We have already been graced with the amazing green building and home accessories that Greenhome Solutions offer on their retail website, but now they have made it even easier. Their flagship green building supply retail store and showroom is open now More...

By Erin Russell, Sales Coordinator

What are the three most important pieces to growing a vegetable garden? Well, besides having a little piece of land, it is sunlight, water and good soil. Even if that little piece of land isn't in your back yard, the city of Seattle has several different options for you to work out that green thumb! More...

By Aaron Richey, Seattle Market Director

If you're like me, you've probably thought about solar for your house and "kinda" looked into it. You browsed a couple websites and read a few list-servs. You probably came out of it thinking you were pretty well versed in the basics, and that it was not right for some reason. More...

Purchase Green Power
Seattle City Light (greenupseattle.org) Purchase green power for the percentage of energy you use. $3/25%, $6/50%, $12/100%.

Puget Sound Energy (pse.com) Purchase 100% of your usage for just over a penny per kWh (usually $10 extra per month), or in blocks of $2 per 160 kWh.

Snohomish PUD (snopud.com) Contributions to Planet Power can be made in $3 increments. Tacoma Power (tacomapower.com) Evergreen Options can be purchased for $3 per 250 kWh. More...

Scrub the tub Mix baking soda with water for an abrasive scrubbing paste, or substitute castile soap such as Dr. Bronner’s in place of water for extra power. To disinfect the bathroom, spray with hydrogen peroxide and rinse with water.

Claim the drain Pour baking soda in the drain, add 1 cup white vinegar, and watch the volcano, just like in grade school. Flush with hot water and repeat if necessary.

All hands on the pans Mix white vinegar with enough salt to form a paste, and watch the grease slip away. Add 1 tsp lemon juice for scent and extra power. More...

When Washington lawmakers approved a set of incentives in 2005 for producing electricity from the solar power, they hoped to encourage residents to install solar panels and recruit businesses to build them in the Evergreen State.

Four years later, we are seeing slow, but steady and growing progress.

Under the state's incentive program, anyone who installs a solar panel and a meter that records its production gets a double payoff. First, the electricity it produces lowers the amount you need to buy from your utility. Then, you also earn at least 12 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy the panel generates.

It’s a generous incentive.

The minimum production incentive alone is nearly double what my employer, Seattle City Light, charges its residential customers. Combined with the savings from not needing to buy that electricity, the minimum payback is about 18 cents per kilowatt-hour.

But wait, it gets even better and THIS SPACE is here to tell you why. More...

What was your biggest stress during your last move? Were you able to find all the cardboard boxes that you needed in your neighbor's recycling bin? Or did you succumb to buying brand new moving boxes (made from virgin wood) at your local big box store?

Lose the eco-guilt...now you have another option! Welcome, FROGBOX, a company new to Seattle that aims to help locals move with the help of rent-able plastic boxes. See the press release below!
 More...

Every now and then you run across a situation where instinct tells you to zig when you really ought to zag.

For saving electricity and keeping a few more dollars in your bank account, THIS SPACE is about to bend your mind around the idea of using electricity to save it.

This week’s ONE THING you can do to conserve energy is to try online billing for your utility bills and any other payments you need to make. The switch will increase your time on the computer, which would seem to increase your energy consumption, but this is a situation where one step back can lead to two or three steps forward.

Here’s why. More...

Seattle’s summertime fun melted under record heat this week, forcing many who are unaccustomed to temperatures in the upper 90s, let alone an all-time-high 103 degrees, to seek relief.

The first thought is typically to seek air conditioning. My father and my mother in-law both called to see if I needed one after they saw national news reports about the Seattle heat wave.

While thankful for their concern, I politely declined. Part of that decision was recognizing that Seattle gets about two weeks of hot weather each year. I can survive two weeks of heat. The other part was understanding how to help keep the house cool without relying on air conditioning, so I could keep my electricity use and bills lower.

And thanks to THIS SPACE, I’m here to share those tips with you.

Portable room air conditioners – the little boxes that look like R2D2 from Star Wars – generally use between 900 and 1,400 watts.  That means they cost about 8 cents an hour to run at the lowest-in-the-country rates offered by my employer, Seattle City Light.  Use them for 12 hours a day for a month and that will add up to about $34 per month. Central air conditioning uses much more electricity.  A unit that uses 3,500 watts will cost about $100 per month at 12 hours per day.

If you can keep the house cool enough to get by with a window fan, you can significantly reduce your costs. A window fan costs about $1.40 a month to run for the same amount of time.

How then, do you beat the heat without the A/C?

For starters, try to avoid building a box of hot air inside your house. Eat cool meals like sandwiches, salads and fruit instead of cooking with the stove. If you really want a hot meal, grill outside. And wait until evening to run the washing machine, dryer or dishwasher.

Next, use shading and ventilation.

Keep interior shades closed on the windows with direct sunlight. Exterior shades offer even more relief. I installed one on the west side of my house to cover the sliding glass door and have another for the picture window.

Open windows and doors to create cross ventilation then turn on a fan or two. You don’t want to spin hot air around inside your home. You want to move it outside and replace it with cooler air, even if cooler means 80 degrees.

Another idea is to take advantage of the insulation provided by the ground. If you’ve got a basement like I do, you learn fast that it’s typically the coolest room in the house during the summer. Spend more time there when it’s hot outside.

If you’ve got air conditioning, don’t sweat it. I understand the comfort of a climate controlled room and excessive temperatures can create health problems, including heat stress and heat exhaustion.

But even if you turn to air conditioning for some extra relief, these tips will help you conserve electricity because your A/C unit won’t have to work as hard to bring the temperature down.

So this week’s ONE THING you can do to conserve electricity and keep a little more money in your bank account is to try to keep cool without the air conditioning, or at least use the A/C a little less.

 More...

A new tool is about to become available online for Seattle area residents that will help us track and reduce our energy usage.

The free application is called Hohm – a mashup of the words home and ohm, which is a measurement of electrical resistance.

The application was built by a little software company on the east side called Microsoft. OK, they’re not little anymore, but they are mostly local. The power for this tool comes from its ability to link up with energy use data from local utilities and crunch it into suggestions for saving energy and money, which is what THIS SPACE is all about.

Seattle City Light (which provides this author’s paycheck) and Puget Sound Energy are among the first four utilities in the country to partner with Microsoft to provide this service to their customers.

When a person creates a Hohm account he or she can follow a link to connect the tool to their energy provider by answering three security questions. The utility will then transmit usage data to Microsoft for display and analysis by Hohm. A user also can create a profile of their home with information such as the type of heating and appliances that are in use.

Hohm shows electricity and natural gas usage over time along with temperature comparisons. It makes comparisons against similar homes in the surrounding area, including what your most energy-efficient neighbors are doing to keep their bills low.

Then comes the really cool part.

Using the energy data, the home profile information and other factors, Hohm will generate personalized recommendations for cutting your energy consumption along with an estimate of how much money you could save by making that change. The recommendations include links to rebates and other incentive programs from your local utility.

The data crunching to generate those recommendations is based, in part, on complex algorithms and data developed by Lawrence Berkeley Labs and the Department of Energy.

One person might find out how much she could save by switching her light bulbs to compact fluorescents. Another might learn how much that spare fridge in the basement is costing him and how he can score a $30 rebate for recycling it.

While those energy-saving tips might sound familiar, linking them to the projected savings for a particular person’s home could be enough of an extra nudge to take a person from interested observer to actively making energy efficiency improvements.

So this week’s ONE THING that you can do to cut down your energy consumption and keep a few more dollars in your bank account is to check out Hohm. Its Beta version release is expected any day.

You can get more information at www.microsoft-hohm.com or www.seattle.gov/light/conserve/hohm. At the Hohm site you can also sign up for a notice from Microsoft when they release the Beta.

I look forward to hearing from any readers that would like to share their experiences with the new tool. More...