Looks nice, but worth the money?
Winter is approaching and it's getting cold outside, so it's time to put on sweaters in your homes to stay warm (to really save energy) or just turn up your heat (boooo!). But let's all be honest, as much as we say we can just bundle up inside, nobody likes...
I want to suck your Watts!
**Update - 10/31/09 -- I originally posted the below post on Vampire Loads months ago, but we just watched "Interview with the Vampire" (amazingly this was my first time watching this), it's Halloween, and the evening news just ran a segment on the topic. One thing...
By now we all know the value of monitoring our home energy consumption, and one such product to help do that is the Black & Decker Power Monitor. I've spent a lot of time covering Energy Inc.'s TED 5000, so let's look at another option (and one that is half the price at $99).
The nice thing...
AlertMe, an energy monitoring device based in the UK, has announced they are teaming up with Google to display energy use on the iGoogle home page. I covered the first U.S. company to team up with Google a few weeks ago with my blog on the TED 5000 and Google PowerMeter. Currently, AlertMe is...
Yesterday I had the chance to see one of my heroes of sustainability speak in Atlanta. Ray Anderson was promoting his new book Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth at an author lecture series. Ray wrote the first book I read...
350 in New Zealand
Yesterday was 350.org's International Day of Climate Action and the response was huge. 350.org is the brainchild of Bill McKibben, who is also the author of one of my favorite Sustainability focused books, Deep Economy. The whole premise behind 350.org is to bring attention...
I recently attended an event where a Utility was highlighting some of their new plant improvement efforts. The new methods of power production at this one plant will be much more efficient than their current methods, and it will save much unwanted emissions from going into the atmosphere. This...
BP Solar Clean Power Estimator Example
I've been searching for a good solar power payback calculator based on where a person lives for awhile now. While the U.S. does have a Federal incentive of a 30% tax credit for those who install solar, many states also offer incentives. Additionally,...
If you're in the middle-class and wondering how the green economy is going to help you, fret no longer, because V.P. Joe Biden is on top of it! Today he revealed the report, Recovery Through Retrofit, which aims at expanding the home energy efficiency and retrofit market (which happens to be the...
While the main focus of the Mapawatt Blog is on personal home energy and water conservation, occasionally you may notice a blog on general sustainable issues. The goal here is to help you learn more about sustainability in hopes that you can apply some of those things to your daily life. Every...
I'm traveling this week out in SF/Napa valley area and I just wanted to throw in a few observations:
We stayed the first night at the Hotel Griffon which I covered on Triple Pundit when I wrote a quick blog on their use of the Perfect Flush device from Brondell. I was happy to test out the...
Google PowerMeter iGoogle
I was thrilled when I learned Google PowerMeter and TED 5000 were going to be teaming up to bring me my energy consumption on my iGoogle page. I have had the TED 5000 installed since July and I just installed my TED 5000 updates and I have the power meter running on my...
Home Energy Monitors
With all the buzz from the announcement Google made regarding their partnership with Energy, Inc. and the TED 5000 I decided now would be a good time to provide a summary of all the companies in the residential energy monitoring space. This list was compiled with...
Guy with Solar Panels
I'm going to start a series about individuals living sustainable lives in hopes that it can inspire others to do the same. The series is titled: Sustainable Living in Real Life. We all won't be able to implement everything the people I chronicle do, but hopefully there...
LED, Incandescent, CFL
Between Incandescents, CFLs, and LEDs, there are many different lighting options available for the homeowner. The problem is that there are so many options, the energy-saving technology keeps improving, and costs keep adjusting. I've done a cost comparison between...
I've covered the smart grid before - with the basic blog What is this Smart Grid thing and Smart Grid and buildings - but no resource on the web covers the Smart Grid in a vaguer, yet more entertaining way than GE. As part of their ecomagination campaign GE has an augmented reality section of...
One of the best blogs I've found focused solely on Solar power on the residential/commercial scale is SolarPowerRocks.com. These guys provide excellent information targeted for each state. Recently they came out with a 2009 State by State report card that grades states on how well they are...
Wood goes in, gas comes out
Biomass is currently used to create electricity in many places in the U.S. The process is fairly simple. Chop down some trees (a renewable resource), burn them (with the required air permits), create electricity. While sometimes the trees burn in a boiler to...
Green Jobs, not just a slogan
Why won't more politicians and Americans listen to Thomas Friedman? It's not like the guy is some wacko living in the backwoods of Montana. He's a foreign policy expert and world traveler. He wrote Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How...
Let's get one thing straight: Geothermal power production is very different than residential geothermal. Geothermal power production is when wells are drilled over an area of high thermal activity in the earths crust, then water is put down the wells to create steam, which turn a turbine, which...