It’s been a good three days in St. Paul, Minnesota, at the 2012 Energy Star Products Partner Meeting, even though I haven’t seen the sun since I left beautiful Colorado. It was nice to see some familiar E Source member faces and to meet some bright new people. As I pass the time in the airport, I want to share my final thoughts while they’re still fresh.
Today started fast with a fabulous breakout session by Chris Badger of the Vermont Energy Investment Corp. and Christopher Wold of the Collaborative Labeling & Appliance Standards Program (CLASP), on behalf of the Super Efficient Dryer Initiative (SEDI) (PDF). (Can you tell I just came from a conference sponsored by a U.S. federal government program?) The topic: heat pump clothes dryers. If this is a new technology to you, fret not; we’re currently working on a report covering this technology and it’ll be published soon. However, I can share that this technology saves a great deal more energy than traditional resistance dryers, but there are some significant barriers to seeing them in the U.S. market (an optimistic outlook is fall 2013).
The breakout session this morning brought together retailers, manufacturers, and utility folks to discuss the challenges presented by introducing a foreign technology into the U.S. market. I was blown away by how powerful that one-hour conversation was with all those stakeholders in the room. Hearing each group discuss the various barriers from their perspective was eye-opening for me. Again, I was reminded of just how difficult it is to put a successful product into the market, regardless of how much energy it can save a customer.
Read the full blog entry by Lee Hamilton, Senior Research Associate, E Source