West Coast Green Innovations

**UPDATE Oct 14, 2009: This article has been submitted to Re-Nest for their "Green Architect" blog competition. Please check it out here

I'm back from the West Coast Green conference held in San Francisco this weekend and I'm so excited to share with you some of the great innovations out there. The top three that really caught my eye are:

Bright Spark by Econetix  A Do-It-Yourself Kit which helps you monitor your home's power, HVAC and electrical consumption. It's all done via WiFi- that means absolutely no wiring. Some of the cool features are a touchscreen thermostat, a "Sleep Mode" to put your home to sleep at the touch of a button and it can all be controlled from your computer or iPhone! And I have to say, these guys were young, energetic, intelligent and really excited to be offering such innovation. Definitely the most enthusiastic bunch on the showroom floor.

Perfect Flush by Brondell  The beauty of this product is in it's simplicity. The system easily installs in your existing toilet leaving you with a dual-flush button on top of the tank. Installing one of these is more sustainable than buying a new energy efficient toilet, performs just as well and can save you up to $100 a year.

Solar Clover by Armageddon Energy  All right, i have to admit that I was drawn by the name, but you should see these things, they're really designed well. Basically, a single solar "clover" consists of a triangular frame, a micro-inverter and three lightweight silicon hexagonal solar panels. These solar electric systems are roof-top ready out of the box which will save you time and money on installation. You'll have to wait though, the solar clover is yet-to-be-released but plans are to start prefabbing and shipping commercial volumes in less than a year.

In addition to these amazing products, I also met a lot of great people at West Coast Green. There is definitely a strong workforce out there trying to develop and push green to the top of our agenda both environmentally and economically. I'll have more about that in my next blog and will leave you with this:

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay