New rebates have been added.

Utility Company Long Island Power Authority, LIPA has a bunch of programs and incentives to help save energy and money.

• LIPA Cool Homes air conditioning and heat pump rebates up to $700. Exp 12/31
• Free Programmable thermostat and installation
• Refrigerator and Freezer Recycling – $50 rebate and free pickup. For each additional appliance picked up at the same time as the refrigerator pickup, you will receive a voucher code for $20 (max of 3)
• Energy Star Rebates – $0.50 – $2.50 on CFLs, $20 on Dehumidifiers, $100 on Furnace fan motors, $200 on variable speed pool pumps, $125 on 2 speed pool pumps, $100 on refrigerators
• Solar Energy Rebates – $1.75/watt rebate up to 10 kW with a maximum of $17,500, must be ready to sign up when blocks free up. Grid-connected PV systems only.

Questions, call 1-800-692-2626.

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Save up to 10% easily on cooling or heating costs by reducing air leaks and weatherizing your home.  Gain yearly savings up to $400 when you seal and properly insulate heating and cooling ducts in your home.

Add weather stripping around windows and doors to reduce air drafts.  Caulk or use expandable gap filler foam around air ducts, plumbing openings, wall openings, etc.

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Powerstrips and Surge protectors have evolved into the green era.  They help combat phantom power draw by Power Bricks aka Wall Warts, and other electronic devices. Lawrence Berkley National Labs estimates that 10% of residential power use is wasted toward this as most homes have 40 products constantly drawing phantom power or vampire power even when the device is off.  Save over a $100 a year by fixing this problem.

The new 3rd generation Smart Powerstrip helps you save power if you use a desktop or laptop computer for about $35.  It also works great for TVs. Green Powerstrips have finally started to appear.  You can Measure Energy Usage with a Kill a Watt Energy meter to quantify the power use and savings.

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Digital timers are a very useful in your quest to save money on your energy bill. You can program them to turn devices on and off. More advanced ones allow you to setup different times for different days. Most electric utilities have the lowest rates between midnight and 7 AM, use a timer to schedule appliances or pool filtering during those hours. Intermatic makes a lot of these timers.

We use this outlet plug timer to control our Internet connection.  It is set to turn on at 7 AM in the morning and off at 10 PM at night, seven days a week.  The Cablemodem / DSL modem, ATT Microcell,  Ethernet switch, and Wireless router are controlled by the timer.

We found  powering on/off these boxes far too tedious. Many an evening we would forget to power things down.  Installing a timer like this make it automatic.

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Low cost iPhone, Cell Phone, and portable electronics Solar Chargers with batteries are now available for under $40.  Leave it out in the Sun to charge, then use it when you are out of power. iPod, iPhones, BlackBerry’s, Kindles all eat batteries fast. Solar Panels charge and maintain 1400 mAh of battery power present in this unit.  Full Solar Charging takes from 5-7 hours. Most units have USB connectors to charge various devices like the Nintendo DS game console.

Be green and use the sun’s energy to power your gadgets.

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New rebates have been added for 2012.

Utility Company Reliant Energy has programs and incentives to help save energy and money.

• Free home energy checkup, $100 value
• Solar Power Rebates in Texas.

Questions, call 1-888-467-3542.

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Gas is getting more expensive by the day. Everyone wants a fuel efficient car, but does it make economical sense? Obviously serious green oriented folks care more about the environment than financial considerations. When does it pay to buy a hybrid automobile is the question?

Replacing a vehicle with a fuel efficient model has the biggest aggregate potential reduction in green house gas emissions at 31.4 millions of metric tons of carbon a year. Even more than Weatherizing a home (21.2), buying energy efficient appliances (11.7), or carpooling (6.5).

How Quickly does a Hybrid Pay off?

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New Peco rebates have been added for 2012.

Utility Company Peco Energy has a bunch of programs and incentives to help save energy and money.

• $15 back on Refrigerator recycling or Freezer recycling
• Up to $300 rebate on furnaces and boilers
• $400 rebate for converting to natural gas
• PECO Smart Home rebates for select EnergyStar appliance or heating, cooling system pay up to $100.   Covers air conditioners, heat pumps, and more. Expires 12/31/2012.
• Save up to $120 with Smart A/C Saver
• Home lighting – Discounted Home Lights

Questions, call 1-888-573-2672.

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World-famous FREE Amish built Heat Surge Miracle Convecta-red fireplace heater advertisements have shown up in a variety of magazines and newspapers. Free Amish Heaters to the first 17,247 readers! They tout a low-cost energy-efficient heater that is superior to other heaters. The mantle is priced at $298 and you have to pay for it to get the free heater. You can pay $249 for the heather itself.

Consumer Reports.org performed an analysis of “Amish Heaters”  and found that it is costly for what it represents. “Amish made mantle is handmade in Ohio.” Amish Heaters are made in China.

These experts concluded that you could find cheaper, better performing heaters. A simple $29.99 heater from a local hardware store might perform better.

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PG&E has started installing Smart meters in many locations throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. These industry standard gas and electric meters measure a customer’s energy use. Electric meters read power consumption hourly, while gas meters record information daily. Both types periodically transmit your energy use information over a secure wireless network back to PG&E or your local utility company. They are said to use 1/1000 of a cell phone’s RF power and transmit data for less than a minute each day.

A wireless smart meter controversy has arisen stating that the meters are not accurate and customers are being overcharged. Hackers may be able to hack into your meter and there are concerns about wireless RF radiation. PG&E counters by saying that a rate increase occurred during the smart meter rollout. Third-party labs need to test the meter to verify accuracy. At the end of May, 2010 PGE finally responded with a report.  In early May 2011, PG&E finally admitted that some meters got to hot when internal temperatures past 100°, and misread electrical usage. Customers were overcharged due to this bug.

Smart Meters for Solar and Renewable Energy Customers

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