If you have saved your lolly reading this page - please consider how you can help others?

Look through our Forums - find one that interests you - share your experience with our readers by Joining our community and posting a comment. Check out our page on Smart ways to Save Electricity - is there more you could do - something you could share with us or a friend - we do NOT want your cash - we DO ask for your attention!

Plans that offer instructions on how to build a solar panel, a wind generator, or power factor correction units are a scam. Much as we know IOU's are imperfect in how they supply us energy, please do not be deceived by foolish allegations of conspiracy.

For good ideas on how to install a DIY solar energy system, do read the articles in our Solar Energy Forum, written by a Licensed Solar contractor with a NABCEP certification. The author has 24 years experience in installing solar energy systems, and has collaborated with us to provide readers an informed safe place to begin their research.

The Power4Home on-line presentation includes "As seen on" Fox News and other reputable media sites. On further investigation (August 8th) we have found no content on the Fox News web site relating to this claim. It appears that Fox News is serving adverts for Power4Home on it's pages. To Fox News; this is not helpful! We have contacted Fox News to advise them of the misuse of their brand.

In keeping with the tactic of appearing to be endorsed by Fox News - From Chris at MapaWatt:  "The narrator tries to rely on the Beck tactics of over dramatization, blaming the government and greedy corporations, trying to appeal to the audience’s emotions while playing loose with the facts, etc. ...

We note that there is an identical scam called Power4Patriots just out. It is being advertised on the Fox news site and others using a similar banner and the same claim. We suggest that the information published on the Internet debunking this product has forced a name change.

You cannot build your own solar cells anymore than you can make your own plasma TV. You can purchase the parts, but the silicon solar cells are most of the cost of the panel. You can wire up your own cells and mount them in a frame, but there is no way you are going to get anything for $150 that will be of much use. You would be lucky to put together a 10W system that could power a compact florescent bulb for about 6 hours a day. This is no power sucking gadget at all!

If by some chance, the plans were for a real DIY solar panel, or DIY wind generator there is still no possible way to build a solar panel from components at a reasonable cost. It would like trying to build a car from spare parts.

These scams offering near free energy have hijacked the social media, Internet and search engines. The need for affiliate marketing has duped many publishers into allowing false positive commentary on these "near fraud" practices. Added to this, the perpetrators have engaged in a systematic program to create new web content, targeted at search terms looking for reviews, containing bogus rebuttals and further false energy saving claims.

We encourage readers to become selective in the energy sites they frequent, to know that search results can be misleading, and to only consider reviews from trusted energy saving publishers like Open4Energy or MapAWatt.

We did see that TreeHugger was named as a reference for these plans. This is not true, and they are having a challenging time posting denials on their forums!

If you are seeing this page, do take a look at this article titled Power Factor: Dissipating the Myths published by David Stonier-Gibson of SPLat Controls, or our overview on Power Factor to protect yourself from the many power factor correction scams doing the rounds!

You may have heard that Amazon started to collect Internet sales tax in California. Do remember that Internet sales tax funds many local services, and the web sites that collect it correctly help you!

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