Here's another item for the myths of energy conservation category: In most homes, ceiling fans do NOT save energy. It's not that they can't save energy; it's just that most people don't understand how to use them to do so,…
I was born and raised in the oil patch, getting my start in Houston and then moving to south Louisiana when I was 10 years old. Spending as much time as possible fishing, hunting, trawling, and hanging out in the…
I recall a lot of talk in the early ‘90s about the ‘peace dividend’ and how we’d spend it. This new term entered our lexicon because of the fall of the Soviet Union and the supposed billions of dollars that…
A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends wrote on Facebook, "How many more times in my life will I forget that I am hardboiling eggs?" That got me to thinking about the time my grandmother told my aunt,…
Tomorrow I'm going to the Sustainable Atlanta Roundtable meeting on the topic of 'Georgia's Solar Future,' which got me to thinking about my friend and fellow HERS rater class instructor Mike Barcik's 5 step program for solar energy. Here it…
You can turn electricity into heat at an efficiency of 100%! Every kilowatt-hour of electricity in turns into one kilowatt-hour of heat out. That sounds pretty good, doesn't it? The truth, however, is that electric resistance heat (toasters, baseboard heaters,…
I've analyzed and improved the energy efficiency of numerous homes. The starting point is, of course, the analysis because you want to put your efforts—and your dollars—where they're going to generate the best results. I've analyzed and improved the energy…
In 2005, my friend Scott from Pennsylvania (well, really from Toronto but living in PA) visited me in Georgia. I was enveloped in the world of peak oil at that time and showed him an article that postulated that when…