In almost all commercial buildings, the Heating Ventilation & Air Conditioning (HVAC) system uses the largest percentage of power. Like lighting, the HVAC operates throughout business hours but its plant consumes much larger amounts of energy. Traditionally HVAC systems source heating from gas (oil in some cases) fired boilers, and cooling from electric chilled water or refrigerant plants. Reverse cycle package air conditioners produce heating and cooling via compressors within the unit. Most large HVAC systems are centrally controlled via a Building Management System (BMS), which activates the heating or cooling relative to the demand within the serviced area. This is controlled via a temperature set point, proportional bands and dead bands.

Shown below is a simple temperature control proportional–integral–derivative (PID) controller diagram. It shows a temperature set point and heating cooling proportional bands (PB) or percentage heating/cooling.
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For a small business such as ours maintaining a healthy cash flow is a must. Cash comes into the business when invoices are paid. A recent survey showed that Australian businesses were on average now waiting 58 days for invoices to be paid. This means that for most businesses the cash that will come into the business in April is dependent on what the business invoices now in February. There is lag between when the work is done and when it is paid for. Failure to invoice enough in February could result in a business running out of cash in April. And when there is no cash, there is no business.

Climate change is similar. The carbon we put into the atmosphere now influences the climate well into the future. However rather that a time span of weeks or months, its decades. Todays carbon emissions will influence the climate for decades to come. So to get a stable climate in the future we need to cut greenhouse gas pollution NOW.
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Black Saturday 7 February 2009: Melbourne’s temperature reached 46.4 degrees (116.5 deg F), fanned by strong hot winds 400 bushfires across the state killed over 170 people and destroyed 700 homes. And the dams supplying the state with water are at record lows.

If letters to the editor in the newspaper are any indication, many people are making the link between the terrible events of 7 February and climate change.
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Controlled Plasma (CP) lighting technology is the latest of a number of emerging innovative lighting technologies that inadvertently help reduce GHG emission through energy efficiency. In fact its Melbourne inventor Graeme Huon (formerly and acoustics engineer) asserted that “If we were to replace 75 % of lights in homes with these globes in the next five years, we could save building one new power station”.

Cold cathode fluorescent lighting (or CCFL) has been around for a few years in the form of inductive lighting. However, what sets CP globes aside from the rest is that it is the first of its kind to be able to be used in homes as well as for commercial applications due to its affordability and design.
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As part of an international effort to combat climate change, researchers worldwide are exploring new ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One such method is Biochar, which takes organaic matter and burns it in a pyrolysis oven with no oxygen to produce a charcoal form and a renewable gas fuel by-product called Syngas. Carbon that would otherwise be released from the breakdown of organic matter is trapped in the biochar for hundreds of years and if returned to the ground has been shown to increase the fertility of soil.

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