ACI National Home Performance 2013

Are you ready for the 2013 ACI National Performance Home Conference? Affordable Comfort, Inc 2013 National Home Performance Conference When: April 29th – May 3, 2013 Where: Denver, CO Details: Founded in 1986, ACI is a not-for-profit organization that has become...

Solar Power – Even for the Poor

I heard an interesting article on Earth-Sky yesterday.  It was talking about solar power energy being available for even poor people. It seems that Africa is showing us the way with Shared Solar power grids. Solar power grids, of micro size,  are set up to provide...

Deciphering the HERS Index: Or Trying To

We’ve been having a very interesting discussion on residential energy indexes like the HERS Index, Energy Score, and others. Some of the participants are advocating for a more direct and transparent number to present to homeowners that represents the energy...

Cooling Your Home with Night Air

Tired of your house always being hot? Nighttime ventilation works well for cooling buildings in many climates, especially in milder summer weather. Nighttime temperature and relative humidity are big factors for determining whether you can use nighttime ventilation....

Using Words: One Word, One Meaning

Writing Words for Communicating We at Saturn have a few rules about words. One is that we describe an item or idea with a single word or term. We don’t use two terms for describing something or one term for describing two or more things. If there are two common terms...

Energy Efficiency and You

According to Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, energy efficiency is “using less energy to provide the same service”. We all strive for energy efficiency for different reasons. Maybe you want to reduce your impact on the environment, or to simply lower...

Comfort Expectations and Energy Conservation

Differences in Energy Use Over the years, I  learned a little about how Europeans use roughly half of the energy, per person, as we Americans do. This is true even though most buildings in Europe have no insulation!  I lived in Prague, in the Czech Republic, between...

The Future of Energy

Good Decisions are Important to Our Energy Future There’s a problem for the future.  Solving our energy crisis requires making good decisions and avoiding bad ones. Fortunately the right decisions are good for the economy. They’re good for carbon reduction...

Biomass Energy Choices

I’m annoyed when renewable energy trumps energy conservation in the media, and nowhere is this tendency more prevalent than with liquid bio-fuels. Biomass Energy Efficiency To make a gallon of ethanol, start with 23 pounds of corn with a potential energy of...