School Energy Savings

A GOOGLE search dragonfly solutions scam gets LOTS of hits.

An incarnation of Brent Ivie. That name should sound familiar.

What do you think ignatious? Worthwhile, or a scam?

Lots of warning signs. Thanks for the confirmation.

Don't mess with Deputy Doorman!

Sales pitches based on promises of money, instead of measurable advantages of equipment that might be purchased, make me suspicious.

"What's Under the Hood?
Products are rated at 600 or 1200 amps and easily connect to a 100 or 150 amp 3-phase circuit breaker at power distribution panels throughout the building. Dragonfly achieves maximum efficiency for Schools because equipment is installed throughout the school buildings to provide better protection and greater savings. Decentralized bubble technology is used for maximum effectiveness increasing overall electrical system capacity, eliminating wasted heat and energy, and lowering
peak demand charges, and energy use. Dual-level surge protection protects sensitive equipment and electronics throughout the School. One Master controller is
installed in each building to communicate real-time information, coordinate actions, provide remote control and collect and measure data. Dragonfly SEED Equipment
is built to last 15+ years. "

Scammish language for sure. Power conditioning has some tangible benefits, but energy efficiency is not one of them, so that in itself makes it smell funny even before we analyze the rest of it. "Decentralized bubble technology" is not something that is a recognized industry term, it's something their marketing department made up. It basically just describes their way of selling you more of their power conditioners. If you are having power quality issues that are causing equipment failures, then consider it. If you are looking at saving energy, this is not the way to go about it.

If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit!

Schools are pretty much a static environment except during periods of expansion and regular maintenace of existing facility support systems.

If load balancing is achieved at each distribution panel and simple monitoring is achieved every day with long-standing and proven systems there is no need to go overboard with these dyanamic monitoring systems/schemes. The HVAC plant is really the only point of concern for daily issues. Seasonal changes affect the balancing, but if it is set up by qualified engineering it would go off without a hitch.

This sounds a lot like a "dirty-power" scheme. This is our tax dollars at work...I would throw the BS flag in my district if I heard about this.

Arrroooooooooogah!

Bullshine alarm!

I don't know anything about this particular equipment and I can't comment about that, but I would caution people about being negative about something just because it is different or unknown. Many things that we now take for granted started out as being something strange or "scammish". It's not that they were bad they were just unknown until enough people bought into the validity of the product and gave it a chance, i.e. FAX Machines, etc.

Sometimes people are negative towards an idea or product simply because they aren't used to doing things or thinking in a particular way, i.e. "get a good education, get a good job and you'll be set for life." That way of thinking was accepted for many years and lots of people got along thinking and acting that way. Because of lots of conditions, economy, business environment, etc., that way of thinking isn't very trustworthy anymore. Sam Walton also received tremendous amounts of resistance to his way of doing business. Henry Ford told his engineers he wanted an 8-cylinder engine, the engineers said it couldn't be done. He insisted and they came up with the way to do it. We now take it for granted but it started out as being a poor idea.

Sometimes people are also resistant to something new because they didn't think of it (pride), or maybe they don't want someone else to succeed.

Thats very true. However, one of our gurus did talk about coming up with a "snake oil detector" a week or so ago on some other thread.

I presume any advertisment with the words "Quantum", "wellness",or "biological energy" will automatically be tagged by the snake oil detector. Any others?

If you can define "Decentralized bubble technology" then maybe we'll listen...

Otherwise...well, yeah...

Your handle is Facilities Manager...do you have Decentralized Bubble Technology magic your facility(ies)?

Fax machines, a V-8 internal combustion engine, Sam Walton's business model... none of these things violate any laws of thermodynamics, energy conservation, or the like. They are not scams.

"Sometimes people are also resistant to something new because they didn't think of it (pride), or maybe they don't want someone else to succeed." Sometimes people around here (CR4) resist and expose scams because they are scams.

I didn't say this was or isn't a scam, it may be. I am just addressing part of the thought process when presented with something new.

Skepticsm is only good if it is honest skepticsm, i.e. an open mind rather than one with a conclusion already drawn.

I'll say it...it's a scam.

And that is worth exactly my opinion.

Fair enough, in general. However, let's look at just one of the claims:

"Decentralized bubble technology is used for maximum effectiveness increasing overall electrical system capacity"

What does that say to you, facilitiesmgr?

I'll give this a bit more time from my really busy schedule:

The site itself is a quick gen google startup which is sourced largely from Google.

Tangent Alert!

Durtieduck will like this:

--a tracking (ghost, web) beacon is embedded in the HTML (var JOT_clearDotPath = 'http://www.gstatic.com/sites/p/ca06ea/system/app/images/cleardot.gif';)

--If you want to protect yourself from things like this, or just be informed about who is doing this, try the ghostery application.

On Topic

Okay, so this company run by Jacqueline Zielenski appears to be a legit business in California. I wouldn't be surprised if some of her engineering staff is subscribed to this very site. Any takers?

Anyway, in a nutshell, they provide the service that any resident engineer, facility manager, building manager, etc, would provide. The hitch is that it is contracted out to a company who provides the specific service to schools who want to qualify for SEED credits. In the long run, this garners attention, awards, and credits to school and state agencies for being green.

They provide equipment/systems that automate the monitoring so they can generate reports to file for SEED credits. Actually, not a bad service if it pays for itself in the long run, although I am not sure how long that would take.

I stand almost corrected. Probably not a scam. Maybe they should just use standard lexicon when they describe their services.

_{^{Damn you facilitiesmgr! I hate the taste of crow...pass the ketchup}}