Simple Energy Saving Tips Courtesy of Conservastore.com

At Conserv-A-Store we think its very valuable to inform our customers of some breakthrough techniques to help our readers save energy in their households. The following list breaks down some easy to use ways to save some energy.

• Replace standard incandescent light bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) and save 75% of lighting costs.
• Unplug electronics, battery chargers and other equipment when not in use. Taken together, these small items can use as much power as your refrigerator.
• Take steps to cut water use such as installing faucet aerators, low-flow showerheads, and low-flush toilets. As much as 19% of California electricity is used to pump, transport and treat water.
• A 5° higher setting on your air conditioning thermostat will save about 10% on cooling costs.
• Always buy ENERGY STAR qualified appliances and equipment - they're up to 40% more efficient. Find rebates and incentives in your area using our rebate finder.
• Turn your water heater down to 120° or the "Normal" setting when home, and to the lowest setting when away. Water heating accounts for about 13% of home energy costs.
• Reduce air conditioning costs by using fans, keeping windows and doors shut and closing shades during the day.
• Turn off unnecessary lighting and use task or desktop lamps with CFLs instead of overhead lights.
• Enable "power management" on all computers and make sure to turn them off at night. A laptop computer uses up to 90% less energy than bigger desktop models.
• When possible, wash clothes in cold water. About 90% of the energy use in a clothes washer goes to water heating.
• Run your dishwasher and clothes washer only when fully loaded. Fewer loads reduce energy and water use.
• Make sure your dryer's outside vent is clear and clean the lint filter after every load. When shopping for a new dryer look for one with a moisture sensor that automatically shuts off when clothes are dry.
• Test for air leaks by holding a lit incense stick next to windows, doors, electrical boxes, plumbing fixtures, electrical outlets, ceiling fixtures, attic hatches and other locations where there is a possible air path to the outside. If the smoke stream travels horizontally, you have located an air leak that may need caulking, sealing or weather stripping.

Tips Provided Courtesy of FyPower

Conserv-A-Store is your favorite Green Products webstore. Come to us for products to lead a Green Life or for tips on how common sense lends to a Green Life. Always at Conserv-A-Store.com

Screw in Lighting Controls - Conservastore Update

Screw in Lighting controls and lighting control systems are an easy way to reduce the cost of lighting in the home and can also act as a deterrent to thievery as a home that is at least partially lit at nite is less likely to be broken into.

We have a good assortment of lighting controls on our Conservastore.com website with Amertac Westek as our major supplier.

In this blog we will discuss some of our favorite controls

How do screw in  lighting controls work?:
Most have a small eye to record light levels. Most have a dusk-to-dawn setting as the primary feature but some have random on off features and programmable features that allow on/off at specific times.

As far as a very technical scientific discussion of how these parts work, as traditional as this technology is, we've had difficulty finding a good explanation.We'd be interested in a very technical write up if you can find one. Please send it our way.

Outdoor Flood fixtures are a no brainer to add a light control to:
It's a pain to get the ladder out and change flood bulbs often. But outdoor flood bulbs are one of the most important deterrents to vagrant activity. It's a simple install for a homeowner or handyman to screw the control into the existing flood fixture and then screw the flood bulb into the control.
The outdoor lighting control Amertac Part # OLC5CFLBC is the Conservastore Part #03-0151. The part has recently been upgraded to handle CFL(compact fluorescents) and LED floods which are very popular now. Here's a pic of the part.

Conservastore part # 03-0151 Outdoor Flood Light Control

Conservastore offers longest life incandescent flood bulbs in 75 wt and 150 wt by Aerotech light bulb.These bulbs would be a great tandem purchase with the above light control to offer the longest life for the bulbs and lessen the need to change bulbs often.


Our most popular lighting controller offers options on the turn off portion of the control
This items is the Amertac Part# SLC6CBC and  Conservastore Part # 03-0149
The device automatically turns lights On at dusk but you have the choice of turn off after 2, 5, or 8 hours or at dawn. Random Off deters intruders when on vacation. It will handle the popular CFL or compact fluorescent bulb as well incandescent bulbs. It will work indoor or in a weather protected outdoor setting

Conservastore Part # 03-0149 Programmable Light Control

A Popular Amertac controller has been upgraded making it a Great Value Buy 
Amertac recently upgraded the model SLC5BCW which is the Conservastore part # 03-0237 to perform with CFL bulbs as well as incandescent and halogen bulbs. It is a perfectly priced screw in control for most of the lamps in your home or small office. It is limited to a dusk to dawn setting but that is the most popular setting for most folks.

Conservastore Part# 03-0237 Value Buy Dusk to Dawn Controller

                                                                                                                                           
Lighting controls will continue to move to an integrated system whereby you can control the lighting in your home remotely thru the net. But that is still a bit expensive and just screwing in low priced controls is still a great way to go for many in 2012.

Earth Day Wishes and Poetry

 We will try to inspire you every Earth Day with some rhyme. This year we have a few selections from last year and a few new entries as well.

We hope you have a great Earth Day 2012! We hope that we all carry and extrapolate the the thoughts and respect for the Earth that many feel on this one day to the other 364 days a year.

This Old Earth needs our help
To stay fresh and clean and green
With a
Pick it up
Pitch it in and
Throw it in the can
This Old Earth needs a helping hand

 from ReallyRoper.blogspot.com

I am the Earth
And the Earth is me.
Each blade of grass,
Each Honey Tree,

Each bit of mud,
And stick and stone
Is blood and muscle,
Skin and bone

And just as I
Need every bit
of me to make
A body fit
So Earth needs
Grass and Stone and Tree
And things that grow here
Naturally

That's why we celebrate
This day
That why across
The world we say:
"As long as life,
As dear as free,
I am Earth
and this is me!"

Earth Day Earth Poem

Even the Earth knows well the market must
 Align itself with something more than greed.
 Ravenous monsters on the future feed,
 Their fangs ripping at Earth's delicate crust. 
How might one profit from an empty sea, 
Drawing dividends from dying streams?
 Although one might find riches at the seams, 
Yet none will prosper once the Earth is scree.

Even the Earth Knows Well the Market Must by Nicholas Gordon

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing Gold Can Stay
-Robert Frost


Plant a tree
Watch a bee
Go clean up the
Sea!!
Let's leave our planet
to be,
What it intends to be
So we, and all life
Can Be ........

Bonnie Pelton

Happy Earth Day from Conservastore.com

Residential Wind Power - Green Network Group March 2012 Meeting

Our March 2012 Green Network Group meeting was another outstanding get together.

We were  lucky to have local Orange and Lake County Fla self taught wind power expert Jim Dotson as our presenter. Jim offered a beautiful powerpoint on his personal initiative to learn about and install a wind turbine on acreage he has in central Florida. He also included information on his trips to rural Africa to offer electrification efforts to small clinics which often have no power at all.

Jim became interested in residential wind systems after seeing an exhibit at the  National Botanical Gardens in Washington DC. He researched the opportunity and decided to dive in.

He laughed when discussing his first visit to the local zoning office. The office had never had a wind tower installed in their locale so they were unclear how to list the project. After much discussion the decision was to list it as a radio tower and not a wind tower.

For those with interest in installing their own turbine, placement of the tower is quite essential to optimum performance.

The tower needs to be 250ft horizontal distance from any obstacle and the motor needs to be  20ft above any obstacle. In that the turbine is in many ways like an aircraft propeller it is important to have clean air ie the less turbulent air the better. Jim installed his tower on a hill(yes we have hills in Florida) near his home which helped elevate the blades into less turbulent air.
Usually the taller the tower the better in order to get the cleaner air.

Here's some data on Jim's system:

- Was purchased from Southwest Wind Power or Skystream-click here to see their residential systems

- Has a 35ft tower with 6ft blades

- The unit spins 360° to catch the wind from any direction

- The unit needs 5 mph consistent wind to operate and stalls at 60 mph to protect the motor

- The optimum wind speed is 24mph

- The factory states no maintenance is needed for 20 years but Jim did say that one of the only drawbacks to the system is that if maintenance is required the motor must be brought to the ground

- Anchoring the tower is very important to get the best performance. Jim dug a sizeable hole and used rebar and poured concrete.

Jim says he expects a  4.5 year breakeven on the $22k cost of his system but he's only using it to contribute toward half of his Progress Utilities energy bill currently. He says the net metering checks he's gotten from Progress have been satisfactory

Jim did volunteer that he has seen no birds killed by the moving turbines yet. He said in fact that he watches a hawk on occasion that seems to like to play on the turbines when the wind is light.

Some experts say the ambient wind flows in Florida are too light to support successful residential wind power in Florida. It does seem that due to the size of the turbine and the requirement for "clean" air, wind power may be suited for a more rural location where there are less obstructions by neighbor's houses and large buildings. But it does seem also that wind can certainly contribute to reducing the need for grid generated power in Florida. We passed a marina recently and almost a 3rd of the sail boats had small wind turbines to power their batteries.

This map from Wikipedia shows where in the USA wind is most likely to return an investment quickly and consistently. In that blues and reds are the most potent wind the northern coast of California, SW Oregon, and the N Atlantic coastal states all look prime for significant wind power growth

Here's are some links on Jim's project and on general wind turbine information and current wind topics:

Video on Jim's project

Wikipedia on How Wind Turbines operate

Florida's first commercial wind farm to be built in the Everglades commercial district 

Conserv-A-Store.com helps to sponsor the Green Network Group in Orlando the 3rd Wednesday of each month. Everyone is welcome! If you are from out of town and are at the theme parks but need a break to come learn about Green topics-we welcome you.

Green Investments Portfolio by Conservastore.com week ending 4/6/12: Focus on Can Green Make $

 We recently added the company Naturex to our portfolio and it has helped the performance greatly but we will say that since early 2011 when we started our portfolio that making money has been difficult with Green investments. You would think that Green products might not run with the pack of the general market but sadly it seems as if they have since the Great Recession began.

Here's a good article on whether or not one can make money in Green Investing. We've italicized parts we feel are of interest to us

By John Wasik

CHICAGO | Mon Apr 2, 2012 2:59pm EDT

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Want to vote with your dollars when it comes to environmental concerns? One way is to invest in environmentally focused mutual and exchange-traded funds, although you may be trading your green conscience for increased portfolio risk.
People who are concerned about energy prices and climate change have put more than $3 trillion into the hands of managers who target positive environmental, social and corporate governance practices, encompassing more than 250 investment funds, according to the Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investment's 2010 report on socially responsible investing.
Like any sector, environmental stocks are volatile. One year ethanol producers are hot, then sold off. Solar-panel manufacturers sizzle - and then fade.
I've found that green funds tend to overweight a particular sub-sector. Some managers may focus on water infrastructure, while others may hold a broader array of geothermal, biomass, solar, wind and energy-efficiency stocks.
When considering actively managed funds, you always encounter higher sector risk; managers can guess wrong on which will be the next hot industry.

NOT IMMUNE
Green funds were not immune to the travails of the market meltdown in 2008. They were sold off with the broader market and closely track it. If you take a look at the performance chart of a green fund such as the Market Vectors Environmental Services ETF, you can see it parallels the S&P 500 Index. When the index tumbled in late 2008, the Market Vectors fund followed, although slightly outperforming it over the past five years.
And, of course, in the real world, no one company is entirely clean and green, although these specialized managers attempt to find companies focused on sustainability and solutions to the global problems of resource depletion, energy consumption, pollution and climate change.
All of this is not to say that you can't do well in a green fund. Along with the rest of the stock market, their returns have blossomed recently. The Winslow Green Growth Fund is up about 13 percent year to date through March 30. The Fidelity Select Environmental and Alternative Energy fund has risen about 9 percent.
One of the biggest issues with green funds is that they haven't been around very long, so most of them don't have track records that run through several bear markets. Only a handful have been around for more than 10 years.

GREEN PICK
Ultimately, though, if you want the broadest-possible exposure to green investing, you'll need an index fund that covers much more ground and doesn't specialize in environmental companies. The Vanguard Total Market Index ETF samples more than 3,000 stocks, so your chance of owning the next Microsoft of green technology is more likely to be from holding that portfolio.
Costs are also much lower in the bigger index funds. The Vanguard fund, for example, has a 0.07 percent annual expense ratio for management fees. The Winslow fund, in comparison, charges 1.45 percent.

Even though there may be more losers than winners, green companies may be golden over the long term. Energy and resource issues are only going to get more challenging as more people crowd the planet and demand more water, electricity, fertilizer, oil, coal, metals and consumer goods.
Yet don't amplify the risk profile of your portfolio en route to doing the right thing. There are many more sensible ways to help the planet.
(The author is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

Here's a current note about solar PV manufacturing stocks

Here's your portfolio for the week ending April 6th, 2012. We hope you have a great Holiday weekend with your family

Conservastore.com

 

Today							Since Purchased
Symbol/Name	Price*	Change	Last Trade	Gain/Loss (USD)	Shares	Price Paid	Purchase Date	Gain/Loss (USD)	% Change	% Port	Value (USD)
2208:HK (HKD) Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co Ltd	4.45	+0.16	04/05	+0.02	1	16.30	01/03/2011	-1.53	-72.70	0.00	0.57
FAN:US ($) First Trust Global Wind Energy ETF	7.5106	-0.0294	04/05	-0.03	1	10.40	01/03/2011	-2.89	-27.78	3.40	7.51
FSLR:US ($) First Solar Inc	20.98	-0.75	04/05	-0.75	1	0.00	03/10/2012	+20.98	+∞	9.49	20.98
GAAEX:US ($) Guinness Atkinson Funds - Alternative Energy Fund	2.91	0.00	04/05	0.00	1	5.24	01/03/2011	-2.33	-44.47	1.32	2.91
GAIA:US ($) Gaiam Inc	3.99	-0.06	04/05	-0.06	1	7.67	01/03/2011	-3.68	-47.98	1.81	3.99
ICLN:US ($) iShares S&P Global Clean Energy Index Fund	8.89	+0.04	04/05	+0.04	1	16.07	01/03/2011	-7.18	-44.68	4.02	8.89
KWT:US ($) Market Vectors Solar Energy ETF	3.41	-0.021	04/05	-0.02	1	11.17	01/03/2011	-7.76	-69.47	1.54	3.41
NALFX:US ($) New Alternatives Fund Inc/fund	34.88	-0.09	04/05	-0.09	1	40.88	01/03/2011	-6.00	-14.68	15.79	34.88
NRX:FP (€) Naturex	49.11	-0.68	04/05	-0.89	1	41.10	01/03/2011	+10.49	+19.49	29.11	64.32
OPTT:US ($) Ocean Power Technologies Inc	2.98	+0.12	04/05	+0.12	1	5.86	01/03/2011	-2.88	-49.15	1.35	2.98
ORA:US ($) Ormat Technologies Inc	19.34	-0.25	04/05	-0.25	1	29.47	01/03/2011	-10.13	-34.37	8.75	19.34
PBD:US ($) Powershares Global Clean Energy Portfolio	8.53	0.00	04/05	0.00	1	14.12	01/03/2011	-5.59	-39.59	3.86	8.53
PUR:CN (CAD) Pure Technologies Ltd	4.21	-0.04	04/05	-0.04	1	4.75	01/04/2011	-0.54	-11.37	1.91	4.22
RSOL:US ($) Real Goods Solar Inc	1.31	-0.0601	04/05	-0.06	1	2.45	01/03/2011	-1.14	-46.53	0.59	1.31
VWDRY:US ($) Vestas Wind Systems A/S	3.02	-0.08	04/05	-0.08	1	11.14	01/03/2011	-8.12	-72.89	1.37	3.02
WFIFF:US ($) WaterFurnace Renewable Energy Inc	20.2207	0.00	04/04	0.00	1	24.63	01/03/2011	-4.41	-17.90	9.15	20.22
WGGFX:US ($) Winslow Green Growth Fund	13.88	-0.04	04/05	-0.04	1	14.62	01/03/2011	-0.74	-5.06	6.28	13.88
Totals				-2.13				-33.45	-13.15		220.96