Grid-smart appliances are the future in sustainable design and efficiency. They are able to monitor and measure your electrical use in an effort to save on costs and manage the stress on the local energy grid. This will work well if your house is on the grid exclusively or if you use solar panels to lower your use of community power.

The goal of grid-aware appliance use is to be carbon neutral with  zero net-energy growth. To get there this involves new technology for refrigerators and freezers that use natural refrigerants, such as hydrocarbons in place of hydroflurocarbons which are thought to have an affect on global warming.

When it comes to laundry, clothing will be washed and dried faster with grid-smart appliances. Flat screen televisions will use less energy than the old CRT sets and modern thermostats will be better at regulating room temperatures.

Some of the new grid-smart appliances can even be controlled on your smart phone or tablet. You can be notitifed when your home reaches a certain temperature or when the wash cycle is over and it’s time for your clothes to be dried.

Here at Trilogy Partners in Breckenridge we incorporate grid-aware appliances into our sustainable designs and construction philosophy. Feel free to visit our Facebook page for more on green building.

Image: engadget

If you’re wondering about how to judge whether a product is green, here’s five good tips from Residential Design & Build magazine’s John D. Wagner.

1. Improves indoor air quality.

2. Uses recycled/recyclable materials.

3. Reduces water consumption.

4. Is sustainably harvested.

5. Reduces fuel consumption (carbon footprint) during manufacture, delivery, installation and use.

As Wagner writes, it’s easy to separate what’s “green” from what’s “greenwashed” if you keep these 5 basic green principles in mind: “When you do this, you’ll find that green building really is a rather old-fashioned approach to building. It produces tight, well-vented, low-maintenance structures that don’t use lots of fuel to heat and cool themselves, and contain nontoxic products and materials that don’t permanently deplete their sources when harvested.”