Green Products (or lack of) at the Home & Garden Show

I was initially disappointed by the absence of a Solar Power company at the Home & Garden show that ran this past week at the LEED certified David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, however, there were some green products and service providers such as a Geo-Thermal heating company that was marketing its product to homebuilders, and there was a nice setup by the Duquesne Light Company, one of the utilities in this area, who's booth focused on energy efficiency with a demonstration of the benefits of switching from incandescent light bulbs to compact fluorescents.

The product they used to show the difference in the amount of watts used by the two different sets of bulbs is one I've been meaning to purchase for some time, the Kill-a-Watt Electricity Usage Monitor. This neat little product allows you to monitor how much electricity your cell phone and laptop adapters use even when they are not plugged into their respective devices(known as Phantom Loads).

I was annoyed at the AC and Heating salesman who laughed when I told him Solar Power was the next big thing in PA. He said "you'll never see a payback on solar." I said "what if the state offered rebates of 50% on solar installations?" After our little debate and my wife rolling her eyes at me, he finally admitted that he hadn't done any real research on solar power. Schultz 1 - ignorant know-it-all sales guy 0. I told him of the Governor's solar rebate plan and he did hear about it, which means his company is going to miss out on a huge business opportunity if they ignore solar water heating, which would be a nice complement to their current business.