The Belkin Conserve Insight Energy Cost Monitor is about to enter the appliance energy monitor space, one that has been dominated by the Kill-A-Watt. Both of these energy monitoring devices monitor single appliances on a 120 V outlet. But there is one major difference: The Belkin unit has a...
DIY Home Energy Audit
Having a professional Home Energy Audit is a great investment to make when you need help planning your home energy upgrades. However, in the spirit of Mapawatt and empowering readers to take control of their energy usage, we'll offer the reader a "Do it Yourself Home...
Insulation for your home's attic is one of the most important aspects to ensuring that you save the most money and energy in regards to heating and air conditioning. I briefly covered insulation in our insulation intro, but it was very basic. While catching up on my energy conservation blogs I...
A few weeks ago a journalist at UNC reached out about an online news site about energy sponsored by the Carnegie and Knight foundations titled Powering a Nation. From the Powering a Nation About us section:
"Powering a Nation will investigate the political, economic and scientific tensions...
My home was equipped with energy efficient appliances when I purchased it in 2003. However, recently, we've had trouble with our Energy Star Amana refrigerator circa 1998. In my case, the freezer wasn't freezing well anymore... even with clean coils. Since my refrigerator was 12 years old, I...
Tankless water heater installed
Tankless water heaters are getting very popular in the United States. I first wrote about them in May of 2009 with our wonderfully titled post, "Tankless Water Heaters: Not Sure if I'd Demand Them" In that post I was hesitant to recommend tankless water heaters...
Earlier this week a team from Virginia Tech, with their Lumenhaus entry, took home first place in the first ever Solar Decathlon Europe contest held in Madrid, Spain . The University of Florida took home 8th place. The majority of the contestants were from schools in Europe. The Solar...
Unsustainable Fossil Fuel Meeting
The documentary "Gasland" first aired on HBO on June 21, just weeks after the worst oil spill in the history of the United States. I'll warn you: watching it will infuriate you...that is if you care about individual human beings over the profit of the fossil...
Scientific American has an article written by Michael Moyer coming out in the July issue titled, "Dirty Truth about Plug-In Hybrids". While the article is interesting (and the interactive portion is really cool), I'm not too happy with the narrow focus of Mr. Moyer's conclusions. Basically, his...
incandescent --> CFL --> LED
In a recent post about the Philips dimmable LED a reader mentioned that Home Depot also has a residential LED available under the EcoSmart brand name, and this one is under $20. So I bought one to test it out. I first went to my local Home Depot store...
The following is most of a press release I received yesterday regarding a solar financing method for residential consumers. In short, the press release is about a solar financing option where a company (in this case SunRun) installs solar pv panels on your roof and they pay the majority (or all...
This is a list of currently available electric cars that you can buy right now in the U.S. For the purpose of this list, a plug-in battery electric or a plug-in hybrid is considered an electric car, because you will be plugging it into an outlet in your garage to charge the batteries at night.
A...
I first wrote about Home Star in March, when Obama was in Savannah, GA proposing the program. Three months later and Congress has passed H.B. 5019 - Home Star Energy Retrofit Act of 2010, a.k.a. Cash for Caulkers. All of this was probably helped out by V.P. Biden's report delivered in October...
Embrace Clean Energy
In Obama's address to the nation last night regarding the Gulf Oil Spill he stated:
We cannot consign our children to this future. The tragedy unfolding on our coast is the most painful and powerful reminder yet that the time to embrace a clean energy future is now. Now is...
I saw the Philips Dimmable LED bulb, Philips EnduraLED A19 Dimmable LED Lamp, at a trade show last week and I was very impressed. Philips highlights the features of this bulb on their website:
Smooth dimming to 10% of full light levels
Instant-on light
Emits virtually no UV/IR light in the beam...
Vampire Cable Box
By now you've probably heard about vampire energy loads (also known as standby power). I'm sure you've seen the articles on news sites or environmental sites describing how much energy vampire loads consume. And if everyone in the world would just unplug their vampire loads...
This post is me venting. If you're fine and dandy being led around by dunces then please stop reading.
I'm fed up with society being tarnished by those who are only out to make a buck at the expense of their surroundings.
Coal ponds spilling over in Tennessee
The sub-prime mortgage meltdown...
I was surprised to see the ClimateMaster full page ad in my Time Magazine back in February. While I've written a blog on Residential Geothermal Heat Pumps (that makes me an expert right?) I never thought the market was big enough for a full page ad in a national magazine. But I'm glad to be...
While doing some work at home in the middle of a hot summer day I realized I needed a solution to the fact that I was close to sweating. We leave the upstairs thermostat at 78° F during the day, and I'm loathe to adjust my thermostat if I don't have to.
So I decided to use a fan.
You may be one...
Traditionally, the Southeastern U.S. has been behind the ball when it comes to clean energy. This perception inspired my guest post that appeared on Triple Pundit titled Renewable Energy and the Good 'Ol Boy. In that post I wrote:
"I’ve lived in and around Atlanta – the capital of the New South...