Does wind farm/electricity offer makes sense, or have I been had?

[Inland]

My municipality (ranked one of the most conservative in the US recently, thank you very much) owns it's own electricity distribution to city residents.

Yesterday I got signed up for a "renewable energy option) outside of the library.

The pamphlet said "A small addi tonal charge of $5.00 to your small electric bill covers the added expense of delivering 200 kilowatt hours of clean and renewable energy to the Illinois electric grid."

The renewable energy sources are 90% wind, the rest solar and "small hydro". If you didn't know, most of the Illinois prairie experiences a wind that just never stops, and there are wind farms a few hundred miles away.

Has anyone heard of this sort of program?

Is this sensible? I average about $50 bucks a month in electric (very good, since the municipality locked in some great prices years ago).

Should I do something else with my five bucks?

[In_The_Wind]

1. it makes lots of sense

I'm looking into building windmills on my property!


Clean non-fossil fuel power is the only way to save our world.

[Inland]

3. I remembered to ask about birds and the wind turbine thingies

and the lady compared the deaths at the windfarm in question to usual bird deaths just on power lines, sounded reasonable.

But you probably won't have the ten story high suckers, unless you are renting out.

[In_The_Wind]

6. We already have a few windmills that are operating locally.

I do know that one of those is 100 feet up.


I'm at the foot of a small mountain so I have windy conditions much of the time however I will also be installing solar panels.

[Yupster]

8. Around here it's the bats

that are getting creamed by the wind farms.

They're trying to figure out what to do about it, but it's killing them by the hundreds in places.

[Inland]

10. Find better places, I guess.

Or maybe some sort of sonic warning device?

[whistle]

2. What does your small $5.00 monthly fee buy again?

[Inland]

5. Well, that's the thing.

My pamplet says that the city will use the money to "cover the expense of delivering 200 kw hours of clean and renewable enerty to the Illinois electric grid". Since the city isn't actually making electricity, doesn't it just buy off the grid whatever is there? Or does it purchase from the windmill farm?

I'd like to ask questions, but I'm not sure how the whole thing works.

[BR_Parkway]

12. take a look at www.greenpower.org - this sounds like the program they have

here in NC. $4/month voluntary goes into a fund, the fund buys excess power from solar / wind producers (even small residential systems) to help offset the cost of the system.

We're looking to install a 20KW wind turbine at a B&B/Winery that we're building. The greenpower buyback, along with the Fed/State tax credits have made solar and wind very attractive financially.

[whistle]

14. Why should consumers have to pay such a fee each month....

...it should be the energy company who is obligated to buy excess energy from consumers who choose to add energy efficient components like solar, wind, methane production or any other small energy self sufficiency measure/investment taken.

The program the power company is proposing sounds ass-backwards. Always soaking the consumer and making the consumer more and more dependent on the monopoly energy companies.

[kestrel91316]

13. It's a green power subsidy I think.

[expatriot]

4. Oh yeah I have heard about it. It sounds like a great program.

For one, on the side of Silk soymilk cartons they talk about how their company buys wind energy credits to replace all the energy that they use.

[Coastie for Truth]

7. Palo Akto CA

has a similar program.

[DrRang]

9. We do a similar program in New Mexico

Pay about $5 per month to get 90% electricity generated by wind farms along the eastern side of the state. The local program has gotten far more people to sign up than they expected. Eventually, the "green" surcharge is supposed to go away, but I don't understand how that works. Also, they don't actually "send you" electricity generated by wind, but they feed the equivalent amount of wind power into the mix from different sources.

[Inland]

11. See, that's sort of my question.

Is it a charity move, where the city simply sends the money to the windmills and has it put more electricity on the grid, rather than taking the lowest bids?

I don't have a problem with it, if it means less coal burnt.

[IrateCitizen]

15. I pay more than $5 per month for renewable electricity...

I signed up for the Green Solutions program run by Con Edison of NY. I pay something like $29.95 per month to get electricity from 100% renewable sources -- wind and hydro, for the most part. Of course, it's not like the electrons flowing into my home are directly from windfarms and hydro dams only -- but my fee certainly goes toward helping to build more renewable energy sources.

I realize that $29.95 per month is not exactly cheap, and a lot of people can't afford it. And that's the down side. But I know that I can afford it, and it's important to try and raise demand for these kinds of energy sources to encourage their expansion.

[Viking12]

19. We have a flexible program

You pay just $3.00 additional per month for each block of renewable energy, the equivalent of 150 kilowatt-hours (kWh). For example, if you sign up for three blocks, a renewable energy charge of $18.00 for 900 kWh will appear on your monthly bill.

[phantom power]

16. We have a very similar program here in Phoenix.

I think they are good programs, as far as they go (which isn't far enough). I do think it would be interesting to research where that extra money is really spent. Once upon a time, there was an entire class of professionals who did this. They were called "investigative reporters." But I hear that nobody has sighted one in years.

[NNadir]

17. Reporter? As in journalist?

I think they went the way of the firemen on steam engines.

[Coastie for Truth]

18. Even the anti-establishment progressives here in the

San Francisco Bay Area have not been able to poke logical, thermodynamic, or political holes in this.