zone automatic climate control, heated and ventilated 10-way power front seats, power-adjustable pedals, heated second-row seats, an auto-dimming rearview mirror, and a rearview camera.

On the Luxury trims the wheels are 22-inches with an upgraded magnetic automatically adaptive suspension, automatic high beams, a blind-spot warning system, sunroof, and a heated steering wheel.

Optional on this trim is the power-retracting running boards and a rear seat entertainment system, but if you choose the Premium trim you get these two features standard.

Optional on the Premium, but standard on the Platinum Edition are LED headlights as well as a cool exterior trim, 22-inch chrome wheels, leather-trimmed dash and door tops, heated and cooled cup holders, and upgraded leather upholstery.

Under the hood the 2012 Cadillac Escalade ESV has a 6.2-liter V8 engine with 403 horsepower and 417 pound-feet of torque. It comes standard with a six-speed automatic transmission and rear-wheel drive, but all-wheel drive is an option too.

Safety features on this Cadillac include standard antilock disc brakes, stability control, traction control, front side-impact and full-length side curtain airbags as well as rear parking sensors, a rearview camera, OnStar emergency communications, and ― all but the base trim ― a blind-spot warning system too.

Inside, expect high-quality leather upholstery along with faux-wood and trim and the overall luxurious styling that Cadillac is known for all around. As for the knobs, bells and whistles are also intuitive and placed well for ease of use and location.

While the 2012 Escalade ESV can accommodate eight passengers, take note of the second row adjustments needed to be made in the case either a choice of bucket seats or optional bench seats.

With all the seats in use, there is 46 cubic feet of space and when the rear seat sections are folded and removed, you up that to an impressive 137-cubic feet of cargo space, leading in cargo space class overall.

For driving, it’s obvious you are driving a bigger than big vehicle and needless to say parking in the “smaller” spots won’t be an option. This is made up in the fact that, while on the road, you do own it and the power to get going is more than enough for the driver, including a smooth ride with the requisite smooth handling too.

Shipments of LED street lights

The market for street lighting is transforming. We no longer have to rely on tradition lighting methods ― instead, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are rising in popularity due to intelligent management and energy saving options.

Research released earlier this year by the Climate Group suggested that when lighting urban areas, LEDs with a lifespan range of 50,000 – 100,000 hours provided the best return on investment, and rates of failure were far lower than traditional lighting ― two of many reasons that cities are beginning to turn to this technology.

According to a new report released by Pike Research ― a part of Navigant’s Energy Practice ― due to this gradual change in the market, unit shipments of LED lamps tailored for street lights will rise from less than 3 million in 2012 to over 17 million in 2020.

“LED lamps allow for better dimming control than standard street lights, and their electronics allow for easy integration of control nodes,” says senior research analyst Eric Woods.

“Rising sales of LED lamps will therefore drive up the adoption of smart street lighting systems, which promise to bring new levels of control and efficiency to the illumination of our cities, communities, highways, and public spaces.”

At the moment, very few LED lighting projects have been established past a pilot phase. Such smart systems do tend to cost more in the short-term to install ― up to four times more in some cases ― which keep such schemes out of the reach for many councils. However, when we consider the long-term benefits, low failure rate and reduction in manpower required to replace or fix malfunctioning high-pressure sodium counterparts, there are further considerations than energy savings to install such systems.

Fortunately, most of the other "problems" with CFL lamps that are so widely publicized by folks enraged by the light bulb "ban" are at worst minor issues. Lifespans shorter than advertised and light not as bright as the incandescent "equivalent" printed on the CFL package are common complaints, but these are almost always due to a poor choice of fixtures for a room. Dimmable CFLs for the living room and outdoor CFLs for cold climates are now common, flicker has been eliminated with electronic ballasts, warm-up times have been reduced or eliminated in most applications, and the lamps are now available in a variety of color temperatures, mostly solving the five top complaints about the quality of CFL light.

Mercury in CFLs is often hyped by nay-sayers as a major environmental problem, but the amount of mercury in a CFL is actually minuscule -- a coal-fired power plant would release almost twice as mercury into the atmosphere to power an incandescent bulb over its lifetime than a CFL even contains. Also, both streetlights and the ubiquitous fluorescent tube lamps that illuminate almost every city, office, warehouse, factory, airport and garage worldwide also contain mercury, but the anti-CFL crowd seems to conveniently forget that fact. If you are faced with a broken FL or CFL of any kind, just don't lick your fingers after sweeping up the broken glass and phosphor powder with your bare hands. You weren't really going to do that anyway, were you? Use a broom, and follow a few simple directions.

Hightower launches company to help businesses cut energy costs

Steve Hightower recently launched an energy efficiency business that he already plans to expand to at least two major U.S. cities in the near future.

Located at 3577 Commerce Drive in Middletown, HP Energy assists businesses in reducing costs through cutting energy consumption and enhancing the operating and financial performance of their existing buildings.

Hightower, whose Middletown-based company Hightowers Petroleum is the Tri-State’s largest minority-owned business, serves as president and chairman of the board.

He had help in the entrepreneurial endeavor. Environmental consultant John Picard, the company’s chief technology officer, and sustainability company founder Tim Donovan, HP Energy’s CEO, are co-founders.

“We didn’t invent the concept for energy efficiency,” Hightower said. “What we’ve done is put together a sustainability company that offers facilities the ability to reduce their overall operating cost through technologies, something that we call the fifth fuel.”

“The fifth fuel is energy that you don’t actually ever have to use,” he said.

As he sought out energy alternatives in which to involve himself over the years, Hightower said he was “very skeptical” when it came to wind, solar and other more traditional energy sources currently in the market.

For too long, businesses have relied on coal, petroleum, nuclear and alternatives to meet energy demand, he said. Delivering “the fifth fuel” helps businesses reduce costs by cutting energy consumption and enhancing the operating and financial performance of their existing buildings.

Hightower credits Picard, who he called “a guru in the green space” and one of the top sustainability experts in the world, as a major contributor in HP Energy’s conception.

“I was convinced that this was a space that if I had that type of expertise along with what our market consists of, in terms of our customer base, and knowing the opportunity in the broader marketplace that this would be the space that I should be playing in,” he said.

Naming a CEO like Donovan, who had served as director of strategy and marketing performance for BP and worked alongside Picard, allowed Hightower and Picard to “push the company forward in a very deliberate and organized manner.”

“There’s no facility that operated on a very high energy basis that you can think of that would not benefit from the breadth of technologies that HP Energy is able to bring to the table.”

Middletown has five LEED certified buildings and another, Aldi’s Market, built to green standards but not certified, said Denise Hamet, the city’s economic development director. LEED is the recognized standard for measuring building sustainability.

“In addition to providing jobs and offering a new service that will help our businesses lower their operating costs, the HP Energy venture adds a new dimension to the city’s focus on sustainability and strategic energy innovation,” Hamet said. “Having a business of this nature headquartered the city puts Middletown on the map as a growing hub of innovation; it strengthens community resources; and it provides students the opportunity to grow through internships and co-op opportunities.”

CUC installs over 1,000 LED streetlights

OVER 1,000 light emitting diode, or LED, streetlights have been installed on Saipan, Tinian and Rota, Commonwealth Utilities Corp. power division manager Gary Camacho said.

The retrofitting of LED streetlights will replace about 50 percent of the remaining high pressure sodium HPS streetlights in the CNMI, he added.

“CUC’s revenues continue to be impacted by the high energy consumption of existing streetlights. Therefore, it is imperative that we continue to identify and implement ways to reduce consumption and operational costs through new technologies such as LED lighting,” Camacho said.

Prior to the recent installation, he said there were 3,975 streetlights that utilized HPS bulbs, adding that those 250-watt HPS lights drew 993.75 kilowatts of power which equated to 4,352,625 kilowatt hours of energy per year.

The HPS streetlights will be replaced with energy-efficient 140 watt LEDs and these will reduce both streetlight energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions, Camacho said.

He said CUC expects energy savings of up to 44 percent with the installation of the LED streetlights.

In addition to energy savings, Camacho said the benefits of LED lights include improved night visibility, significantly longer lifespan, reduced maintenance costs, instant-on with no run-up or re-strike delays, no mercury, lead or other known disposable hazards, lower environmental footprint, low operating temperature and no harmful Ultraviolet UV or Infrared IR emissions.

He said funding for the project was made possible through the assistance of Thelma Inos of the Department of Public Work’s Division of Energy and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Camacho said funding HPS public streetlights is increasingly difficult as the cost of fuel and electricity rise.

He said CUC hired Maeda Pacific to retrofit 1,148 identified HPS streetlight fixtures to LED: 812 on Saipan, 133 on Tinian and 203 on Rota.

“We have completed the retrofitting of the streetlights that were identified on Saipan and Tinian,” he said. “We are in the middle of retrofitting the streetlights that were identified on Rota. The project there is expected to be completed next week, if not sooner.”

In addition to the retrofitting of the streetlights, CUC power crews are adjusting streetlights in areas identified for aesthetic purposes, Camacho said.

New depth in flat-panel fight: plasma, LCD, LED, OLED

More recently, plasma, the first commercially successful flat-panel technology, has been fading: NPD DisplaySearch's data show that after peaking at 7.4 percent of the total TV market, plasma sets will drop to 5.3 percent this year and keep skidding. But plasma's continued relevance in larger screen sizes, combined with the swift rise of LCD's LED offshoot, keep this choice from getting too simple.

So when the topic came up yet again in a shared taxi ride last week, I started with my usual question for a TV shopper: Where will you put the set?

The glass coating on plasmas usually makes them more liable to glare in a well-lighted space -- not that LCDs are immune, since many of them ship with glossy screen finishes that look terrific in a darkened showroom but can double as a mirror in a living room.

You'll also have a smaller selection of plasma TVs: Most manufacturers either don't sell them at all or ship far more LCD models. Samsung, for instance, lists 29 Samsung LED sets and five conventional LCDs but only nine plasmas, while LG offers 39 LEDs and LCDs against 12 plasmas; Panasonic is the one exception, with its plasma sets easily outnumbering LCDs and LEDs.

Plasmas also weigh more than LCDs, which can make mounting one on a wall slightly more complicated. But contrary to what you might hear, plasma sets don't automatically use more electricity than LCDs or suffer from "burn-in" that leaves ghosts of network logos visible on their screens.

And in return, plasma can delivers deeper blacks and faster response times -- meaning you're less likely to see credits or a news ticker blur as they scroll -- although years of steady improvements in LCD technology have chipped away at those advantages.

Increasingly affordable LED panels -- starting last year, NPD found that they made up more than half of all LCD production --get much credit for that.

Light-emitting diode backlights are brighter than the fluorescent lamps in older LCDs and allow for a more responsive display. High-end sets can also turn off some LEDs to further darken areas of the screen -- although when I've talked to display experts, they counseled that it was still possible to get a subpar set even with LED technology. And LED backlights don't incorporate the trace amounts of mercury found in fluorescents.

(Don't confuse LED with OLED, a much newer technology that allows ludicrously thin screens at an absurd expense. It has looked great in demos at trade shows like CES in Las Vegas or last week's IFA gathering in Berlin, but it also costs as much as ten times more to make.)

So for a TV in a sunny living room, I'd get an LED with a matte screen finish. For a media room or some other place where the TV will be the main attraction, I'd consider plasma as well. For anything smaller than 40 inches, LED or LCD would be my only option.

If you have a "connected" TV that runs Web apps like Amazon and Netflix, that set probably also supports a standard called DLNA, short for Digital Living Network Alliance. And if you have an Android phone, that probably speaks DLNA too.

In that case, you may then be able to share photos, videos and music from your phone to your TV as long as both devices are on the same home network; the phone's storage will appear on the screen as if it were a USB flash drive plugged into the set.