This subject is not new. Man has made energy for thousands of years since the first camp fire. Some renewable eco-friendly energy technology is new and becoming very popular around the word.

DIY Energy Projects
• Solar Photo Voltaic
• Wind Turbine Generator
• Solar Hot Water
• Solar Air Heater
• Geothermal Heat Pump
• Magnetic Generator
• Home Energy Audit
• Solar Installation Course

Cost is a factor and startup costs are lower than ever. Residential Energy Kit is dedicated to presenting Do-it-Yourself (DIY) plans, guides and products to help you go green and save our environment. DIY projects are 1/3^rd to 1/10^th the investment cost of commercial solutions. For example, a completely solar home commercial cost is $20,000 to $80,000 with a 25 year pay back. DIY can do the same project for $3,000 to $5,000 with a 3 year pay back.

As populations grow and wealth increases, the stress on our planets resources grows too. Now we have to be more conservative and use alternative energy sources. Methods for reducing energy consumptions should be our first effort. Insulate, seal, use energy star products, and many other methods need to be employed. These are detailed in our Articles

Another consideration to saving our environment is to stop using power company energy. Over half of the US electricity comes from coal. Coal and oil usage is extensive around the world. We can make our own energy at home. The energy is free in nature. We just have to harvest this energy with techniques that are more feasible today than ever before. Wind, Solar, Solar Hot Water, Wave, Geo-Thermal and Fuel Cell technologies are readily available and encouraged by governments around the word. Energy Tax Credit Incentives of up to 30% can save you a ton of money. This is Important ~ If you seriously want free energy at home and you are willing to build a device yourself to save investment cost, you need a guide. They are relatively inexpensive. You will find my critical reviews under the Index on our Home page. These new guides have all the development worked out and offer step by step instruction. This will save you both time and money. Usually you can be operational in less than a week. All of these guides are written for the layman without high technical requirements. Material and tools required are common around the house items. The first model that you make is like training. Once you make your first, you can make another bigger and more powerful.

With all these projects you can scale up the size to eliminate most if not all your dependence on the power company (the grid). These guides even show you how to tie into the grid (grid tie) and sell the power company your excess electricity. That’s right. The power company will pay you for power!!. Make power at home with solar or wind to eliminate your power bill. Get our complete guide at Residential Energy Kit

Respectfully,

Plus, patented software from EcoFactor

A doctor can tell if you’re sick by taking your temperature.

EcoFactor is concocting software that can do the same for your house.

The startup — which has invented a home energy management system that gets sold through utilities and communications carriers — has obtained a patent for calculating the thermal mass of a building. Software derived from the patent crunches historical weather data, data on how much you use your heater and air conditioner, and other factors to diagnose your home and pinpoint any problems.

In a test case in Fort Worth, Texas, for instance, a consumer had purchased an ultra-high efficiency air conditioning system but was still experiencing extraordinarily high bills. The software helped find the problem: crushed ducts and a dryer duct that was venting into the home’s air handler.

“He was losing money every time he turned on the air conditioner,” said co-founder and senior vice president of products Scott Hublou.

In another house, the software detected a clogged furnace filter that boosted HVAC consumption by 8 percent to 9 percent.

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Internal Sponsorship:
Just released from GreenEcoClub the DIY Easy-Energy-Audits. This step-by-step guide will show you how to do energy audit on your home like the pros. Easy-Energy-audits

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The company will use the technology to optimize its own services. In a nutshell, EcoFactor links its software-as-a-service to your thermostat and then dynamically adjusts the temperature all day, within comfort parameters set by the homeowner, to save energy. Oncor is currently reselling the service to its customer base in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area. EcoFactor claims the system can curb energy consumption by 25 percent to 30 percent; it is particularly effective in muggy areas like the Southeast where air conditioning is a way of life.

But the patent could also conceivably be used to analyze small commercial buildings. Another idea: using the software as a prelude to a full-blown energy audit and retrofit.

“You could quantify the actual savings,” said John Steinberg, CEO and the other co-founder. “It is less labor-intensive than an audit.”

EcoFactor has an number of other patent applications winding their way through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, so expect to see more of these. Disclosure: although many reporters and analysts disdain patents and whine that patents, particularly software patents, stifle innovation, I believe intellectual property remains the bedrock of Silicon Valley.

Patents are “something that we think have absolutely helped us on the funding side,” said Steinberg. “I don’t think there is any question that it is helpful to have a deep and wide patent portfolio.”

DIY Home Energy Audits

Auditing a home’s energy use while going solar can be a smart move – it can give a homeowner a picture of his house’s energy consumption and help him see where solar power will contribute to energy savings.

Combining a solar installation with an energy audit is nothing new. SolarCity – one of the nation’s largest solar leasing companies – bought an energy-audit software company, Building Solutions, in May. The purchase lets SolarCity provide energy-auditing services at the same time it installs solar arrays for residential customers.

Energy audits and solar projects are naturally interlinked: Both lead to energy savings, and both can save homeowners money. It’s the cost savings that make a home energy audit a good investment, whether the audit is performed before or after a homeowner installs a solar array.

Even the White House may benefit from an energy audit. The Obama administration announced recently that it would install solar panels on the building – and a green-education company called CleanEdison offered to audit its energy use at no charge.

Average homeowners should expect to pay for their home energy audits, but the cost isn’t substantial – usually $400 to $500.

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Internal Sponsorship:
Just released from GreenEcoClub the DIY Easy-Energy-Audits. This step-by-step guide will show you how to do energy audit on your home like the pros. Easy-Energy-audits

Finding a professional energy auditor can be a good idea: Professionals have equipment that can help them perform a comprehensive audit, like giant fans that blow air through a home so that pinhole leaks can be detected. They also use infrared cameras to find sources of heat loss.

Homeowners can undertake some simple energy-auditing measures themselves, too. To find air leaks on a shoestring, a person can simply light a candle and draw it slowly around window and door frames. If the flame flickers, there’s air entering the home – so the leaky spot should be sealed up with felt strips or plugged with a commercial-grade leak-filling product like Great Stuff.

There are also products that help people see how much energy their appliances are using. Any comprehensive home energy audit should include an examination of appliance energy consumption – and devices like the Kill-a-Watt can make the process easy. The Kill-a-Watt, which has a small display, simply plugs into the wall. After appliances or electronics are plugged in, the display registers how much energy is being consumed.

Going cutting-edge on energy efficiency means cutting some serious checks, Milton case shows

By Johanna Seltz
Globe Correspondent
October 10, 2010

MILTON — Andrew Koh is learning that going extremely green — his house renovation project is designed to cut home energy costs in half — can cost a lot of green.

Take the new water heater he’s installing as part of the “deep energy retrofit’’ of 225 Gun Hill St., the 30-year-old Garrison-style home he and his wife, Tracy, bought last year.

“It’s the prettiest water heater I’ve ever seen,’’ Koh said.

And it’s 96 percent efficient, compared with the 80 percent efficient water heater he had not so long ago in their old condominium in South Boston. That translates to using nearly a fifth less energy, he said.

But the old heater cost about $500 and the new super-efficient one sells for “well north of $2,000,’’ Koh said.

“The biggest moral of this story, for us, is that going green will cost you more than conventional,’’ he said. “And as you go further and further to the extreme, things get exponentially more expensive.’’

He’ll save money, of course, in reduced utility costs.

But unlike other families who take a more conservative approach to going green — and get an immediate payback — Koh figures it could take many years before the savings catch up with the eco-investment at his house. Luckily it’s not all his own money on the line.

“Obviously, we wouldn’t do all of this if there weren’t some funding dollars behind it,’’ he said.

The biggest financial support comes from National Grid, which is sponsoring the project as part of the utility’s “Deep Energy Retrofit Pilot Program.’’ Manufacturers and retailers also have donated or deeply discounted such things as solar panels, foam insulation, and appliances.

But the fact that the true cost of the project is beyond most homeowners’ budgets doesn’t lessen the worth of the exercise, Koh said. His house, he said, is a laboratory of sorts — an experiment in the best ways to make an old house energy-efficient.

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“The deep energy retrofitters are the warriors,’’ said Caitriona Cooke of the Conservation Services Group, a Westborough-based company that advises on energy efficiency. “They’re setting an example and leading the way, showing what’s possible.’’

“The ultimate goal is the trickle-down effect,’’ Koh said. “Not everybody will go to the extremes we have, but there are a lot of practical lessons to be learned from what we are doing.’’

They’re lessons likely to be heeded in Milton, he said. The town recently adopted the new Stretch Energy Code mandating energy efficiency, so it can apply to be named a green community by the state. The designation would make Milton eligible for state grants for energy-efficient projects.

Energy efficiency wasn’t high on their priority list when Koh, who runs a software security company, and his wife, a physical therapist and personal trainer, started looking for a new home. The green they sought was a yard where their two young sons could play.