NPEEC Seal

In our modern society, electricity is something vital to everyone’s lives. Not only for the conveniences it allows us to have, but also for the greater practicality it grants to everything we do. For instance, two people at completely different places can talk to each other simultaneously, whatever the distance is. We can easily illuminate a room with the click of a button. While our ancestors took months to arrive at a certain place, today we can do it in a matter of hours. There are countless examples of ways electricity makes our lives easier and comfier. Besides, it allowed us to develop several fields of science, such as the medical one. We can have readily available all kinds of exams such as X-Rays and it’s possible to get their results in an instant. 

Nevertheless, all these benefits are not without a price, and this bill is paid by our planet. It’s impossible to create something from nothing, we need to use Earth’s resources to generate electricity. We’ll not talk about this in detail, it’s not our intention in this post, but a fact that should be clear to everyone is: we cannot use these resources in a thoughtless manner, they are not infinite, so we all should work to make the most of them. The subject of energy efficiency has never been more important than it is now.

If you’d like, you can also check our post in: Avanço na fotossíntese artificial permite que os cientistas armazenem a energia solar como combustível

In this case, we’d like to present to you a brazilian tool that encourages the creation of more efficient electrical products: the Selo Procel, or NPEEC Seal (National Program of Electrical Energy Conservation), created in the year of 1993 through a Presidential Decree. This tool has as its main goal being an efficiency indicative for customers. Basically, if you see an electrical product bearing it, you’ll know for sure that it’ll consume less energy than any others in its own category. 

Moreover, this seal doesn’t apply to every residential equipment, but only the following:

  • Home appliances:
    • Refrigerator;
    • Freezer;
    • Washing machine;
    • Television;
    • Air Conditioner;
    • Fan;
    • Microwave.
  • Lighting
    • Compact Fluorescent Lamps;
    • Sodium Vapor Lamps;
    • LED lamps;
    • Reactors;
    • LED light fixtures.

It should also be said that the NPEEC Seal classifies an equipments’ energy consumption and its degree of efficiency. This ranges from A (best efficiency) to G (worst efficiency). So, in order to decrease your energy consumption and reduce your energy bill, we highly recommend you to only buy household appliances with the grade A in the NPEEC Seal. Other examples of ways to avoid energy waste in your household are:

  • Everytime you travel, be sure to switch off your house’s main circuit breaker. Otherwise, unplug all your equipment that has a stand-by mode. 
  • Avoid using plug multipliers to power more than one equipment through the same plug; 
  • Avoid switching on lamps at daytime. You should better utilize the sunlight: open your windows, curtains and shutter.
  • Do not forget to switch off the lamps in an unoccupied room.

By Samuel Cravo