The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is conducting a webinar describing efforts underway to develop a suite of national guidelines for the work and workforce involved in residential energy efficiency retrofits.

Webinar attendees will learn how these proposed guidelines will improve the quality of weatherization services and other residential retrofit work; assist training providers in developing industry-recognized course content and curricula; increase mobility and improve the careers of weatherization and residential energy efficiency retrofit workers; and build confidence among consumers and the energy efficiency finance community.

The webinar presentation is titled “National Residential Retrofit Guidelines: Updates & Opportunities for Weatherization and Residential Retrofit Stakeholders,” and will take place on Wednesday, August 11, from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The speaker will be Benjamin Goldstein, project lead for the National Residential Retrofit Guidelines at EERE.

The online seminar is free of charge, but you must register in advance to obtain a URL for the presentation and call-in phone number. You can register online for the August 11 webinar and read background materials about the project on EERE’s National Residential Retrofit Guidelines Web page.

EERE News: EERE Webinar August 11: National Residential Retrofit Guidelines.

Contractors, we would love 10 minutes of your time in order to fill out a survey on hiring practices and employee certifications. If you wouldn’t mind spending a couple of minutes filling out this survey, it would be greatly appreciated.

The folks at Efficiency First have asked us for contractors to submit their survey by April 26th.

Here is the link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7PCspTs52P0gYLYyIPoBpYo60k8L65r%2fWzjBAD1Zr%2bs%3d&

Thanks for your time!

Renovating, repairing or painting a home, child care facility or school containing lead-based paint

Beginning in April 2010, federal law will require that contractors performing renovation, repair and painting projects that disturb lead-based paint in homes, child care facilities, and schools built before 1978 must be certified and follow specific work practices to prevent lead contamination.

Read about EPA’s requirements for renovation, repair and painting.

From Sean Penrith, at Earth Advantage:

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,

Another quality post from Peter Troast from over at Energy Circle. Be sure to check out their website…

ASHRAE Building EQ: An Intelligent Energy Measurement System.

By Peter Troast (Energy Circle)

If you are one of the gazillion readers of Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, then you know that IQ doesn’t predict performance. As with any test issued at a singular moment in a given life to measure a particular trait, the IQ test is riddled with imperfections and limitations.  Despite the transparent short-comings of such measurements, we find them helpful, and we turn to them repeatedly, to gauge our expectations, hedge our bets, and customize (for better and worse) our investments. This applies to buildings as well as brains.

Read the rest here: Energy Circle

I found this post on the Energy Circle blog, and since there seem to be a lot of interest in Hohm, I thought I’d pass it along…  Ammen

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

The objectives of this study were to determine a practical and cost-effective method of assessing the effectiveness of dehumidifiers in controlling moisture in houses, and to assess the usefulness of dehumidifiers in controlling general moisture conditions in houses in different regions of Canada. Results showed that in most regions of Canada, dehumidification is beneficial during the non-heating season, while year-round operation can be beneficial for houses located in milder coastal climates.

To download this research highlight click on http://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/b2c/catalog/z_getpdf.jsp?pdfkey=8550061590791139862977325108987864496290587662362330486/66555.pdf

Real-Time Electricity Monitoring Works (24 Hours Later Doesn’t).

Smart meters have the capacity to provide utilities – and therefore homeowners – with real-time monitoring of electricity use. But early indications are that utilities, and even data managing services based upon smart meters, like Google PowerMeter, may not take advantage of real-time data, and instead will continue to ask consumers to settle for next-day information.

Read the rest here: Energy Circle