With the government stepping up incentives to encourage energy saving by home owners we are seeing a serious increase in the “step up” by energy saving scam perpetrators.

The most serious of these is around power factor correction. The high end systems carry a price tag of up to $1,500.00, and with that amount of money come door to door and other nasty selling tactics. The worst of these is the free energy audit as a way to get inside the home, and to use the home owners own information on power factor as the plarfrom to mislead.

There is NO saving to home owners for correcting their home power factor. The technical details can be found in this article.

http://open4energy.com/forum/home/scam/power_factor_correction

There are a number of lesser scams, the most common being a plan to build a Free Perpetual Motion Magnetic generator, a DIY solar panel, and a DIY windmill. If you see any of these run …..

http://open4energy.com/forum/home/scam/energy_saving_scams

The scams have hijacked the internet. They have 1000′s of pages of content, including content that speaks rebuts the scam complaints, and is optimized to searches investigating the validity of the claims. The only solution is to limit the sites and authors you believe to those like this (thanks Katie), and others like it where there is a commitment to quality information.

Here is a link to the most offensive of these , a company called Earth4Energy

http://open4energy.com/forum/home/scam/earth4energy_windmill_solar_panel

There are no government rebates for any of the products being promoted this way, check for valid Energy Star certifications and remember that the search results have been manipulated by these scam sellers and resellers.

Katie – thanks for what you are doing in this article.

So as we return to work on Monday, can I remind us to pay attention to our own energy consumption, at home and in the workplace.

I continue to be surprised, despite all the work we are doing at open4energy to measure energy use in homes – lights, appliances and such – at the saving we miss. The latest of these has been 12 stubborn bulbs that I had not replaced with CFL’s – mostly as I could not source suitable replacements at a reasonable price.

I finally found CFL replacements and installed them. I was shocked at the visual of what a 75% saving in lighting energy is, monitored on our bedroom/bathroom circuit using a Wattsup SC20 monitor.

http://open4energy.com/forum/home/lig/energy_saving_light_bulbs_0912102218

I hope this will be a reminder for us to pay attention to both our global energy issues, and the energy use in our personal lives.

http://thegreenmarket.blogspot.com/2009/12/obama-needs-senate-to-succeed-at-cop15.html