Berkeley Lab and Fetzer Winery Honored with California's 2005 Flex Your Power Award

Flex Your Power, California's statewide energy efficiency campaign, recognized Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Fetzer Winery   as   leaders in energy efficiency with a 2005 Flex Your Power Award. A total of 35 businesses, local governments and institutions were selected from a competitive pool of more than 260 applications. The Flex Your Power Awards originated in 2001 to acknowledge outstanding leadership in energy efficiency that helped California through the energy crisis.  

The Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Fetzer Winery were highlighted for developing an easy-to-use, computer-based tool and a handbook to help California's wineries reduce energy and water costs .

"BEST (Benchmarking and Energy and Water Savings Tool) Winery" compares the performance of a target winery to a similar reference winery. The reference winery is very efficient, using state-of-the-art commercially available energy and water control technologies.

After evaluating how the target winery compares to the reference winery, the user can view the tool's inventory of available efficient practices and technologies to select those that will save money, energy and water. BEST Winery is available as an Excel spreadsheet that can be run on any PC operating Windows 2000 or higher.

Commissioner Susan Kennedy, of the California Public Utilities Commission, said, "The Flex Your Power Award winners should inspire us all to use energy more wisely. California recently launched the most aggressive energy efficiency and conservation campaign in the history of the United States. Our ambitious goals can only be achieved if all Californians are as committed to energy efficiency and conservation as the 2005 Flex Your Power Award Winners."

In addition to the Public Utilities Commission, winners were selected by a committee of experts from: California Business Roundtable; California Energy Commission; California Urban Water Conservation Council; California Farm Bureau Federation; Energy Foundation; League of California Cities; National Resources Defense Council; Sacramento Municipal Utility District; Building Operators Managers Association; and Southern California Edison.

For more information on the 2005 Flex Your Power Awards, log on to www.fypower.org .

For more information on this research, see http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-BEST-winery.html

Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research and is managed by the University of California. Visit our Website at www.lbl.gov.