Unisolar Roofing [RE-wrenches]

[Michael Welch, Home Power]

hugh piggott wrote at 12:22 AM 03/18/2001 -0800:
   
>HP only present the good news and some of the news might be bad.  Paul Gipe had an experience where he had done some independent tests on small wind turbines, and wrote them up into an article for HP but some of the data was unacceptable to one manufacturer, so it was not printed.

When publishing product reviews, Home Power does not do negative reviews (we will, however, make suggestions privately to the manufacturer and re-review the equipment after a fix). That is different than saying we "only present the good news." Our articles sometimes have info about products that have not worked right or had warts.

We have published info that was "unacceptable" to manufacturers, even those that are our advertisers. But one thing Home Power does not like to do is become a forum for someone that has an axe to grind. We shouldn't trust their "independent" tests any more than we should trust a manufacturer's tests. Our industry is small and young and Home Power doesn't need to be publishing mud throwing. I believe that very philosophy is the basis for Richard's editorial policy to not publish negative product reviews.

Home Power staff would like to do more testing, including real-life module testing. But it is hard to find the time. We are just a bunch of hippies in the woods that spend almost all of our time publishing a magazine. It is a huge task that fills our days -- specially Richard's, who would otherwise love to do more nerd stuff like module testing.

I hope that there can be an independently funded laboratory to test modules and maybe even wind machines and then make the info public.

Disclaimer: None of this (except the HP policy about not publishing negative reviews) is the official position of Home Power, but is based on my own observations.
   
Michael Welch
   
------------------------
"Society is like a stew. If you don't keep it stirred up, you get a lot of scum on top."

			Edward Abbey
         
Michael Welch, michael.welch at homepower.com www.homepower.com
      Associate Editor, Home Power magazine
      Office Coordinator, Redwood Alliance
      (Not HP mag's #s) 707-822-7884 fax: 707-822-3481
      

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