Get them while they last, though, as the application states it is effective for purchases made from April 1st to June 1st, 2011. We hope for more rebates to roll out soon in Hawaii for all sorts of energy-saving and energy-producing technologies with the recent progress of SB 1520, which would have been left to die if it weren’t for a great showing of public support. Thanks to Hawaii Energy and the Blue Planet Foundation for their efforts to help secure a clean-energy future!

Plugging in the numbers: i = 0.08; n = 20; Savings per Year = $500, yields Present Value = $4909.

Wow! That means that if you paid up to $4,909 the return on investment would be 8%. (we don’t charge that much for the 4.4e…)

Saving Energy is a damned good investment. Who woulda thunk ?

Armstrong Builders has partnered with the DHHL (Department of Hawaiian Home Lands) to build affordable green homes in a state where affordable housing is virtually unheard of and utility rates are astronomical. The communities “Kumuhau” and “Lai Opua Village” both include AirScape Kohilo-e Whole House Fans (the Kohilo-e is a special limited edition model using the highly efficient ECM technology designed specifically for Armstrong Builders for use in their projects). Even with the high electrical rate, the fan only costs an average of 5.7 cents an hour on high speed and 1.4 cents an hour on low speed. Compare that to an extremely efficient 2 ton Air Conditioner, which is going to cost 68.5 cents an hour on average, and it’s easy to see why our whole house fans are so beneficial in Hawaii.

As Kaulana H.R. Park, director of DHHL and chairman of the Hawaiian Homes Commission (HHC) said, “Reducing living costs is one measure of a sustainable lifestyle and as native Hawaiians, living a sustainable life is what we strive for.”***

We’re glad we can be a part of this move towards greater sustainability in Hawaii.

*Kohilo is Hawaiian for “a gentle breeze”

**For average electrical rates by state, visit the Energy Administration Website.

***DHHL News Release.

Well, after a bit of thinking I realized that maybe, just maybe I have a metric, or at least an indicator for when our economy starts to grow.

It comes down to this.  When institutions and organizations return to increasing productivity, then we are on the road to increasing wealth. Why should this simple metric be more important than an economist who knows way more math than most of us? Well, I’m going to bring in some handy engineering tools:

• The Control Volume.  This is a great concept because it’s so simple and elegant. Draw an imaginary surface around whatever you are studying. Now, the increase in whatever you are measuring has to come from either greater input or less output. A corollary of this is “garbage in, garbage out”.
• Some basic calculus.  All you need to know is rate of change.
• BS detector. (based upon proprietary common sense algorithm)

Let’s go over some social institutions and I’ll grade them. The grade up/down is based on whether I (using my tools above) judge whether the institution is providing more benefit to society than the year before.

Education		‘Is our children learning?’ Sure, but the evidence says they are learning less, and it’s costing more money from kindergarten to univeristy.
Medical		Way out of control. We’re sicker, life expectancy is not rising, and it costs more every year.
Legal		Peleeese.We spend $865+ billion on our legal system. That’s a lot of money.  And even if that is good value, is it getting better for us, the public?
Military		A necessary cost, but again, how much safety did we buy this year for $700,000,000,000. And next year will be more safety for less money?
Electronics		A rare winner. Way better each year for way less money. Only problem is we let the kids have phones, computers, games, and now they think they’re adults.
Financial		Apparently they used to do something. (like your appendix). Currently the control volume concept and my BS detector determines that the financial industry takes 7% of U.S. GDP and gives us what? (hint: bonuses)  I have sympathy for these guys. How can you improve when you gamble invest this amount of money each year?
Manufacturing		Whatever is left in this country generally provides good wages, and if they are still in business, have been outperforming themselves year after year. Of course, this is the one group that we chose to outsource – damned producers!
Science		A winner. Science pays off. Scientists work cheap and they find things that we can make money from. Thankfully we are busy cutting off funding.
Religion		This would be hard to measure. So I’ll say that their effect on society is stable.
Transportation		Airplanes, car travel … definitely not improving.  Apparently it’s too expensive to invest in fast trains. Nope.  This sector is not  increasing in productivity. Scratch that. Transportation is so bad it couldn’t get worse, unless of course we ran out of oil….
Public Safety		Of course it got better. We have 1% of our population in jail. That costs a lot of money, and the prison population is getting older.Guess what, they need more medical care too!
Energy		Still on the oil program. Here’s the plan!. Wait until they raise oil prices, then we panic.

So, there’s the theory. When these groups/industries/institutions  stop feeding and start producing, then we create wealth again. And in case there are any misconceptions, here is what wealth really means to us:

• Jobs
• Clean environment
• Public Safety
• Education
• Retirement
• and last… Stuff.

The Kohilo Whole House Fan is designed to be more financially available (yes, that is a genteel word for cheaper) than our flagship units. How did we do this ? We replaced the motorized damper unit and electronics board with a backdraft damper.

A backdraft damper is pushed open with airflow and falls back (by gravity) when the fan is off. This provides a basic seal (nothing like our motorized dampers), but has no insulation.   In severe climates the Kohilo grille will have to be manually insulated at the end of the season.  We do provide an upgrade path for customers so that they can upgrade to the full AirScape functionality and convenience.

Even though railroads are much more energy efficient and deliver lower transportation costs without federal subsidies, why are trucks the preferred mode of transportation?

I think that the answer lies in the fact that the highway truck combination is effectively open source.  The term open source is commonly used in the software world, but it applies here as well.

The platform is a highway, which just about anybody can use, provided they obey rules for weight, size, and safety of their modules (trucks in this case). This gives a tremendous amount of freedom to truckers and shippers to control their own destiny.  Ask anybody who has used the railroads for shipping and you will see that a rigid central planning department controls how and when your freight arrives.

How about this for an idea. Let’s make the railroads into a regulated monopoly. (It works for electricity, water, and gas BTW). The railroad makes its income by maintaining the infrastructure.

What a wonderfully simple way to describe much of our world.  I am reminded of this whenever I see people working on the “energy” problem.  Software people clearly know, that if only we wired everything up and monitored our energy use, the rest of the problem would be trivial.  Economists clearly have the upper hand, because they can describe carbon trading as the sure fire method to reduce carbon output,  increase energy efficiency, and still have economic growth.  Photovoltaic manufacturers, electric car builders, and wind farm developers are among the many queuing up at the public feeding trough.

Nothing wrong with any of those solutions.  Just bear in mind the aphorism.

By the way, our hammer is a whole house fan.

Why didn’t we do the same thing for houses ?  OK, not the same thing, but how about this idea (in case we’re crazy enough to exend it):  Pay out the $8,000 directly to buyers of newly built homes.  For buyers of used houses, put the cash towards sealing, and insulating, and generally making the old house efficient.  Either way, contractors and their employees are working.

I will name this complicated economic concept “Have something left after the party’s over” , with the other very, very complicated concept (especially not  understood by bankers) “Spread the wealth”.