There are both Federal Energy Tax Credits that we can take advantage of as well as State Energy Tax Credits. First we will look at Federal Energy Tax Credits.

Federal Energy Tax Credits
For homeowners wanting that energy efficient home, the Federal Government will give you a energy tax credit up to $1500 for installing energy efficient roofs, doors, cooling and heating equipment, windows, etc. The energy tax credit is for 30% of the cost. Not bad if you are thinking of getting radiant barrier installed in the attic. This credit is valid from January 1st 2009 till December 31st 2010.

In addition home owners who want to install renewable energy systems to create a more energy efficient home, will receive a 30% energy tax credit. This credit is valid until December 31st 2016. This tax credit does not have a cap.

For those of you interested in having a more energy efficient home and wish to use the Federal Energy Tax Credit, I suggest spending some time on the EnergySTAR website to get a better understanding of what is available to you. The information on their site written in an easy to understand language.

State Energy Tax Credits
Very few people think about State Energy Tax Credits or rebates when we talk about energy efficient homes, but it is a category we should not overlook. Since every state has their own legislation, the kind of energy tax credits varies dramatically from state to state.

Here are just a few very interesting tax cuts from several states, but all the states offer some kind of energy tax credit:

• Texas: Renewable Energy Systems Property Tax Exemption. Exempt a percentage of your property tax if you have a renewable energy installation.
• Arizona: Exempt 25% of renewable energy installations.
• Wyoming: 50% or $3000 grant towards an instillation of residential Photovoltaics.

Do not forget to also see the incentive programs from your electricity or gas provider. They offer incentives like the home weatherization as well as other energy tax credits and incentives. As you are reading this you are probably thinking it is hard to get all this information for your state. Do not worry.

I want to refer you to a website that I found very useful. It is the Database of State Incentives and Efficiency. If you want a energy efficient home, finding your local energy tax credits and rebates is a must. They have a database of all the energy incentive programs for every State. In addition they also have Federal incentive information, but I prefer the EnergySTAR site for federal information.

Energy Tax Credits and Rebates can make it more affordable for home owners to make their homes more energy efficient or to install a solar or wind energy system for their homes. Make use of your State and Federal assistance programs. They want you to become more energy efficient.

Today I wanted to talk about a cool invention on a hot topic. After all, saving the environment, carbon footprint, carbon credits and debits, all these terms are the rage now. A lot of things that were acceptable even 10 to 15 years back have been blacklisted and may soon proceed to being banished for good! Gas guzzling SUVs, generating stations using fossil fuels, logging, non renewable fuel, non renewable fishing methods – the list is endless. Incandescent lamps being another one of them.

Hence the entry of the energy saving compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and compact fluorescent tube (CFT). While the fluorescent lamp was invented by PC Hewitt, the more modern CFL was the brainchild of Edward E Hammer who developed it at GE. The CFLs are fluorescent lamps and can be of various shapes and sizes. While some have the standard elongated tube light shape, there are a host of others with convoluted designs. To save on costs these CFL light bulbs are mostly designed to fit into existing incandescent light bulb fixtures. The advantages of the CFL light bulbs include:

• For the same amount of visible light emanated by an incandescent bulb, the CFL one uses far less power. The substantial savings in energy over the average life span between these two bulbs is a recorded fact.
• CFL bulbs have a longer life span as compared to incandescent ones, somewhere between 8 – 15 times that of the latter.
• While the CFL bulbs emanate a different spectrum of light compared to incandescent ones, the best ‘soft white’ CFLs emit colour similar to the latter.
• There is substantial savings in the greenhouse gases emitted between the 2 bulbs; up to 2000 times the weight in case of the CFL bulb.

The disadvantages are also there:

• The cost of a CFL bulb is substantially higher than the incandescent one.
• CFL light bulbs contain mercury (as do all fluorescent lamps), which has its own complications, especially in disposal.
• The ultraviolet and blue light radiation emitted by CFLs could be harmful for people suffering from specific types of skin disorders.
• The amount of light emitted in the later stages of a CFL light bulb can drop by 70%; however this is not a very noticeable change over the period of its life.
• The amount of time taken to reach full power is longer in the case of the CFL bulb

CFL bulbs can be used both in alternating and direct current and the basic parts are similar to that of its predecessor, the fluorescent lamps. There are some other modern lighting systems with which the CFL technology fares reasonably well. These include solid state lighting used in traffic lights as well as the LED lamps. There are also various modifications on the basic CFL light bulbs, which have cornered niche segments of the market; for example use of titanium dioxide coating on the outside of the se bulbs to kill bacteria and at the same time neutralise odours.

Overall the CFL light bulb can be considered a blessed invention!

Assembly:

I have assembled many products in my life, but this one from the start I was not looking forward to. The first hurdle was to get the crank itself out of the box and into our lounge. The assembly is a 2 person job in any event, but you need 2 strong people for it. Once we got all the components in the lounge where we assembled, we thought we are half way there – but little did we know.

Five minutes into assembly we ran into our most challenging task. The power ramp has a shaft that you have to grease and insert at the bottom of the power ramp. Now I have to explain, that in the beginning of the assembly instructions they tell you that you will need 2 of your own tools in addition to their ellen keys – a rubber hammer and a screwdriver. Yes, a hammer. Nowhere in the instructions do they ever tell you where to use the hammer, but getting the greased shaft into the power ramp clearly called for it. The great challenge was once we greased it and hammered it in; it would simply get stuck 80% into the power ramp. If we hammer even more we would pop out the component on the other side.

I think it took us about an hour to get this little greased shaft in. A very simple little component that made life real difficult for a while. The rest of the assembly was not too difficult. One other little snag was how they reference the screws washers and bolts. If you look at the diagram you will see for example you need crew # 116. Then you have to look on the bolts and screws reference page that will tell you that screw #116, is known as a 6mm crew. Then when you look in the bolts and screw package, find the 16mm screw. The numbers they tell you in the diagram like “#116″ is not written on the package itself, so you need to double reference to get the correct screws and bolts. But once you get the hang of it, it is not too bad.

The upper body cover needs 5 screws of which 2 goes directly into the metal. It was impossible to get the little screws into the metal without stripping the screws. We got the ones into the plastic, but in now way could we get the screws in the metal. I think if I drill the hole a little bigger it would work, but decided not to for now.

Quality:

When we went to Sears the first time to look at this Elliptical Trainer the floor model was squeaking very much. I thought it was because people are on and off of them all day so we decided to go to a different Sears to look at one. At the other Sears we found one that were smooth and quite, thus we agreed to buy.

After assembly the elliptical is smooth and quite. I will really only get a good workout on it today, but on my test run, I have no complaints. Having said that, I do want you to be aware of 2 other things I ran into which did not impress me too much.

When we unboxed the Elliptical Trainer, I looked at the construction and welding. Joints are not welded very smoothly. I noticed some joints will be welded, then not, then welding continued again. I am sure it is welded enough to withstand the weight of most adults, but when you pay this money and hear the great reviews, I at least expected to see nice welding done. As a side note, as most of our products we have in our home today, this product too is “Made in China”.

When I opened the box initially I noticed the plastic cover that is under the power ramp, did not close properly. It was of such a nature that I had to unscrew the molded plastic, re-align it and screw it back together. This was a plastic cover I was not suppose to have had to open, but it was obvious on the eye that it did not “click” together as it should have. I was not impressed that I had to rectify this before even starting to assemble the elliptical, but it was not too bad to fix.

Electricity Use and Money Savings:

Let’s look at the electricity use of the AudioStrider 990. It has a Ghost Load of 10 Watts. This means that even just having it plugged into the socket, it will draw 10 Watts. While working out on it, the power it drew increased to 16 Watts. What does this mean in Dollars and Cents?

At 9.99c per kWh as your electricity rate, if this unit were running on standby 24x7x365, it will cost you $8.55 per year, simply for being on standby. If you will disconnect it during times you do not use it or use a Bye Bye Standby Energy Savings Kit, assuming you work out for 2 hours a day (365 day a year), it will reduce your energy cost from $8.55 to $1.14 per year. That is a 87% reduction in energy cost.

As with every review I take the savings from every device and see how much it will add up to if you invest the savings in a conservative 1.75% savings account over 18-years. I call it your children’s little College Fund. If you invest the savings of $.7.41 per year for 18-years @ 1.75% interest it will add up to a $155.27 contribution towards your little College Fund.

The other savings component that is applicable here is if you had a Health Club Membership. Since it is reasonable to use the same elliptical for 6-years we will buy 3 Elliptical Trainers in 18-years. Using a 3% inflation variable, we will buy our first one for $1000 today (2009); second one for $1195 in 2015; third one at $1425 in 2021. This is a total hardware expense of $3620 over 18-years.

Since we no longer have a Health Club Membership of let’s say $30/month, let’s look at the savings. If you invest $30/month into a conservative 1.75% per year (0.145%/month) savings account, over 18-years (216 months) it would have grown to $7603. This $7603 is simply your Health Club savings. Deduct your investment into your 3 Elliptical Trainers over the 18-years and you have a gross savings of $3983 that you can put tight into your College Fund.

If we look at industries that have had huge growth recently I am sure everyone will recall the Information Age when the internet was one of the greatest leaps forward most of us would see in our lives. Now you and I can run a business from home from this thin called the internet, now what is the next big thing? Sometimes we simply have to look at what the big boys are preparing for.

Both Microsoft and Google have been developing tools to monitor consumer electricity use. Their game plan is to engage energy providers to use their platform and in turn offer their customers a nice intuitive reporting tool to give their customers better insight how they are using electricity. Both these companies have something in place on the platform side, but the task of bringing partners onboard to use their solution is a slow one.

Which brings us today to have a look at Microsoft Hohm which was released this week into beta.  For starters Microsoft Hohm requires you have a Windows Live ID. Don’t worry, if you have ever used any of the Microsoft services like Hotmail, Live Journal or other Microsoft services you already have a Windows Live ID. If not, the Microsoft Hohm wizard will guide you through the steps of getting one.

The wizard will guide you through some steps gathering information about where you live and detailed information about your home itself.  The aim of the wizard is to fully understand how your home is build and what energy devices you use. At the end you will be given tips oh now to improve your energy use and also generate charts of your energy use.

Most of the information the wizard asks for is easy, but some are little tricky if you do not know. Here are some of the questions I had to think about more seriously before answering:

Tonight I want to share with you all energy saving factors I found on my Home Theater Receiver. The receiver I have is a KLH R5100 Receiver. It has been a wonderful entry-level receiver that has served me well. Being a physically big unit, I thought it will be drawing lots of electricity – surprise.

I measured it tonight and I was so surprised. Firstly, it has a top-notch design because this Home Theater Receiver has ZERO Ghosted Load. Meaning when this Home Theater Receiver is set to standby, it draws virtually no electricity. This characteristic makes our KLH R5100 Receiver a great candidate to be the control unit when we install a Smart Strip.

The KLH R5100 Receiver draws 30 Watts when switched on.  With an electricity rate of 9.99c per kWh, if it runs 24/7 it will cost you $ 25.66 per year. For most of us your receiver should only be switched on when viewing TV, which around here is about 4-hours per day average. Based on our 4-hour per day calculation, it cost a mere $4.28 per year pulling a total of 43 Watts per year on this basis.

I cannot find any ways to improve on the usage of this receiver since it is indeed switched off when TV is not watched and since it has no Ghost Load, it will be great to use it on a Smart Strip as the control device.

Look out for my review on Microsoft Holm, coming soon!

We all love our home entertainment systems since they supply us hours of joy watching blockbusters from Hollywood right in our own TV room at home. But when it comes to electricity saving, we do not frequently think how much electricity those devices consume. Today, I took my Kill-A-Watt Electricity Meter and measured how much my personal entertainment system consumes. To my amazement, as a whole the Sony WEGA FD Trinitron TV, Dish Network DVR, KLH Receiver and Nintendo Wii together was consuming over 150 Watt of energy.

In this review we will focus on the Dish Network DVR. The Dish Network DVR did pretty well, but we can definitely apply some electricity saving techniques in the way we use it. Most people do not unplug their DVR when they are not using it and the load that the Dish Network DVR draws when it is in standby is 33 Watts as appose to 35 Watts when it is fully on. Thus there is only a 2 Watt difference only between it being in standby as appose to it being on. When you are recording it goes up to 36 Watt, but that is the highest I have measured it. This means that when you think you switch the DVR to standby, you are not really switching it off and not saving much money in the act. So, what does this mean to your pocket?

My calculations to follow are based on my new Electricity Rate from StarTex Power, 9.99 cents per kWh. Now most of us control our TV experience via the Home Theater Receiver and this means that the Dish Network DVR stays on for the most part – 24×7 360-days of the year. Thus if you run your DVR day and night all year long, it will draw 302 kWh per year which will run you $29.48 per year. This is not too bad, but remember our goal is marginal reduction of usage off all of our appliances in order to generate all over cost savings for you.

In our home the TV is truly only in use for about 4-hours per day. In the event that we unplug the DVR for the time that it is not used, we will be generating a cost saving of $24.95 per year and the Dish Network DVR will only end up using about $4.99 of electricity per year, consuming only a total of 50 kWh for the year. This is a cost & electricity saving of 83%.

Most of you will say that it is a hassle unplugging your DVR when you are not using it, but I have good news for you. The use of a Smart Strip can disconnect all your entertainment devices when one control device is switched off (like your TV). We will review Smart Strips on a later stage, but just remember that there is simple affordable electricity saving devices available to prevent you from bending over the TV every night to unplug it.

Let us get back to the numbers. As you will see in all my reviews I will make reference to how much money you will be saving over a long term. $24.95 per year might not sound like too much for you, but if you put that $24.95 in a conservative savings account and earn 1.75% interest on it and you do it consistently for 18 years you would have a nice bundle stacked away. How much? After 18-years you will have $522 in your children’s College Fund, simply from these savings.

Getting something for free is always nice. With July 4th just around the corner we are in the peak of our warmest season again. Every time I hear the air conditioner kick in, I am just again reminded of the month-end electricity bill coming. But there is good news on the horizon.

As this is my first post on this site, I want us to start looking at a crucial step that must be taken, if you want to reduce your energy usage. Two years ago I had my house weatherized by a provider that is part of the Energy Conservation Program of my electricity provider. Most electricity providers have such a program in-place and it is at no cost to you, the consumer.

The program is run by the U.S. Department of Energy and it works with all Stated to conserve leaking energy from residential homes. In turn electricity providers offer this service to their customers as an audit and weatherization service. Firstly, they come to your home and weatherize all your plumbing and electricity outlets. Then they also walk around the house as well as outside and close up possible leaks. All your doors in the house will get new weatherization strips and if you do not have a draft guard mounted to the bottom of your doors, they will install these for you also.

An audit of your air-conditioning system is also done. They make sure that there are no leeks in the duct system and if there is they will seal it up for you. Just before they finished they took test to ensure the home is not leaking more than it should.

If you are setting out on reducing your electricity bill, this is for sure the first step you should take. If your home is not sealed-up well, no fancy equipment will help lowering your bill. In some cases, depending on the age of your home and how much insulation you already have in place, they could also add some insulation for you in your roof, at low or no cost to you.

Call up your electricity provider today and schedule an Energy Conservation and Weatherization Audit. You will be glad you did. For moreinformation, visit the U.S Department of Energy Website on Home Energy Audit.