May 12, 2017
If you’ve been reading this week’s blog series on Ductless Mini-Splits, I hope you’re convinced Mini-Splits are the way to go. But maybe they’re just not right for you due to timing, needs or money. There are other ways you can decrease your home’s cooling requirements to save money, help the Earth and be more… Read the entire post »
April 27, 2017
I recently went into the WCRN-AM 830 studio to be a guest on “On The Level With Steve Quist,” a popular home improvement show. It was a lot of fun, as always (I’ve been on several times), and hopefully it was informative for those learning about solar. Here is the interview, broken into three 7-10… Read the entire post »
April 7, 2017
OK, so I exaggerate a bit. But you can learn about going solar from your couch. Grab your laptop, tablet or smart phone and sit in on my 30 minute webinar and learn The Basics of Solar. In the webinar I’ll cover how solar electric systems work, I’ll help you understand if a solar system… Read the entire post »
March 13, 2017
If you’re a solar owner, figuring out how much electricity you actually used in a given month is not as easy as it used to be. When all your power came from the utility, a handy graph or chart on the side of your bill probably showed how much electricity you used each of the… Read the entire post »
February 2, 2017
Solar is under fire from many utilities and many special interest groups linked — visibly or not-so-visibly — to utilities. The most effective bit of propaganda in their arsenal is the mistruth (can we say “lie”?) that electricity ratepayers without solar subsidize those ratepayers with solar. They often paint those without solar as poor and… Read the entire post »
October 20, 2016
My headline for this blog post might have you scratching your head. Why would the president of a solar company talk about alternatives to going solar? But since the day I started New England Clean Energy, my focus has been on helping the environment so my kids and their kids have a planet left to call… Read the entire post »
October 10, 2016
“Heat pumps” are well known to HVAC professionals and energy-efficiency experts. Heat-pump based systems have been used for years in milder climates to warm and cool homes and other buildings. In the past few years, the technology has improved to the point that heat pumps are now becoming popular in colder climates like New England.… Read the entire post »
October 4, 2016
Measurements are supposed to be exact. But are they? Is your bathroom scale always right? OK, maybe that’s a bad example. Safe to say, though, that measurements come with some wiggle room, especially when it comes to proposals for solar electric systems. There may not be as much difference between competing proposals as the sales… Read the entire post »
September 12, 2016
One of our Hudson, MA customers sat down for a Q&A session on his solar, two years after turning on his system. Mike (pictured here with his wife, Nancy), has a 10,695-watt system that went live in July 2014. New England Clean Energy: Why did you decide to install solar on your property? Mike: I was initially… Read the entire post »
August 22, 2016
In my previous article on energy conversion, I suggested that when energy is converted from one form to another, some energy is lost. I lied. Technically, the energy is not lost. It does, however, get converted to an unusable form – typically heat. Let me start with an example. At my house, we heat with natural… Read the entire post »
I started writing The Energy Miser in 2011 because I like to analyze energy issues and pontificate about my findings. Got a topic you want me to cover? Let me know.
