Green appliance performs well in "popcorn test"

As we said yesterday, home inspector and New Homes columnist Tom Corbett speaks highly of energy-efficient appliances. When clients ask Corbett how the green appliances stack up against the dinosaurs they replaced, he tells them about the “popcorn test.”

“When my wife and I remodeled our kitchen, we replaced our 1,100-watt microwave with a 500-watt model,” Corbett says. “The new microwave cooks popcorn slightly faster than the old model did and consumes about half the amount of energy.”

There you have it.