3 New Ways to Optimize Your Home Performance Business in Google Places. | Energy Circle PRO.

When Selling Energy Efficiency, Don’t Say ‘Retrofit,’ Say ‘Upgrade’ — Study – NYTimes.com.

Keywording Strategies for Energy Efficiency and Home Performance Professionals.

As customers become increasingly tuned out to traditional forms of advertising, Home Performance Contractors and Energy Auditors need to dig deeper. In our increasingly “word of mouth” world, the endorsement of someone trusted, even if that trust is just implicit, is the most valuable marketing currency. And though so much of the “trust” conversation seems to revolve around the online marketing space, some innovative, offline approaches can be very effective too.

4 Fresh Offline Marketing Ideas for Home Performance Professionals.

Posts from Efficiency First Blog for 07/12/2010.

At this time Energy Trust of Oregon’s 2008 Energy Performance Score pilot is now complete and we invite you to read the final Findings & Recommendations report. The goal of the pilot was to develop a performance metric for existing homes that could be applicable to new construction homes and would reflect energy consumption and carbon emissions—an “MPG” for homes. In creating the metric, the pilot compared home energy modeling tools for their accuracy and ease of use in estimating home energy consumption.

Earth Advantage conducted the pilot for Energy Trust of Oregon, performing the home audits, data analysis, and the writing of the report. Conservation Services Group (CSG), the Home Energy Solutions – Existing Homes program implementation contractor, managed the pilot with Energy Trust of Oregon.

Due to the size of the files, the report and supporting documents are available at http://energytrust.org/eps/eps_ex.html.  

Please feel free to circulate this link and inform others of the release of this report. We feel the report’s discussion of home energy performance metrics is pertinent to many ongoing discussions on this topic.

Kindly yours,

By Will Mallett – July 30th, 2009

Joining the slew of energy monitoring programs recently launched – Google Powermeter, Microsoft Hohm, GE’s Home Energy Manager, and eMeter, to name a few – we’ve just become aware of a dark horse candidate that has for four years been quietly developing what may be the most user-friendly home energy program yet.

Read the rest here: Energy Circle

Nearly 940,000 Energy Star-qualified homes have been built to date, including more than 100,000 constructed in 2008. In 2008 alone, U.S. families living in Energy Star-qualified homes locked in annual utility bill savings of more than $250 million, avoiding the use of more than 1.5 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 155 million therms of natural gas. The Energy Star program is a joint effort of DOE and the EPA. See the EPA press release and a state-by-state breakdown of Energy Star-qualified homes on the Energy Star Web site.

There’s a lot of talk about energy efficiency. How efficient are you? Steve Scher invited some energy auditors into his home to find out how green friendly he is. Their machine detected hot spots — where heat was leaking from the house — and they offered suggestions on how to fix them. The verdict? Let’s just say Steve has a big job ahead. Puget Sound Energy and Seattle City Light are increasing their efforts to test homes. How energy efficient is your home or business? What can you do about it? Is there a greener future for Seattle? Call in with your questions at 1.800.289.KUOW or email Weekday.