Energy Star Tax Free Holiday

This past weekend the State of Georgia had a little publicized tax free holiday on Energy Star and Water Sense products under $1500. This could include appliances, windows, light bulbs, faucets, etc. In the press release they included thermostats as well. I got pretty excited about that because I've been wanting to upgrade my thermostat for a while. So I went over to the web to check to see if the thermostat I've been looking at is in fact Energy Star rated.

Well, it turns out that the label wasn't there. So I checked some others, no label. So I browsed over to the Energy Star home page and searched for thermostats. It turns out that thermostats haven't been on the Energy Star program since 2009. I forwarded the information to the Georgia Environmental Finance Association. They are the ones who administer the environmental programs. They informed me that it was the legislature that ruled the thermostats part of the holiday and they were only passing along the information, which was true. However, they did issue the press release without vetting the information first.

I wasn't able to save any money on the thermostat, but I did buy some bulbs with the Energy Star label on Saturday and they were indeed tax free.