Electical Contractor

Being competitive in automation means doing your research:

Electrical contractors head home for emerging opportunities

  There’s something for everyone in this technology-driven sector The home is a serious contender for electrical and automated functions, and there are many different services the customer can use; it’s up to you, the electrical contractor, to find your residential niche.

Lutron Electronics has teamed up with Cherokee Investment Partners to build the National Homebuilder Mainstream GreenHome in Raleigh, NC; GreenHome is a mainstream green home designed to demonstrate how sustainable living can be achieved in a traditional home.

Keep your eyes on the residential market

Fueled by a hot real estate market, residential lighting manufacturers are creating products that integrate design and function at the onset. Although custom homes comprise 17 percent of all new homes, they account for almost 30 percent of all expenditures for building products.

You have seen them: tall, gangling, steel structures-known as high-tension lines-that transport hundreds of kilovolts. These rights-of-way are used to safely move transmission-level bulk power from the generators to the distribution substations.

While the residential lighting market is still largely driven by new construction and retrofitting of single-family homes, emerging trends in multifamily residential dwellings are signaling new opportunities for the design and installation of indoor lighting products.

The next time you review your marketing strategy, consider expanding into the often-overlooked residential market. Many electrical contractors have chosen to concentrate on the cyclical commercial, industrial and institutional niches.