Tax Credits!

With taxes due earlier this week, I started reading up on some of the new tax bills which Congress released as part of the economic stimulus package. I learned something pretty cool: You now get a 30% tax credit with no cap for the purchase and installation of a direct exchange geothermal heat pump system. Essentially, that means that the heat pump unit itself is now free with a typical installation. In fact, most customers will likely be receiving the equivalent of a free heat pump and, for smaller installations, free ground loop coils.

In addition to long-term energy savings, DX geothermal heat pumps are now more cost-effective than ever. Recovery on initial investment is now faster than ever before, and with energy cost spikes looming in the future, the time is now to install a DX system.


The Green Home

I was poking around the Internet, looking for people with stories to tell about their DX systems or other green technologies, when I stumbled upon this. What that is is a home datalogging and monitoring system which automatically generates and uploads temperatures and energy information to the Web for a number of uses. It allows HVAC contractors to see problems before they become problems, allows homeowners to watch energy savings and performance in realtime and with serious recall capabilities, and provides heat pump manufacturers with an incredibly useful tool to monitor their installations in a non intrusive manner.

The hardware is called the "Web Energy Logger" and is available from OurCoolHouse.com. Very inexpensive and very robust, I'm currently speaking to the rest of our engineering staff and looking to make this a customer option for factory installation on our GeoDirect systems. Here's a list of all the homes with the WEL currently enabled. Most of these systems are closed loop water-source, but the first link I provided is a 3-ton DX system.