Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Discover how fun it is to inspire change!

In honor of Earth Day, we have introduced a new challenge to encourage awareness and change!


Share the news, inspire others and join the wave.

Earn community points and bragging rights by joining, sharing and even qualify for prize money!

Join our “Come Discover” Challenge to be one of the trail-blazers for this innovative, eco-friendly community by earning community points and competing for cash prizes.

How it works:
DiscoverPerfectEnergy.com is awarding community points to each member for various activities on the site. Examples include referring a friend, posting a project, etc. You even get 10 community points just for signing up.

So Join today and begin earning your community points. Do something good for the environment while having fun, and you could win!

Sunday, April 20, 2008

Ideas can be a Dime a Dozen...

To have a great idea, or a 'light-bulb moment' is one thing, but then to actually follow through and guide it to fruition is definitely another thing! The initial frustrating experience in investigating windmills that triggered the idea for this whole adventure then led to 6 long and intense months of nailing out the details and creating the actual website (not to mention a crash course in solar, geothermal, wind power and energy efficiency strategies)! We wanted to make the website so straight-forward and simple to use that even someone with a glimmer of curiosity or a basic desire to take control of their energy bill could benefit and even put some money back into their pockets.

As we worked over the past 6 months, DiscoverPerfectEnergy.com has evolved into a renewable energy and eco-friendly community, but the cornerstone is still the matching feature and service. The Discover Matching system has been built in a way that allows interested or curious members to submit a detailed project or even request a simple consultation to answer some basic questions. The process is simple and flows like this:

  1. A Discover Member wants to 'chat with an expert', request a consultation or find professionals for a specific project .
  2. The member completes the simple request form located in their back office and the request then enters the dynamic matching system.
  3. The member then begins to receive replies from professionals matching their request in their 'Live Reports Center' located in their back office (each post may receive responses from up to a maximum of 10 professionals).
  4. When a reply is received from a professional in the "Live Report", the member then has the opportunity to view the professional's Marketing Suite (which contains their company overview and details) and then can either request more information from that professional via the matching system or decline further contact.

Our focus is to make the investigation and search process as stream-lined as possible in order to encourage successful communication without all of the headache of searching through phonebooks and search engines - bouncing from contractor to contractor while becoming increasingly confused and frustrated (we have tried it and do not recommend it)!

As we dedicated countless hours developing the matching system, software and site, it only made sense that we also integrate a learning center and other resources to help would-be-consumers. It has been those endeavors that have been the biggest learning curve for me personally, as I immersed myself in an unlimited stream of education to try and understand. I felt that the more I could learn and understand, the more I could pass on the knowledge, tricks and strategies that I had learned in order to help others. As I continue to blog our experiences and journey I will cover the renewable and energy efficient world strategy by strategy, and share the insider tips and tricks that hopefully may help you in your journey towards a more eco-friendly and affordable lifestyle.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

In the beginning...

Beginning the discovery actually began a long time ago when I first met and married my husband. I came from a background that gave very little (if any!) thought to renewable energy or eco-friendly living and it was actually my husbands enthusiasm and intense love for renewable energy (specifically wind power) that finally opened my eyes to the possibilities. So no matter where you fall on the ‘green spectrum’ (from “what is green?” to “I’m as green as they come!”) I can understand the thoughts and feelings that exist there!

It was while Dwight and I were investigating into a potential windmill for my father-in-law last year, that we discovered the existence of a huge gap, which made it all too often frustrating and difficult to do the right thing. It seemed as though it were every man (or lady) for himself, and that it was really hard to narrow down which brand, style and model were actually the best ones for a specific project, and it was even harder to locate the proper professionals to help! It was from that experience that the idea of DiscoverPerfectEnergy was born with the purpose of helping would-be-consumers (or even intrigued onlookers) by centralizing and stream-lining their search efforts. Each project or requested consultation would be matched with qualified and suitable professionals who are compatible with the request. We truly felt that the easier we made it to ‘Go Green’, the more people would be willing to do the right thing – or at least look into it! Today, our goal and vision for DiscoverPerfectEnergy.com is to narrow the gap between everyday people and ‘green living.’