[spindler]

So I moved from Austin, TX slightly north to Round Rock to start a job (you can probably guess who I'm working for). I was going to sign up with the electric company that the apartment complex told me about. But since I had never before been a customer with TXU, they wanted a $300 deposit just for the honor of having them as my electric company! So I searched on the internet and the first thing I saw was a comparison page. The other companies in Round Rock charge 13.0 cents a kilowatt hour, a lot higher than the national average of 9.3 cents.

But one company, called Green Mountain Energy, greenmountain.com was charging 14 cents for what seemed to be from renewable sources. For 14 cents per kw/h they offer electricity that comes 1/10 from wind power and 9/10 from water. I'm not sure what they mean by water generated electricity. Well, anyway, for 16 cents per k/hr they offer electricity that is 100% wind generated.

Green Mountain Energy now offers power in parts of 6 states.

My apartment is 700 square feet, so it won't cost much. So for a little more money, I won't be contributing to global warming, and won't be sending my money to Middle Eastern terrorists or a certain South American communist in the making. And of course the more money you put into a technology the cheaper it becomes in the long run.

Here's a question. The U.S. is just about the richest country. Even if you have your head in the sand about global warming, we still shouldn't be sending our money to murderers and wife beaters. Is it too much to ask that Americans pay a little more for their electricity bills to be energy independent? After all, productivity is going up year by year. If Americans have a bad economy in 2007 we'll still be way richer than in a good year in 1987. At this point, is it so outrageous to ask Americans to pay a bit more to break free of these Middle Eastern slimeballs?

[tie]

That's interesting. PG&E last year allowed customers the choice of spending a little more for renewable energy. But I don't know that they have built any more renewable energy plants. (I think most renewable energy is hydroelectric, which is obviously hard to expand.) And if you look at their statistics, the percentage of energy in the general market which is renewable has dropped dramatically. So essentially PG&E is getting more money but overall energy composition is unchanged.

If this weren't the case, then I might agree with you. About global warming, there are a number of sites which sell carbon offsets, if you want to travel in a "carbon-neutral" manner. I'll have to look into if my company will pay for this. Obviously, this does nothing about us sending enormous amounts of money which ends up funding our enemies, though.

(I don't have any way of finding the exact statistics for PG&E, unfortunately, unless they're online somewhere.)

[Yose]

We've got something like that in Ontario, it's called Bullfrog. It's a network of green energy producers around the province. It's a great concept, however, OPG already has invested a lot in green energy sources itself so while it's great to show the flag, sometimes your "regular" energy producer is already doing the same thing ontop of "traditional" energy production.

[FireWire]

Congratulations! Everyone should follow your step: it's worth spending a little bit more to save the planet

Regarding your question about water-generated electricity, it's called hydroelectricity. That's our main way to produce power in Québec. It uses the same principle as the wind turbine, but harvests the movement of water instead. They build giant digs to create a greater water pressure to the bottom, where the turbine is located.



It's pretty clean energy, but a little less that wind, because you often have to drown forest to create a reservoir, and in Québec, they had to relocate autochtone population because their native land was submerged.

Personally, I'm looking to produce my own electricity when I own a house, probably from solar and wind power.

[Gossamer]

Working for Dell, huh?

[Yose]

Originally Posted by FireWire 

It's pretty clean energy, but a little less that wind, because you often have to drown forest to create a reservoir, and in Québec, they had to relocate autochtone population because their native land was submerged.

Sadly, it's not as clean as we think. There are examples of raised mercury content in aquatic life due to naturally occuring mercury that is found in soil, which then becomes submerged due to water diversion and remobilized by bacteria.

Also, there are examples of carbon-dioxide and methane being released from soil/peat sources due to water diversion aswell.

Sucks.

[ShortcutToMoncton]

Yeah, hydroelectricity is showing some nice problems that we hadn't identified before. The release in greenhouse gases is quite interesting, and of course the ecological damage is pretty fun.

But hey, better than coal.

greg