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Hasn't this been covered through the Utilities, already? Most utilities here allow you to buy different plans, normal electricity, or electricity generated from
by IkmoIkmo 11y ago
Hasn't this been covered through the Utilities, already? Most utilities here allow you to buy different plans, normal electricity, or electricity generated from renewable sources. At the end of the day it's just a 'accounting trick', as it's not like the green energy is being routed specifically to you, you get the same energy, most of it from a coal burning plant, but your payments are earmarked (in the accounting) to pay for existing or new green energy projects, and you hope they're audited such that this is actually true (as opposed to selling 15% of their electricity as 'green' when their green sources are only 5% and growing slowly).
And this isn't even any different from having your own solar, unless you're in a remote location unconnected to the grid and uninterested in interconnecting to the grid. Most people who have solar simply get two energy meters. One of your power being generated and going to the grid (not to your own home), and one of power from the grid going into your home. It's pretty rare that you actually use the energy that the panels on your roof generate. Which means that whether those panels are on your own roof, or on the other side of the planet, doesn't really make any difference as long as they cost the same and have the same sun conditions. Except of course for the fact your home rises in value with panels on them because panels are essentially a small currency printer that takes sunlight as its ink, which has value.
Which brings me to the weirdness of this project. People with roofs get free panels and some free electricity. And people without roofs have to pay for that, which is obviously going to be quite expensive. Residential solar is already 2x, almost 3x as expensive as industrial solar projects, plus solar is still more expensive than your utility in the first place, and then you have to pay for extra panels for someone else's energy bill, plus the panels you do pay for aren't owned by you and don't add value to your home, and of course the energy of the panels doesn't even go directly to you, or hell even directly to the person whose house's panels you're paying for. I don't see why this would be a better idea than buying solar credits, shares in an industrial solar farm or green energy from your utility. It sounds like a waste of money to me, magnifying the very concern that is keeping solar from taking over the energy market.
For example that's what vandebron.nl does here in the Netherlands. They essentially sell green energy credits (I call them credits not because it's not green energy, but because it's delivered to the grid in general, and not to them specifically) to consumers by facilitating the financial link between independent producers (e.g. a farmer who has a wind turbine and who can sell to 600 households) and the consumer.
- LakeShoreDrive1 11y agoMore green energy is being produced as a result of this project. How is that a bad thing or waste of money? People save a little money and help create clean energy. More companies like Yeloha, the better. The main issue with your first point is that big utilities in the states lack incentive to push for renewables. So yes, all of the actual power will still come from the grid but that's how the entire industry is structured. Federal and state incentives that help make commercial and residential solar affordable demand that energy flow onto the grid. This company sounds like they've got a nice angle on increasing the adoption of solar and there's nothing wrong about that.