Between the extravagant claims for various forms of renewable energy, and figuring out ways to pay for energy-saving improvements and technologies in your home, we sometimes forget that major energy–and cost– savings can be realized simply by ensuring appliances and utilities in your home are operating or set at optimal temperatures.

A quick ‘temperature tour’ of your home to check the heating and cooling settings on your appliances. You can take a major step towards saving energy in approximately 20 minutes. Here’s where you’ll save the most:

Set your hot water heater at 120 degrees.
The refrigerator should be set at between 38 and 35 degrees, and freezer set to 0 degrees.
Program your thermostat two degrees cooler than your normal winter setting and two degrees warmer than your normal summer setting.

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From Canada comes the rather amazing story of Cansolair, a company that reuses soda cans to make solar panels. Once installed, this soda/solar unit can provide up to 30% of the heating for your house. All this in the cloudy, foggy Labrador region. All without adding another CO2 particle to the environment. Maybe Coke knew it was onto something when they introduced this new flavor last year.

Check out this video to see how it’s done.

Last week, we showed you how a local Cambridge organization (HEET–Home Energy Efficiency Team) ‘weatherizes’ a house for fellow Cambridge residents.  Weatherizing a house involves making some basic non-structural changes to a house to reduce the energy needed for heating and cooling and save money on utilities. The homeowner supplies all the materials and HEET provides the knowledge and manpower needed to finish all energy efficiency improvements in a single day.

It’s a great community activity and a fantastic way to meet your fellow Cambridge residents while learning from skilled tradesmen how you can make your own home more energy efficient. And there is always a party to celebrate the completion of another successful Weatherization Barnraising.

The next HEET Weatherization Barnraising is scheduled for Sunday, March 1 between 12:30—5… [view entry]

You may remember the scene from the 1985 movie Witness starring Harrison Ford. A group of Amish people converge on a neighbor’s property and assemble a barn in a single montage, a single day. A Cambridge-based co-op  HEET (for Home Energy Efficiency Team) does weatherization work that’s less lofty, but arguably more important to the modern world. It’s a model for what can be done by harnessing the power of progressive community which emerged during the Obama campaign.

As Bob the Builder might say, ‘Can We Caulk it? Yes we can!’

Combining the materials purchased by the homeowner with free knowhow and labor from HEET, the team has weatherized several low-income  homes in Cambridge, with the goal of performing a barn-raising per month. As they do so, they transfer the… [view entry]

If one does a Google search on ‘keeping warm in the winter,’ you’ll find dozens of articles from all over the world, with tips and advice on how to keep warm without breaking the bank. There’s a lot of overlap in these lists, but occasionally you find a unique idea or two. Many of these lists are aimed at the elderly, who have to balance warmth issues with other issues (avoiding slips and falls). You’ll also find a great deal of disagreement about the safety and utility of closing off vents in unused parts of a structure heated by a forced air furnace.

The tips are all common-sensical. But one thing we’ve noticed at Energy 2.0, if you pile up enough common sense, you frequently find you’ve created an uncommonly useful… [view entry]

The details of an interesting program to encourage energy efficiency in Utah just crossed our desk here at Energy 2.0.

The Energy Services Efficiency Program… eases the financial burden of making large changes that lower the energy load on the power grid, such as better insulation, more efficient air conditioning systems and improved swimming pool pumps.The rebates could pay more than $500 for improved attic insulation, $350 for a new air conditioning unit and up to $125 for a better swimming pool pump.

Energy 2.0 supports this idea because it achieves two things. It ties the reduction of energy use in each house to specific improvements, and it helps the homeowner make the capital investment in what are becoming tough times for all. Looking at the photo below,… [view entry]

Built by volunteers in the Riverside Neighborhood of Cambridge twenty eight years ago, this old solar project just keeps on keeping on.

This Q&A from the Detroit Free Press provides some useful information on the effect of using humidifiers in the house during the winter months.

Because the Humidifier puts out moisture, you don't have to. That keeps your body warmer.

The accepted wisdom is at least 50% of the energy used in our homes is for heating and cooling. That is particularly true for residents in the North-East Corridor and the Midwest, who routinely shiver through winter and swelter throughout the summer months.

The Department of Energy says every house has an R-value, which is your home’s built-in effectiveness at retaining the heat generated within your home. They have even provided a calculator that recommends various  insulation improvements to reduce the effect of climatic changes outside your four walls.

Energy 2.0 input their data and found the results…  a little confusing. Try it yourself though.

To find out more about R-values, you’ll find this explanation enlightening. Particularly the part  explaining why simply putting more insulation in your walls… [view entry]