High Efficiency Products

This post was contributed by Lara Bonn, Efficiency Vermont's Efficient Products Strategic Planning Manager.

We buy clothes, books, and airplane tickets online. We virtually hail taxis, bank, and make international phone calls. We share photos of cats and start viral revolutions with bytes of data. Energy efficiency may be fashionably late to this e-party, but with strong partnerships and a focus on customer convenience, the movement is underway to transform how this least-cost resource is captured online.

So how are shoppers discovering energy efficient products online?

Home energy management systems (HEMS) are an invention of the internet age. They are a 21^st-century by-product of the idea that when two-way communication between utilities and homeowners is paired with the proliferation of smart devices, the results are greater connectivity, control, and ultimately comprehensive energy savings.

We know the future will be bright for the residential lighting market, but just how efficient will it be?

Residential lighting has long been at the heart of ratepayer-funded energy efficiency program portfolios. In New England, residential lighting measures have produced over 30 percent of all efficiency program savings. The large savings potential along with the relatively low barriers to getting bulbs into sockets makes lighting the classic low hanging fruit.

You’re an Air-Source Heat Pump believer and you’re itching to get one installed. After pouring over online reports and catalogs, visiting the cold climate ASHP listing, and checking out your neighbor’s system, you now consider yourself an expert. Without doubt, saving roughly 3,000 kWh and $300-459 annually is phenomenal – why leave money laying on the table? So tell me, what type of ASHP are you going to buy?

Ducted or Ductless or Short-run Ducted?

This post originally appeared on Switchboard, a blog by NRDC.

Industry and energy efficiency advocates have come to a major agreement, officially approved today, on updated efficiency standards for commercial air conditioners and furnaces that, once adopted, will lead to huge energy and dollar savings for more than half of the nation's nonresidential buildings.

We are back at it after LightFair International in New York City last week – what a show! This year marked a new frontier for the DesignLights Consortium with our own booth at the most future-focused conference and tradeshow in the lighting industry. With high traffic at our booth, we saw many familiar faces, made new connections and encountered some of the most innovative technologies the field has to offer.

While you probably won’t find Rooftop Units trending on Twitter anytime soon, you will continue to find them on roofs of commercial buildings working tirelessly to keep you cool. And, like many of their HVAC counterparts, rooftop units are due for an energy efficiency overhaul.

In the world of energy efficiency, clothes dryers were the kids picked last during recess basketball games, overlooked for more promising appliances. As refrigerators, clothes washers, and dishwashers became incrementally more efficient over time, clothes dryers were left to their energy squandering ways.

Last we left Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS), they were overseas playing a major role as Energy Continuity Systems (ECS) in Japan after the devastating Fukushima disaster disabled forty-eight of Japan’s fifty nuclear reactors. Rolling blackouts and sporadic outages plagued the Land of the Rising Sun years after the monstrous earthquake rocked the world, instilling a heightened awareness of energy reliability and a towering demand for homes equipped with HEMS.