JonStarbuck.co.uk

earth4energy.com and homemadeenergy.org are the owners of the latest adverts on Facebook to piss me off; to argue if it is a scam or not is splinting hairs, what they claim to be able to teach you is grossly exaggerated and extraordinarily disingenuous nonsense, it is a con and a definite waste of money.

On their very formulaic and scam-like website they claim to be selling you a DVD (it is actually a download) with everything you need to know to make and set up your own home renewable energy system, and all for a fraction of the price of a professional system. There is nothing new about these web pages, they have been selling appalling e-books for years.

This claim is probably true in so far as you could make a very inefficient, unreliable system which will produce depressingly small amounts of energy for not much money. However if you seriously want ot make a positive impact on your electricity bill or on the environment then you are going to have to spend a lot more money that they suggest.

They say you can make your own wind turbine (presumably from old car parts and stuff) and indeed you can… however you will be lucky if you can trickle charge and old car battery with it and even luckier if it does not kill someone the very first time the wind gets up.

They also suggest you can make a PV (solar electric) panel from parts from your average hardware store, this is complete bullshit.

They are charging $50 for nonsense, don’t waste your money. All the information on saving power, reducing consumption, reducing your carbon emissions and so on is all available for free on the Internet. In addition to that the answer any renewable energy question you may have is also available for free, you can start by asking me.