2012 Product of the Year Winners
Consulting-Specifying Engineer Readers Have Cast Their Votes For The 2012 Product Of The Year; Read About The Winners.
By Emma Renee Dutton
Consulting-Specifying Engineer's Product of the Year (POY) contest is the premier award for new products in the HVAC, fire/life safety, electrical, and plumbing systems engineering markets. The annual reader-choice program was created to provide Consulting-Specifying Engineer's readers with information about the top new product in their fields.
Read about the winners in the September 2012 issue of Consulting-Specifying Engineer.
Download the official 2012 Product of the Year press release (PDF).
A total of 98 products qualified as finalists for the 2012 Product of the Year award. We left the final say to the readers. Here are the winners, starting with the overall winner and followed by the 32 individual winners for each of the nine sub-categories.
Most Valuable Product (MVP):
VYCON, Hybrid energy storage system
VYCON's Hybrid VDC XEB is an energy storage system that combines flywheel technology with batteries to provide 300 kW of power and extended runtime. The flywheel handles power anomalies to reduce the frequency of battery cycles. Throughout its 20-year life, the flywheel charges and discharges at high rates without degradation or bearing damage, and up to five of these systems can be paralleled for higher power. The system includes an aerospace-grade steel flywheel hub, a high-speed permanent magnet motor generator, a contact-free magnetic levitation system, a touchscreen display, and a monitoring system that integrates with various three-phase UPS makes and models.
Electrical Distribution:
Gold: Cooper Wiring Devices, USB wall charger
Silver: Eaton Corporation, Automatic transfer switch
Silver: General Electric, Level 2 electric vehicle charging station
Silver: Legrand/Wiremold, Floor box
Emergency, On-site, Standby Power:
Gold: VYCON, Hybrid energy storage system
Silver: Eaton Corporation, Backup power device
Bronze: MTU Onsite Energy, Generator
Equipment-level Sensors & Controls:
Gold: Cooper Industries, Variable frequency drive
Silver: Littelfuse Inc, Arc flash relay
Bronze: GE Industrial, Motor control
Fire, Life Safety, Mass Notification: 
Gold: NOTIFIER by Honeywell, Smoke and CO detector
Silver: Cooper Notification, Mass notification system
Bronze: Silent Knight by Honeywell, Firefighter telephone control system
Bronze: Status Solutions, Desktop notification and positioning system
HVAC/R:
Gold: Johnson Controls, Screw chiller
Silver: Lennox, HVAC system
Bronze: AAON, Packaged rooftop unit
Lighting:
Gold: WattStopper, Outdoor lighting sensor
Silver: Cooper Industries, LED floodlight
Silver: Cooper Lighting, LED luminaires
Silver: Lithonia Lighting, Volumetric LED illumination
Plumbing & Water Management: 
Gold: American Standard, Toilet valve
Silver: Victaulic, Pipe press system
Bronze: Aquatherm, Pressure pipe line
Bronze: Chicago Faucets, Concealed undermount faucet
Bronze: Ilios Dynamics, High-efficiency water heater
Software: Design, Modeling, Analysis:
Gold: Design Master Software, Electrical design software
Silver: Johnson Controls, Building efficiency system
Bronze: Schneider Electric, Data center management software
Test Instruments, Meters, Data Loggers:
Gold: Fluke Corp, Power quality analyzers
Silver: Fluke Corp, Thermal imagers
Silver: Leviton, Smart meters
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2012 Salary Survey
In a year when manufacturing continued to lead the economic rebound, it makes sense that plant manager bonuses rebounded. Plant Engineering’s annual Salary Survey shows both wages and bonuses rose in 2012 after a retreat the year before.
Average salary across all job titles for plant floor management rose 3.5% to $95,446, and bonus compensation jumped to $15,162, a 4.2% increase from the 2010 level and double the 2011 total, which showed a sharp drop in bonus.