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Tag:

energy use

Keeping up with the Green Joneses – Solar and EV Adoption

Keeping up with the Green Joneses – Solar and EV Adoption

written by

The most recent column on “groundbreaking innovation” Co-Exist from Fast Company was titled “If Your Neighbor Gets a Solar Panel, You’re Going to Want One Too: Whether  your neighbor has a solar installation is more likely to influence your decision than politics or income level.”

The articles’ author Ben Schiller cites studies which mapped 3,843 solar units installed in Connecticut between 2005 and September 2013. What they found was “‘considerable clustering of adoptions’ in ‘wave-like centrifugal’ patterns. When they looked at the dates of the installs, they found one decision in a neighborhood tended to lead to another.”

Pretty cool, but isn’t this old news? Back in 2005, a study in San Diego compared the influence on energy consumption between potential money savings vs concern for the environment vs peer pressure. The results clearly supported social influence, which reduced consumption by 10 percent.” Influence guru Robert B. Cialdini weighed in on the remarkably effective tactic of adding a smiley face to bills for energy reduction, which further reduced energy use: “People don’t just want to conserve energy, they want to be acknowledged for conserving energy.”

Electric Vehicle (EV) adoption also spread in clusters. Not surprisingly, EV and hybrid purchases have been most concentrated in affluent communities with early-adopter characteristics. But far more interesting and perhaps even more relevant, 50.5%  of all registrations are clustered in just three suburbs, Atherton and Los Altos (in Silicon Valley), and Santa Monica in Southern California. California has created an infrastructure for EV/Hubrids and is first in ownership, but if affluence was the defining attribute, wouldn’t EV/Hybrids be spread evenly across California’s many wealthy communities?

Now that many low- and mid-priced vehicles are offered in hybrid varieties (i.e., Toyota Camry, Honda Civic, and Ford Fusion), green social influence is moving from novelty for the affluent to smart money for the mainstream. It happened before with residential solar:  the highest concentration of Connecticut solar installations clustered in middle income, Republican-voting areas of the state.

Peer influence is also having an impact in the corporate world, where renewable energy  is replacing fossil fuels in industry clusters. Benchmarking in industries and companies – comparing your sustainability performance against your peers – leads to greater adoption of renewable energy.

As reported in the solar industry’s third annual Solar Means Business, solar installations cluster by industry, with retail leading the pack. Walmart remains the top solar user overall, spurring its leading competitor Target to move from 16th to 8th ranking with the addition of 15 new solar systems. Retailers’ large flat store roofs are well-suited to roof-top solar apps and their razor-thin margins make energy cost reduction perhaps a higher priority, but other industries are following suit. Apple, which once eschewed environmental concerns, is now fourth in solar installations. Their acknowledgement? Apple appeared first alongside Google and Facebook (their data farms run on wind power) in the Greenbiz article “Apple, Facebook, Google score in Greenpeace data center ratings.”

Peer influence, whether in a corporate or a residential setting, modifies environmental behavior. Can peer shaming work too? Freakonomics economist Steven Levitt, would argue yes. In his words: “…society actually likes it when other people get shamed. … it’s actually a really incredibly efficient mechanism for punishing people who do things we don’t like.”

Another experiment tests peer shaming empirically. San Francisco and Berkeley have both passed legislation requiring that as of March 1, 2015, gas station owners must put climate change warning labels on all gas pump nozzles. The labels say how much carbon dioxide is emitted for every tank of gas burned, saying explicitly how using gas as fuel is contributing to climate change.

Reflecting in The Guardian on a University of Minnesota study that again showed the power of social influence, Adam Corner of the University of Cardiff says, “We may currently compete through demonstrations of conspicuous material consumption, but material goods are simply a marker for social status. It’s the social status that’s important – and the markers we use to signify it can easily change.”

Article by Carol Pierson Holding.  Article originally appeared on CSRHub, appearing courtesy 3BL Media. 



November 7, 2014 0 comment
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Energy Efficiency Factoids that Will Win Friends and Influence People (Especially Investors)

Energy Efficiency Factoids that Will Win Friends and Influence People (Especially Investors)

written by Elisa Wood

Riddle: What’s as big as the amount of energy used by the European Union…and getting even bigger?

The answer is the amount of energy we’re not using. Or more specifically,  it is the energy saved in 2011 by the US and 10 other countries – Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, all member nations of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

That’s according to the IEA’s new “The Energy Efficiency Market Report 2014,” which puts in perspective just how important energy efficiency has become.

Together, the 11 countries reduced their energy use by 1, 337 million tons of oil-equivalent (Mtoe) in 2011 — more than all of the fuel consumed by the European Union from all energy sources combined.

Or another way to look at it — these countries effectively displaced an entire continent’s energy demand, says IEA.

Here are a few other energy efficiency factoids from the report that offer market insight.

  • The world avoided using more energy than the supply of oil (1 202 Mtoe), electricity (552 Mtoe) or natural gas (509 Mtoe) in 2011
  • Houses got bigger and population grew, but these factors did not influence energy use because of more efficient appliances, light bulbs and heating. In fact, residential energy use has dropped five percent since 2001.
  • Energy efficiency investments now represent a $310 to $360 billion investment, and growing.

From this report and others, it is now clear that economic decline, alone, did not cause the energy dive following the 2008 financial meltdown.  True,  energy use did take a decided dip in 2009 and then start to rise again, but not nearly as much as it would have without the world’s big push to become more energy efficient, according to the report. Without the energy efficiency efforts begun in 2011,  the world’s energy use would have been  218 Mtoe higher in 2011.  Moreover, had we not made our appliances, cars, buildings and industry more efficienct in the 1970s,  we would be consuming 60 percent more energy today.

Perhaps most interesting is how financial markets are reacting to energy efficiency. Financial products are growing in breadth and sophistication. The energy performance service contract — which pays for efficiency improvements through energy savings achieved — is expanding beyond its origins in the US. While the US market for the contracts is about $5 billion, China’s market for the contracts has reached $12 billion, IEA said.

Meanwhile, use is growing of clean energy bonds, green bonds and climate bonds from fixed income markets. Until late 2013, the green bond market relied heavily on development banks (like World Bank). But corporate green bond issues are now growing very rapidly, the report says. IEA also noted an uptick in on-bill financing programs, such as Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) in the US, Mexico and Europe

Public finance also continues to be signficant, the report says, with commitments of EUR 16 billion from German public investment bank KfW; EUR 2.1 billion from the European Investment Bank; EUR 453 million from France’s Caisse des Dépôts; and EUR 181 million from the United Kingdom Green Investment Bank.

The report is availabe for a fee here. A free executive summary is here.

This article is published under a cross licensing agreement with EnergyEfficiencyMarkets.com



October 15, 2014 0 comment
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Eleven Great Ideas to Help Make Your Home Office Eco-Friendly

Eleven Great Ideas to Help Make Your Home Office Eco-Friendly

written by CleanTechies.com Contributor

According to Chris Winter of the Conservation Council of Ontario, the trend of having a home office is good from an environmental perspective as it eases gridlock and brings balance and common sense back into our lives.  However, many of us tend to fall off the green living and eco-friendly wagon when it comes to our home offices.  While houses of today are being built with a greener competitive advantage, we still leave our computers and gadgets on and plugged in day and night and do not consider eco-friendly options inside our offices.

Moreover, with the continuously growing population of America and the rest of the world, energy use will continue to increase even as living space continues to decrease.  With a bit of creativity and an environmental mindset, any homeowner can accommodate a small home office with an eco-friendly design practically anywhere in the house.

Read on to find out how you can utilize corners and neglected areas to create a comfortable, space-saving and environmentally friendly workspace with these green office design ideas.

pull out

1. Pull-out desktop

A pull-out or roll-out desk like this is a great way to provide you more workspace in your green office when you need it and less when you don’t.  This particular pull-out desk has plenty of knee room for the everyday user, but the far cabinet pulls out as an extra counter-top for larger projects or even an office space for two.  Moreover, when it’s not in use, everything resting on top of the drawer can stay in the same spot when you push it back.

MH0708_SAM03_028

2. Let there be natural light

Consider installing a skylight in your small home office, especially if you will be spending a lot of time in there.  You might also want to see if situating your office next to a window is a viable option.  This is an energy-saving tip that can help you not only save on electricity costs, but also build a greener, eco-friendly home.

Build on a Wall

3. Build on the wall

Making the most out of your wall can help desk areas stay clean, space-saving, and functional.  This homeowner installed a horizontal wooden desk on the wall, and mounted a light fixture, too, freeing up precious surface area.  You can also either decorate the wall with frames, or make use of the space by building a minimalistic shelf.

countertop

4. Build a counter-top over the heater

Instead of letting your radiator eat up the space, build over it.  This home office added an extra surface directly over the radiator at desk height.  Since the average radiator is only about 12 inches from the wall, you can make the counter-top more shallow if you like.  Make sure any combustible counter-top material is at least 9 to 12 inches above the radiator, though.

Creative Shelving

5. Do creative shelving

Traditional shelves may not always be aesthetically pleasing, but functionally they help save on space.  With a bit of daft imagination, you can use the limited room for some good-looking shelving to hold office supplies, books, and magazines.  Also, when you’re planning out the shelving for your office, don’t forget to extend it below your desk.  Recessed shelves allow you to store documents and paperwork that might not be needed every day.

Chalkboard Wall

6. Consider a chalkboard wall

You may want to cover a wall in chalkboard paint for an instant floor-to-ceiling message board.  This dark color adds to the office’s sleek design scheme, but it’d work great in a super modern or more traditional setting, too.  Moreover, instead of using post-its and other paper materials to take notes that will ultimately be thrown out later on, using chalkboards is far more sustainable.

Dual Purpose

7. Use a dual-purpose monitor

If you’re planning to situate your office in the living or bedroom area, you should consider using a flatscreen as a TV and extra monitor.  You don’t only save on monitor costs — you can also watch TV one minute, and work on a spreadsheet the next with an integrated dual-purpose monitor, providing a bigger screen for both work and play.

Stairs

8. Use space under the stairs

The spaces underneath staircases are typically neglected. Don’t let that be the case in your home.  Take a cue from Harry Potter who lived in the cupboard under the stairs for 10 years, and utilize that empty void by turning it into a useful workspace.  Build around the area with desk and add a small drawer or some customized storage.  While you’re at it, you might also want to consider making use of that staircase landing.

Closet

9. Hide your office in a closet

A spare closet is the perfect place to tuck away a work area.  But it doesn’t have to feel like a closet.  Add a built-in desk and shelving for storage, and keep the color palette light and airy.  Add a playful patterned chair for a dose of personality. This is a great space-saving trick for any telecommuter to consider.

Laptop

10. Think laptop — not desktop

While desktop computers are typically faster than most laptop computers, they also tend to be real energy hogs.  So unless you’re doing some video editing or heavy graphic designing at home, consider getting a laptop because portable computers consume one-eighth the power of a traditional desktop.  Laptops also take up less space than desktops.

Reuse

11. Reuse and recycle

It’s an oldie but a goodie — especially when you’re out looking for home office decors.  Consider places like Goodwill and the Salvation Army, and pick up items that you can spray paint with chalk white to spruce up your office with a modern look. Recycled or reused decors are not only cheap, they also last a long time and require little maintenance.

While there is no one-fit-for-all solution, you can build an eco-friendly home office things with some creativity and daft design.  Don’t neglect corners or spaces that you have left underutilized as room under the stairs, stairway landing space, and even a large empty wardrobe to create a compact workspace inside your home.  Most importantly, take full advantage of your carbon-free trek to your home office and save on energy with natural light, efficient gadgets, and reusing old materials as decors.

Article by Aby Nicole League.  Follow Aby on Twitter.



August 24, 2014 2 comments
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Obama Bypasses Congress and Turns to Big Business to Make Energy Efficiency Happen

Obama Bypasses Congress and Turns to Big Business to Make Energy Efficiency Happen

written by Elisa Wood

It’s never a bad thing to have the leader of the free world in your corner. And President Barrack Obama made clear again last week that he’s with energy efficiency.

At a Walmart in Silicon Valley, Obama laid out his next round of green energy expansion plans. Sexy solar got much of the play in the media coverage. But staid energy efficiency was in no way ignored by the president.

“More and more companies like Walmart are realizing that wasting less energy isn’t just good for the planet, it’s good for business,” Obama said at the event. “It’s good for the bottom line.”

Obama convinced several household-name businesses to make new investments in energy efficiency – not just Walmart, but General Mills, General Motors, Whole Foods, UTC, Hilton and others.  To put their commitments in perspective, Obama said that Walmart alone has agreed to reduce energy use across 850 million square feet. That’s more than half the size of San Francisco.

The businesses were joined by schools, local governments and organizations in the latest round of commitment to the federal Better Buildings Challenge.

Part of Bigger Effort

The Obama administration started the public/private program in 2011 to reduce energy use in buildings 20 percent in a decade. The initial effort drew 190 organizations and 600 manufacturers, which together are cutting their energy use 2.5 percent per year. So far, the participants have saved 36 trillion BTUs and $300 million, according to the White House.

The federal government is working on upgrading its own buildings, as well, with an additional $2 billion over three years in energy performance contracts. This adds to an initial $2 billion in the federal contracts.

Obama also announced:  

  • New appliance standards to reduce energy use 1.2 trillion kWh over 30 years, about as much electricity as US households use in a year. (The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy says the standards are the most important part of the announcement. See related article by the Appliance Standards Awareness Project.)
  • Support by the Department of Energy for the latest commercial building energy code, the 2013 edition of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1, to provide an additional 8.5 percent energy savings over the previous standard.
  • More outdoor high performance lighting through a federal accelerator program. This includes replacing 500,000 outdoor lighting poles and developing best lighting upgrade practices for cities. The first cities to participate will be Detroit, Michigan.; greater Kansas City, Missouri; West Palm Beach, Florida.; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Huntington Beach, California
  • Expansion of financing for multi-family housing through Fannie Mae and HUD/Federal Housing Administration. Building owners must commit to achieve energy and water savings equal to at least five percent of the mortgage loan amount.

The green energy plans are part of what Obama calls the power of his phone and his pen – a series of executive actions that bypass a seemingly immovable Congress. They come as the U.S. Senate appears to once again be fumbling the Shaheen-Portman bill, the one piece of significant, clean energy legislation with a glimmer of a chance of passage in recent years. The bill would strengthen building codes and boost energy efficiency incentives and research. But it appears to be mired in political wrangling over unrelated issues once again, this time the Keystone pipeline.

Timing

Obama’s new energy efficiency push also comes as the industry awaits an announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that could bring even greater activity to energy efficiency markets. Expected on June, the rules would set carbon dioxide limits for existing power plants. ACEEE recently issued a study to show how the EPA can use energy efficiency to meet the new carbon standard.

“The energy efficiency commitments made by the president today will not only benefit the environment by lowering carbon pollution, they are good news for our pocketbooks too,” said Neal Elliot, ACEEE associate director for research, “Energy efficiency can save money in every nook and cranny of our economy-these actions will reduce energy waste in industrial plants, commercial buildings, low-income housing, restaurants and supermarkets, water treatment plants, federal buildings, and more.”

This article is published under a cross licensing agreement with EnergyEfficiencyMarkets.com



May 14, 2014 0 comment
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Solar Supporters: It’s Open Season on the Utilities’ Duck

Solar Supporters: It’s Open Season on the Utilities’ Duck

written by CleanTechies.com Contributor

The rapid changes to the electricity system being wrought by distributed solar have utilities crying out, and they’ve poured much of their distributed solar angst into a chart being shared throughout the energy nerdocracy – the duck.

The Duck Chart, Showing Net Supply/Demand on the California Grid in 2012-13, Forecast through 2020

Screenshot-2014-03-25-14.36.08

 

Until 2012, daily energy demand looked like a two-humped “camel,” with peaks mid-morning and early evening. Utility operated power plants supplied most of the needed energy. But the substitution of local solar power to meet local energy needs affects the demand for mid-day energy from the grid. The daily demand curve transforms, from a camel (orange line) to a (forecast) “duck” (bottom green line).

The duck is the perfect vehicle for utility complaints because it casts the growth of distributed solar as a major technical problem (an area where most policy makers defer to utilities) rather than an economic one, where utility complaints can be contrasted with their customer’s desires for more local control over their energy use and costs.

The utility companies crying “fowl” highlight a particular part of the duck chart: the dramatic ramp up in power generation on the light-green 2020 curve that happens in the late afternoon, as energy produced from solar wanes but energy demand rises. In the traditional grid operating model, accommodating this ramp-up in energy use requires a lot of standby power from expensive to operate, rapid-response power plants.

Evidence suggests utilities are crying “wolf,” with several experts poking large holes in the utility argument. The Clean Coalition and Regulatory Assistance Project have both offered numerous strategies utilities can use to “flatten the duck” or “teach it to fly:”

  • Target energy efficiency measures for the “ramp up” period
  • Orient solar panels to the west to catch more late evening sun
  • Substitute some solar thermal with storage for solar PV [I’d suggest adding storage to PV also works]
  • Allow the grid operator more demand management via electric water heating [already done extensively by rural cooperatives in Minnesota]
  • Require large new air conditioners to have two hours of thermal storage accessible to the utility
  • Retire inflexible generating plants (read: coal and nuclear) that need to run constantly in off-peak periods
  • Concentrate utility demand charges on the ramp up period.
  • Deploy electricity storage into targeted areas, including electric vehicle-to-grid
  • Implement aggressive demand response programs (subscribing more businesses and homes into programs to shed their energy demand at key periods)
  • Use inter-regional power transactions
  • Selectively curtail a small portion of solar power generation

In other words, the technical challenges of the duck are manageable, largely with existing technology.

The economic problems for utilities – stemming from an outdated business model – may not be so manageable.

More solar generation serving peak afternoon loads will out-bid competitors – utility-owned peaking gas power plants – because solar has zero fuel cost, so utilities will lose money even as customers save money. By 2020 in the California example, solar production at noon will also be sufficient to cut into power usually provided by so-called “baseload” power plants (e.g. coal) that are only economic when operated round-the-clock. The problem for utilities is that they’ve continued to pour money into a twentieth century grid system (inflexible, centralized power plants with long-distance transmission lines) even as the grid has been transformed by distributed, local renewable energy.

Utilities point to the duck chart as evidence that renewable energy development should be stopped on technical grounds. But it’s in the belly of the beast we find the real utility problem: energy demand displaced by solar represents lost market share for utilities as their customers switch to sunshine.

To paraphrase Mark Ferron, recently retired from the California Public Utilities Commission: it’s open season on the utility’s duck.

Article by John Farrell, appearing courtesy Institute for Local Self-Reliance.



March 27, 2014 0 comment
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New York City Bets On Energy Efficiency To Boost Sustainability

New York City Bets On Energy Efficiency To Boost Sustainability

written by

The world needs to make a transition to renewable energy as part of a global sustainability project, but until solar, wind and other renewables​ become the norm, there’s one solution that is available​ now: energy efficiency. More energy efficient buildings means less energy and fewer emissions, besides huge savings. However, financing projects is not always easy, since payback is not immediate, ​putting lenders off.

But New York City is looking at this issue in a different light, thanks to two initiatives. New York City Energy Efficiency Corporation (NYCEEC) and the recently launched New York State green bank are offer​ing ​solutions for clean energy financing in New York City and State, respectively. They leverage expertise and financial resources to convert inefficient buildings into clean, high-performing investments. Best of all, they can offer custom-built financing options that are too attractive for building owners to turn down.

“Clean energy building upgrades have an important role to play in the new Mayor’s promise to increase affordable housing in NYC, and innovative financing program’s like those offered through the city and state’s green banks are exactly what New York needs to ensure a greener, cleaner, and more affordable living experience,” wrote Susan Leeds, NYCEEC’s CEO, in a recent blog post.

​Take the example of ​LEEDS highlighted Franklin Plaza, a Mitchell-Lama housing co-op in East Harlem that has taken advantage of the city’s new energy finance offerings. Franklin Plaza recently closed on the first tranche of its $3.8 million loan through the NYC Housing Development Corporation’s (HDC) Program for Energy Retrofit Loans, a program enabled by HDC’s partnership with NYCEEC. ​THis investment will result in measurable environmental benefits: ​a 15 percent reduction in energy use, which equals a ​30 ​percent reduction in carbon emissions.

NYCEEC recently announced $50 million in financing available through a range of products and partnerships. These include equipment loans, mortgage lending, credit enhancements and energy services agreements, ​covering a range of services and upgrades to improve the performance of a building.

Article by Antonio Pasolini of Justmeans, appearing courtesy 3BL Media.



March 5, 2014 0 comment
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Triple Insulated Windows: Baby, it’s Cold Outside!

written by Walter Wang

Boasting a savings of 12% whole house energy consumption savings it is tempting to immediately order new highly insulated windows for the whole house. But before you do, consider the payback. Sure, you will be snug as a bug inside the house but according to the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL), it

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December 5, 2013 0 comment
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A Comprehensive Energy Productivity Portfolio

written by Walter Wang

Like a good financial portfolio, it appears that diversification is a successful strategy for America’s Energy Productivity according to the environmental action group, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). But, the NRDC notes that while the energy portfolio clearly should include a combination of all energies, the single most effective tool in maximizing our energy

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October 11, 2013 0 comment
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Will Our Electrical Power Utilities Remain Relevant?

written by Walter Wang

Here’s a Business Week article whose point is that the relevance of our power utilities is disappearing. Not true. Unless there is a breakthrough in energy of unprecedented proportion, along the lines of cold fusion or something else that appears equally unlikely at this point, our electrical utilities will continue to play a critical role in our lives, largely

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August 26, 2013 2 comments
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Developing World Will Significantly Contribute to Global Energy Use

written by Walter Wang

According to International Energy Outlook 2013 (IEO2013) which was released this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), world energy consumption is projected to increase by 56 percent over the next three decades!

This projected increase is mainly due to the growth

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July 31, 2013 0 comment
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Sustainable Companies Give Green for Going Green

written by Walter Wang

Companies commonly base executive compensation on performance, but a growing number of businesses have started associating top leaders’ pay rates and bonuses to achieving corporate environmental goals. In essence, initiatives such as reducing energy use can lead to higher compensation for those in the corner offices.

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May 9, 2013 0 comment
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The $40 Billion Hiding in US Buildings

written by Walter Wang

A pretty big wad of money – $40 billion – is hiding somewhere inside the lights, AC, thermostats, furnaces and fans of our offices, stores, hospitals and schools.

That’s the amount of money the federal government estimates we can save annually by reducing energy use in commercial buildings 20 percent by 2020. To achieve the goal, the Obama administration in 2011

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April 29, 2013 2 comments
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Energy Efficiency Finds Its Cell Phone: Part III

written by Walter Wang

The cell phone is quickly becoming a handy tool for tracking home energy use and even switching appliances on and off from afar. It also turns out to be a good way for consumers to view the inner workings of the electric grid – as ISO New England is showing.

ISO-NE in September became the first grid operator

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April 15, 2013 3 comments
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The Pyramid of Conservation

written by Walter Wang

Whether they’re building a new house or improving a well-loved home, energy-conscious homeowners everywhere are trying to lower energy use and costs. Even with the best of intentions, however, consumers are overwhelmed by too much information, which causes many of them to give up long before they screw in their first CFL light bulb. To

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April 8, 2013 0 comment
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