Home Made Power Plant is a Scam

This is virtually a clone of the Earth4Energy scam, so I will just cover their marketing claims here. For more a general review, see our earth4energy review here.

The web site homemadepowerplant dot org claims their book will show you how to:

• Reduce your electricity costs by 80% or even eliminate them entirely
• Get your power company to pay you for the surplus electricity you generate
• build your own windmill and solar panel for under $200

These statements together would lead many people to believe they are related in some fashion. For example, your electricity costs are reduced by 80% because of the power you generate, or the $200 system might generate power that can be sold back to the utility company. Taken individually, the statements are not lies, but collectively, they are grossly misleading.

Here they are again, with caveats added (mine):

• Reduce your electricity costs by 80% or even eliminate them entirely - by drastically reducing or eliminating your energy usage, turning off the central heat, keeping the lights off unless absolutely necessary, using LED lighting, taking short showers, etc.
• Get your power company to pay you for the surplus electricity you generate -- after spending at least $5,000 on an UL approved grid inter tie system, installed by a licensed electrician, and approved by your utility company. $20,000 is a more reasonable budget.
• Build your own windmill and solar panel for under $200 -- using surplus parts from e-bay and local scavenging. The power you generate will be small and will not significantly reduce your electric bill nor will it pay for itself.

They have a variety of useless "video proofs" hosted on YouTube -- one of which was removed when I looked because of copyright infringement. See image below.

Now for some outright lies. "Basically my book will teach you how to convert the limitless power of the wind and sun into electrical energy and to build your own energy devices at home with less than $200. That's very cheap considering that you'll recover the money you've invested within the first month". The only possible legal argument here is that the money invested is the price of the e-book, and that you saved an equivalent amount by turning down the heat. If you spent $200 and recovered it in a month, you would have to generate at least $200 worth of power, which at current North American rates is about 2000kWh. That is an enormous amount of energy and there is absolutely no way such a system could be put together for $200.

"You can earn a "fat" check every month from the power company for the extra electricity you product". This is only true if you also spend an even fatter check to install an approved grid-intertie system. Expect a 20 year pay back.

It's extremely easy and cheap to build your own solar and wind generators (under $200 investment and it will last a lifetime). Lies! People with really good shop skills (wood/metal/fabrication) might find it straight forward -- but not the average home owner. The instructions are too vague, homeowners do not have the tools or equipment to do it properly. The lifetime phrase implies a human lifetime -- but they would have to argue the lifetime of the device (perhaps a year for the home made wind generator). You can home build a generator that will last a human lifetime with annual maintenance, but it is more like a $3000. See the book Home Brew Windpower for a real how-to manual. In the related earth4energy scam, the wind generator instructions stated "a tail length of between 3' and 4' works the best. Simply cut out a tail shape from the metal and attach it to the back of the assembly." Is that vague enough?

"why you should always build a wind generator (it only takes few hours and can be build almost for free) instead of buying it." -- A toy generator can be built cheaply, but it will not be very useful.

There are some bonus materials that are probably useless -- like the Biodiesel book. Run your diesel vehicle for 48 cents a gallon is silly. The price depends on what you have to pay for used cooking oils, and these vary based on local demand. See our reference section (look for Free Fatty Acid to Ester Conversion) for proper instructions.

Bottom line: Don't support these scammers. If you want to learn more about self sufficiency and sustainable living, read the earth4energy analysis (there are lots of good links in it), browse this web site and check out the links our reference section. All the links point to high quality material that we have reviewed and in no way profit from.

** fun stuff **

Ever wonder about those pop-up live chat boxes that you get when you try to leave a page? Well they aren't human at all. They are using a service called MaxiExit.

 

So what happens if you engage the robot? Well lets see ...

Maybe the robot is sales oriented. Let's try to make a large purchase ...

Well so much for the service maxiexit.com . Their artificial intelligence is not.

As for the talking heads, it is a feed from LiveFaceOnWeb dot com.

To report this scam, use the FTC consumer complaint assistant.