The Energy Show

Every week Barry hosts The Energy Show, a 30 minute informative talk show that covers a broad variety of energy related topics spanning technology, economics, policy, and politics that are shaping the future of how we generate and consume electricity, along with practical money-saving tips on ways to reduce your home and business energy consumption.

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Episodes

Inside Scoop About Heat Pumps for Your House

Inside Scoop About Heat Pump HVAC Systems If you can answer these three basic questions, then don’t bother listening to this podcast. The questions are tricky, so if you're the least bit uncertain I suggest you listen to this week's riveting Energy Show episode. How can a heat pump be 300% efficient? Are gas furnaces still the most popular new heating system? Can you get an $8,000 IRA rebate and $2,000 Federal Tax Credit for a heat pump installation in 2023? First, we’ll delve into the way a hea...

Nov 01, 2023•27 min

Electrical Upgrades for Home Electrification

There is one thing for certain as you electrify your house. You’ll need more electricity. Duh! But getting more electricity from the street to your house is not easy. Bizarrely, it often takes longer to do these electrical upgrades than it does to install your new all electric appliances. When — not if -- your old gas hot water heater dies, you don’t want to wait months for a new 240 volt circuit for that new super-efficient electric heat pump water heater. Nor do you want to delay the installat...

Oct 26, 2023•9 min

IRA Incentives What's Really Available Today?

The Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, became law in August 2022. It's packed with incentives across the entire value chain, including domestic manufacturing, energy-efficient products, and clean saving energy. But these fantastic incentives do not yet match the realities of what you can get today for your electrification project. The table below shows the most significant IRA electrification incentives that are available to homeowners in 2023, as well as pending IRA incentives in 2024. Many utili...

Oct 06, 2023•18 min

How To Select The Best Home Battery

Batteries were everywhere at September’s RE+ Conference in Vegas. I counted over 100 different battery company and system vendors. It was more of a battery and solar tracker show than a solar show — demonstrating the rapid evolution of these clean energy technologies. But out of a hundred batteries on the show floor, there are only half a dozen that I would recommend to homeowners. Home battery systems should provide reliable backup power during a blackout, and also generate utility bill savings...

Sep 27, 2023•20 min

54% of New Electricity Is From Solar - You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet

Proving the solar skeptics wrong, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) now expects that utilities will add 54.5 Gigawatts of solar generation capacity in 2023. And this capacity does not include 6.4 Gw of residential installations and 1.7 Gw of commercial installations expected in 2023. SIDEBAR: a Gigawatt is a billion watts of power. In 1955 the eminent Dr. Emmett Brown stated that the only power source capable of generating 1.21 Gigawatts is a bolt of lightning. Obviously things ha...

Sep 20, 2023•28 min

Solar and Storage Under New California Electric Rates

HEADLINE: Higher Electric Rates and More Blackouts Unfortunately, this is the new normal for most of the U.S. In other words: SNAFU This situation will not change. It’s a little-known fact that utilities use our money to influence politicians to maintain their monopoly. To the tune of $18m in California just in 2022. Government regulators are supposed to ensure that utilities provide inexpensive, reliable and safe power. However, this poorly regulated capitalism is not working. Just look at your...

Aug 22, 2023•7 min

Biggest Electrification Roadblock is Your Utility

Our society is moving rapidly towards electrification. Building electrification is good for the climate, good for our health, and good for our economy. We’ll all be using more electricity — it’s inevitable. Luckily, using all this extra electricity for our heating and our cars is inexpensive when you get it from rooftop solar and storage. But utilities have a monopoly on electricity distribution. They’re rubbing their greedy hands together like Montgomery Burns, safe in the knowledge that as lon...

Jul 05, 2023•17 min

DIY Home Electrification Measures

On this week’s show we’re talking about the first steps toward your home electrification project. What I call the Low Hanging Fruit. These are easy and cheap energy efficiency measures — most of which you can do yourself (DIY) or do not require any special contractors. Many people recommend starting with an energy audit of your home. However, unless you're working with a local energy auditor that knows your local conditions and incentives down to the city level, the standard energy audit recomme...

Jun 06, 2023•7 min

Heat Pump Systems with Dennis Stinson of Fujitsu

More heat pumps were sold in 2022 than gas furnaces. And that was before the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) kicked in, which provides an $8,000 rebate for most heat pump installations — on top of a $2,000 federal tax credit and city/county incentives that can exceed $3,000. Heat pumps are cleaner, more efficient and less expensive than most conventional gas furnaces and air conditioners. But the variety in heat pump system configurations, efficiency, and costs is enough to make even a geeky engin...

May 23, 2023•34 min

Getting Started with Home Electrification

How would you like to reduce your home energy costs, improve your health and comfort, and at the same time do your part to improve the environment? If your answer is “yes,” then listen to this week’s Energy Show episode. If your answer is “no,” then maybe you don’t need your share of the $10,000-$40,000 incentives that are available for your home. The concept of Home Electrification is simple: you replace gas appliances with electric appliances — either all at once, or as the old gas appliances ...

May 23, 2023•5 min

Lessons Learned Installing Battery Storage Systems

Batteries are becoming an essential part of home solar systems. With solar-connected batteries, homeowners can avoid paying peak utility electricity charges. Batteries can provide backup power during blackouts. And if you’re in California, after net metering ends in April 2023, you will need batteries to avoid peak electric rates. In the old days, automobile-style lead acid batteries were used for backup power and time-shifting energy use. I still have holes in my old blue jeans where battery ac...

Feb 14, 2023•1 hr 43 min

What's an Atmospheric River.. and Why Should I Care

According to Wikipedia -- which has supplanted the Oxford English Dictionary and Encyclopedia Brittanica as the world’s definitive source of information -- an Atmospheric River consists of narrow bands of enhanced water vapor winds that form over the oceans. In plain English, Atmospheric Rivers are windy rainstorms that dump a huge amount of water in a relatively short time. They account for about 50% of annual precipitation – so these storms are critical to reducing California’s current drought...

Jan 05, 2023•13 min