February 2012 Blog Posts (29)

On March 8, 2012, Metrolist, Denver’s real estate colossus, will finally unveil its “green-field addendum.”  And it’s been a long time coming, says Jamil Dillon.

Dillon would know because he helped hatch the idea.  He was the Residential Program Senior Associate at the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) in 2010 when he and green home builder Sean Smith began conversations with some Colorado MLSes, including Metrolist, to provide “green” and energy-efficient home-listing info. …

It looks like the time has come to pay the piper for over the top promises of savings from replacement windows. Last week the Federal Trade Commission settled with five window companies that have been making exagerated and unsubstantiated claims of energy savings regarding their products. According to Window & Door, "the cases are part of a broad FTC effort to ensure that environmental marketing is truthful and based on solid scientific evidence, government officials…

It's inexplicable as to why people are sluggish or fearful in regards to getting a better rate on their electric supply rate! 

Only 2% of people were thinking of changing their electricity or gas supplier, down from a third who were interested before the market was opened up statewide in 2006.

The study and recent survey also looked at how many people had already changed suppliers – just 2% for gas and 3% for electricity. You might almost call…

http://nrglogicblog.com/?p=482

Hair Salon   http://nrglogicblog.com/?p=490

http://nrglogicblog.com/?p=490

Building Science Funnies - Duct Blasting  http://tinyurl.com/89wr9sh

The Obama administration – and every parent with a child in college – is concerned about the ever-escalating cost of higher education. And for good reason. Tuition, room and board rose 37 percent for undergraduates at public colleges and 25 percent at private colleges (adjusted for inflation) from 2000 to 2010, according to the …

Illinois Home Performance with ENERGY STAR (IHP) is currently sponsoring a building science training series. The most recent training took place in Normal, Illinois at Heartland Community College on Infrared technologies such as infrared cameras and images used to detect problem areas in buildings. Brian Kumer, owner of Thermal Imaging Services, was the instructor for this 8-hour course which consisted of both a classroom portion and a field portion.…

Hot Tub's Ready to Go, Using Power All Winter

by Don Ames,   www.detectenergy.com

Finding a new address can be a little rough out here in the country. It doesn't help when the Google Map misses the important fact that a road is actually a dead end and it doesn't connect with another road like Google thinks. So I find two dead end roads instead of a nice continuous loop. And, as is always the case, I am on the wrong dead end. Oh well,…

iPhone to Home: It's All About Communication and Home Automation.

by Don Ames,  www.detectenergy.com

Right now, it's more of a joke than a reality. For some reason, even with an iPhone or Tablet in our hands, we fail to realize the fact that someday, in the near future, we will all be living in a Smart Home. Yes, for a while, it will probably be like coming to terms with our first…

President Obama’s 2013 budget caused a lot of smiles this week among energy efficiency advocates – even if it is more of a wish list than anything else. Obama calls for about $1.2 billion in spending for energy efficiency.

What’s this mean to the energy efficiency industry?

Kateri Callahan, president of the Alliance to Save Energy, says that…

  

The finer points of thermostats are actually much more complicated than any published article covers. You must study each premium thermostat individually. If it does not have settings for swing, deadband, fan delays, early recovery, proper setbacks, etc., it's not really of good use. Dual fuel setups are even more complicated because you must decide whether to use the thermostat or the fossil fuel controller function for balance point control. You must also…

Many pros already know that a standard upgrade is to install a Honeywell IAQ thermostat! That's why you simply must take a look at this analysis on the Thermostat Wars, Honeywell versus Nest, which now threaten to pre-empt even the infamous browser wars, and cause consternation within the industry:…

Energy Code Gap Analyses are reports that document a particular state’s energy code infrastructure to assess current gaps, identify best practices, and give recommendations for how these practices can be improved. The Building Codes Assistance Project (BCAP) has conducted several Gap Analyses over the course of the past year and these analyses can be a major step towards informing the state on how to reduce energy use by improving energy codes in those states. The gap analyses are part of…

Hello follow members, I have been involved in many energy related topics lately and one of the projects I have been involved in is a new social media site that focuses on "Residential Energy Conservation" the site is call Green Plug District.

Green Plug District has their "black site" fouders page up and running allowing members to join and create profiles and add content.  Would like to have the members feedback on the contruction page and founders pages listed below:

Founders…

One aspect of the HVAC industry that I believe many contractors are yet to embrace is that of utilizing comfort as a selling point. And by not doing so, they are missing out on potential business and falling farther behind the leaders of the industry. What I mean by this is that, over the past two decades, understanding of the indoor environment, indoor air quality and the interrelation of building systems has increased dramatically. Think AHRAE 55-2010, and the factors effecting human…

Congress has closed the books on a another dramatic year in American politics with no real accomplishments. Among many lingering questions is the future of wind power subsidies. Introduced in the early 1990’s, government subsidies for wind power have played a major role in the expansion of the young…

We celebrated Groundhog Day earlier this month. Naturally, that means we held our annual juggling festival here in Atlanta, but some people associate groundhogs with their weather forecasting ability. My question this year was, How can Punxatawney Phil (the weather predicting…

For a long time ‘clean’ and  ‘green’ marked the forward trend in the energy industry. Then came the quest for ‘smart’ energy.  And now ‘innovation’ is the buzzword.

It’s easy to see why.  As Americans, we believe our ability to innovate sets us apart in today’s international market.  Sure China can manufacture computers and cell phones more quickly and cheaply, but we came up with Google and IPhones in the first place.

The energy industry offers a lot of…