Green Power Update

I place part of the blame for the slow/low adoption of the project on the confusing way it was presented. I was hard to tell if you were paying a premium for green power to the Electric Co., or whether you were making a donation to a public green power org. Also, how many Kw/hours should I buy - do people even know what this unit means? Regardless, now that I am finally getting into a new house, I’ll be signing up - so make that 446 customers.

Is this bonus to a profit-ensured-by- regulation corporation [MEC] the best way to get a bang for your buck for that committment?

MEC makes a buck…

Build your own power farm - nano wind generation…

Check out this site for a power utility that connect green promise to green reality and not just a marketing brochure.

No, you’re right, it’s not a bonus to MEC. They don’t need one anyway. Our gov’t. passed a ruling that MEC MUST make profit for their shareholders: the only sure thing in the stock market in the world, so, they don’t need a bonus. I’ll be happy to sign up, especially if it means getting weaned off ‘nuclear energy’… I can’t say for sure, but I think my lights have been glowing in the dark :(

Power costs are already to high. I don’t want to pay more for the same thing. If our government likes wind power they can spend some of our tax dollars and put the whole island on wind power.

Fortunately, the wholesale electricity market is opening up so the Island producers and retailers will (if not are) buying all over North America from any number of sources which will put the idea that we are dependant on one plant or one way of receiving out the window. One of the odder ideas in the open market is that we should be subsidized by the citizens of Brampton and Calgary to bring natural gas here to generate electricity. Just bring the electricity here. [Douglas Coupland’s new “Souvenier of Canada” at one point makes complaint about the Confederation Bridge as a brain busting mis-allocation of subsidization from an urban Canadian’s point of view. Get used to that point of view as cities continue to decay and wealth transfers from them continue without a basis in economic reality.]

I agree with Andrew - paying extra for something with distant and vague (although significant) benefit is not something that the free market is good at promoting. This is exactly the kind of situation in which it makes sense for the government (as an agent of the people) to make a descision for all. This has happened with the Waste Watch program. It’s great - if it was just up to me to voluntarily recycle at my own expence, I shamefully admit that I probably wouldn’t bother. However, if you asked me if we should make recycling madatory for all Islanders (including myself), I’d say ‘yes’ enthusiastically - and then I would be forced to participate.

…and Montana appears to fund you to power their part of the grid through subsidization of personal wind generation…

Just the other night on Radio Netherlands (Dutch Horizons) they were discussing a program which sounds similars to Montana’s, but it is a national program which only exists because residents sued to force the energy companies to pay them for their input into the power grid.

Maybe we can sue this into place? :)

I would think that the good folks at Summerside Electric Utility, the guy at Brackley who feeds into the grid and the wind power station up West know as much. Having had some actual experience with them, I can heartily agree that the guys at MEC are really good guys but are limited by off-shore ownership interest, by the need to make an honest buck in everything they do and follow their sensible but conservative business model. Changes and the best model for change would not come from them not because they do not wish it but because it carries business risks that are unacceptable at the moment.