Whispergen

Recently I visited Christchurch NZ where, among other things, they build the WhisperGen brand of sterling engines. These engines are used stand-alone in boats and as part of a waste heat recapture system in home's water and air heaters. In the lab they had a 3 kW version just larger than my head.
The guy there shared my view that Sterling engines had a promising future as a clean energy alternative. He also believes that a 1 kW engine should be possible for less than $1000 (btw this breaks the $1/W limit that marks how much it costs coal plants to produce electricity. Idea is, if you can create distributed power for LESS than the coal companies PRODUCE it for you can put them out of business. PV's are typically $10-15/W installed into the grid, but this includes the DC/AC inverter (cheap ones at $1500); sterlings don't need an inverter (but have different frequencies, $500 to grid)). But he believes such commercialization is still at least a decade away.
I've been investigating the possibility of 'flipping green houses'. That is, buying a house cheap, putting in efficiency stuff--like PV's, greywater capture, solar water heating, heat pump & computerized thermostat/power control--then reselling it for a premium.
The key is that people perceive the improvements as being greater in value than their real cost. In 1998 the statistic was that people will pay $20 in mortgage for every $1 saved in energy costs per year, this seems to be higher in CA OR and AZ.
With a 30% federal and 25% state tax kickback on green home improvements and an exemption for such improvements in a property tax assessment the picture grows even rosier. Essentially an agent could spend $5,000 improving a home and have that money matched by the government. Therefore the agent spends $5,000 on improvements worth $10,000 and valued, to homebuyers on the west coast, at $10,000-$25,000. The homebuyer gets ~$1000 a year savings on utility costs while adding property value exempt from tax to the tune of ~$150/yr and repays his investment over the lifetime of the mortgage. The agent nets ~$10,000 for a very brief and construction-free improvement.
Or so the idea goes.
My hope is, return to the country and over the next few years position myself for a few years of increased government support from a democratic pres. What if the kickbacks go up?