I received a call from England the other day asking if I thought a particular power factor correcting technology saved consumer energy bills. I know a little about power factor from an earlier assignment, which included knowing that consumers only pay for real power, and that power factor did not affect their electricity bill at all.

But as I investigated I was astounded to find the extend of the scams and blatant fraud being promoted on the internet.

Having exhausted all the obvious areas of energy saving, I remembered that there were still a few bulbs (twelve to be exact) that had not been replaced yet. I have posted an article comparing the energy use of our old light bulbs to the new, each being turned on in the same sequence, with 15 seconds between them.

The results speak for themselves. I do encourage you to link to our original posting and read our opinion.

Threatening that the planet is dying, or promising wealth from home energy savings is not working. So how will we be motivated to save energy, particularly when saving energy requires us to pay attention and change behavior.

The answer is education, the only solution to achieving any long term change. But to be educated we need motivation, re-enter the temptation for threats and rewards!

I have a question? Why are we so hard to teach on simple energy savings opportunities, like standby power and power factor? And why are we so easily influenced by marketing hype?

I could not help wondering how the upcoming legislation might affect small business and their data centers energy efforts? "Obama pushes Senate to act on climate measure" read article