The Home Energy Source by Ken Sheinkopf Ken Sheinkopf is a communications specialist with the American Solar Energy Society.. The “Home Energy Source” weekly column is syndicated nationally to several hundred newspapers around the United States.  His column also appears in each issue of SOLAR TODAY magazine. Send your energy questions to askken@ases.org.

About the Home Energy Source

To help homeowners and renters get the information they need to save energy on their utility bills and improve indoor comfort, we’ve created this consumer information page.

On the one hand, it can be difficult to find unbiased, objective information on renewable energy and energy efficiency because so many of the companies in the field are fairly small and very specialized.  And on the other hand, there are quite a few research institutes, universities and non-profit organizations involved in energy research, policy and education, and searching for just the right information to answer your question can be very time-consuming.  Start with the words “solar energy” in a Google search and you’ll find 19 million listings!  Where can you go to get your questions answered without having to look all over the place?

To meet this need, ASES has asked long-time energy information specialist and educator Ken Sheinkopf to work with us on answering consumer questions and providing information on current technologies, building strategies, products and ideas for helping you reduce your energy use and costs.  Ken has been working in the renewable energy field since 1983, and for the past 19 years has written a nationally syndicated weekly newspaper column that has helped literally hundreds of thousands of readers around the United States.  He’s now working with ASES as a communications specialist and helping us with our efforts to promote renewable energy use and energy efficiency in buildings, and we’ll be reprinting his weekly columns on these pages.

If you have a question about energy use, send it to askken@ases.org.  While personal replies aren’t always possible, he’ll try to answer as many questions in these columns as possible.  He also is writing an ongoing column in Solar Today magazine to provide even more information, so watch for those as well.

It’s our hope that ASES becomes the source of the information we all need to make our homes as comfortable and affordable to maintain as possible – something that will save all of us money and help us do our part to protect our environment.  These columns are one of the steps we’re taking to helping you solve your energy problems.

Even after all those years in the field, Ken concedes that he’s “not an expert.”  He adds quickly, though, that he knows the experts, and he’ll research the questions he gets to provide the information the public needs to have.

Come back and visit these pages often and find out ways that renewable energy and energy efficiency can become even more a part of your life!