Coming Soon to Southern California: Rolling Blackouts

Every summer has its own story. For residents of Southern California, this summer’s story is going to include a chapter about rolling blackouts. The L.A. Times wrote the prequel earlier this month. To summarize, the natural gas leak this winter at the Aliso Canyon Underground Storage Facility has left Southern California short on natural gas, which means that, come summer, the region’s utilities could be unable to generate enough electricity to meet demand. To prevent the entire grid from, power managers will institute rolling blackouts by cutting electricity to certain individual sectors of the grid at moments of peak demand.

To many, the possibility of a blackout seems quaint. Who doesn’t enjoy the occasional candlelit dinner? And what parent doesn’t wish their kids would watch less television? The reality of blackouts, however, is deadly serious. Electricity provides us with more than just entertainment. We depend on it to, among other things, refrigerate our food, power hospital equipment, and illuminate traffic signals. We hardly notice it when it’s there, but without electricity are lives are much less safe.

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Check Out this Great Video

As you may have heard, we are currently running a promotion offering rebates to customers who send us a video of themselves installing or operating their fan. You can read more about that promotion here, but you should also check out this video that was recently submitted by one of our customers—we’re really excited to share it because it was so well done.

And the video wasn’t the only thing well done. We often field questions as to how our fans’ dampers can be installed in a vertical orientation, or how to organize the installation in an attic with low clearance. This customer did a great job of both. Also, you’ll notice that this customer used many of our fans’ available accessories: the Openable, Washable Grille; an Acoustic Plenum; Wireless Remote; SafeSpeed Kit; and our Data Monitoring Package.

While we can’t identify them here, we’d like to thank our customer for sending us that great video. We’re looking forward to sharing more as the promotion continues.

Send Us Your Videos, Get a Rebate!

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Note:  2015 Rebate ended.

When we’re designing our whole house fans, we here at AirScape endeavor to make them as easy as possible to install. Over the years, this effort has led us to create damper boxes that fit easily on 16″ or 24″ on-center framing, “plug & play” controls that use  low-voltage CAT-5 wiring, and a new latching mechanism for attaching ductwork to our new 5.0e. Our goal is simple: we want do-it-yourselfers to feel confident in installing AirScape fans themselves.

We often hear back from customers once they’ve finished installing their fans. Customers with unique installations often want to share their experience, and many customers simply want to share their pride in their own installation and excitement about our fans. We loving hearing back and getting feedback (both good and bad) from our customers. We’d love our customers to share more—we’d even like to offer a rebate to those who do.

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Energy Rebate Search Tools

Okay, this isn’t an infomercial on how to get free money from the government, but there are many government entities and public utilities that still offer significant rebates for consumers and businesses that invest in energy efficiency projects, appliances, and equipment.

After all, who doesn’t like to get money back right?

There are a couple websites where you can go to research available rebates that may help you recover some of your project costs..

The Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency or DSIRE is a comprehensive source of information on state, federal, local, and utility incentives and policies that support renewable energy and energy efficiency. It was established in 1995 through funded from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy has a search tool that allows users to filter down through a database of rebates by state, economic sector, type of product/project and the provider of the rebate.

Hopefully these tools will help you save money on your energy related projects while lower your energy consumption and contributing toward a sustainable energy future.

Rebate: Boulder County, CO

We’ve found a new rebate available for the good people in Boulder County, CO. The EnergySmart program is now offering up to $500 for a Whole House Fan installation. $500! So what’s the catch? The rebate is for homes with an existing AC system and the installation must be completed by a contractor in the EnergySmart program. Check out the program details here.

If you’re not in  Boulder County, CO many other municipalities and utilities offer WHF rebates. Take a look at our blog covering the full list of rebates we have found so far:

                                            https://blog.airscapefans.com/archives/new-whf-rebates

Aloha… Whole House Fan & Solar Attic Fan Rebates from Hawaii Energy!

We at AirScape are happy to learn of the first whole house fan rebate available in Hawaii! (link) Offered to Hawaii Energy customers, the rebate offers customers $75 back on a whole house fan purchase and $25 back on a solar attic fan purchase. It’s great timing for this type of incentive, because summer is approaching and these efficient natural cooling solutions can help reduce your need for A/C – thus saving you money and sparing the environment.

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!