Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
A solar power company opened its first full-scale factory in Central Texas Friday, creating 160 green-collar jobs as thousands of jobs are being cut across the country.
HelioVolt held a ribbon cutting ceremony Friday morning on Stassney Lane near Highway 71 in Southeast Austin at its 122,400-square-foot facility.
HelioVolt, which plans to manufacture high-performance thin film solar energy products, expects to have 300 employees by the end of 2009.
Austin leaders say the new factory boosts the area's image as a rising center for alternative energy. Austin Mayor Pro-Tem Brewster McCracken says HelioVolt is giving the area a small foothold in solar energy manufacturing.
"All the major companies in America -- like Google, GE and Microsoft -- agree the future is locally produced solar that gets homeowners to be paid for the power that gets put on their roofs so we can have good jobs good and cheap electricity. We really can create a great future and this is a moment we're taking a leadership role in Austin," he said.
The HelioVolt factory is located across from a planned 140-acre Texas clean energy park. The developer plans to build roughly nine buildings on the site for alternative-energy companies.
HelioVolt was founded in 2001 to find ways to apply solar technology to conventional construction materials. HelioVolt has said it plans to start selling its solar material early next year.
