Barrett Kilmer wrote a good piece for AQUA Magazine recently about the DSIRE ("desire") database, which is a great online resource for all things related to energy efficiency. (The article was posted on AQUA's website on Aug. 31.)

The DSIRE datablase (http://www.dsireusa.org/) can be used to find local utility incentives in several states for residential and commercial pool-related equipment, including variable-speed drives and other things that can be used to make pools more energy efficient. "Pool Equipment" isn't one of the highlighted items on their checklist -- yet -- but you can find incentives for efficient pool heaters, efficient pool pumps, and pool covers by following these steps:

 

1. Run a search using broad criteria – maybe just select “utility” as the implementing sector. 

2. At the top of the long list of incentives you’ll see a link “See All Summaries”. Clicking that will put all the incentive details for all the incentives on one massive scrollable page. 

3. Click CTRL+F to open the “Find” window in your browser. 

4. Type: “Pool” in the Find box and your browser will take you to all the instances of that word, and you’ll be able to find all the incentives for pool equipment.