Anyone here a customer of Green Mountain Energy?

Re: Anyone here a customer of Green Mountain Energy?

I've looked into this when I bought my house... you might want to read this:

http://www.boycottgreenmountain.com/

I have no idea if there is any truth to that website, but it's good to know. Typically, they are somewhat more expensive than your basic electricity provider and I'm assuming since you've listed it, is available in your area.

Jay

Re: Anyone here a customer of Green Mountain Energy?

Jason,

I am a Power Engineer and do work on transmission and distribution systems so take what I say with a grain of salt

Due to deregulation consumers now have an option of who to purchase their power generation (tranmission is still handled by the local utility for obvious reasons including service restoration and maintenance).

The rub with buying power from a Green Mountain is that unless your home is located in the near vacinity of one of their wind farms, your power will still be coming from your closest power plants which are most likely coal powered, nuclear, or natural gas fired. By purchasing your power from Green Mountain, you theoretically will be driving down demand for traditional power even though the additional power generated by Green Mountain for your home may end up being consumed by someone in another state who doesn't care where their power is produced.

As it stands, it is impossible to produce enough power for our country using renewable power at this point in time, so if everyone switched to Green Mountain you would still be getting your power from a traditional generation source.

J

Re: Anyone here a customer of Green Mountain Energy?

From the little that I researched when I bought my house, your electric bill is divided into two sections distribution and supply... Your local electric company will always handle the distribution but the supply is a weird commodity. Perhaps maybe look at it like "shares" theres this huge glob of electricity out there produced by Nuclear, Coal, Wind, Water, green space goo.... whatever... a very very very minute part of it is consumed by the average residential consumer. Now when you get power, you don't control where you get it from, other than you get XX amt of power per year. And Company X provides XX amt of power to "the Grid". However, by saying you want to buy power from Company Y versus Company X, you are saying that you want Company Y to put XX amt of power onto "The Grid". However, as Justin points, out, it might not actually control who gives you exactly which Kilowatt of electricity but you can be safe to know that Company Y is providing XX amt of power to somebody out there connected to "The Grid". I believe when you look at alternative companies based on the deregulation of the electric supplier industry, some providers are available in some states, not in others, this is just somewhat geared towards providing green energy sources as close to the customer as practical. I wont want my electricity coming from say a dam in Nevada and neither does the electric company want to have to engineer all that wiring and transmission lines to support that so it's all based on "the Grid" and 'shares' of power.


As far as BP, don't believe all the commercials you hear about them. For years, BP has been neglicent about their Alaskan oil fields and maintenance... You remember their problem with the Alaskan pipeline??? BP isn't as darling as they think they are, but neither are they as bad as that website I sent you makes them out to be either. It's all a compromise. The BEST you can do is not to worry about who is suppling your energy although surely, chosing a green energy supplier is good. The best you can do is reduce your need of it... compact flourescents, solar PV energy... Solar hot water... Geothermal.... etc... That is the best...

Jay

Re: Anyone here a customer of Green Mountain Energy?

By going with a renewable evergy source you will be doing a very very very small part to promote renewable energy, and in theory someone will be using the renewable source (whether they want to or not).

It actually gets a bit more complicated as power generation is dispatched by a Regional Operator, and if the market in a particular area/region does not require the full output of the "green" provider based on that day's market, you will have people paying for Green Power which is never generated. It is quite common for the power requirements of green power customers to exceed the daily generation of the green power companies.

Download http://www.greenmountain.com/service...erms_nj_06.pdf and read the fine print on the "Environmental Disclosure Label Information" on page 2. They are playing a game by allowing up to 3 months in the next year to catch up with the power demand of their customers for the previous year. The 3 month buffer effectively allows them to be perpetually behind by up to 25% in generation vs. customer consumption.


J

Re: Anyone here a customer of Green Mountain Energy?

Good for you, it's about time we start thinking of more of where our energy is coming from, I hope it works well for you.

I've been reading stories across the board about wind energy up in the catskills region and local regulations regarding outdoor wood boilers, its a good sign that people are actively looking at alternative sources for heat and electricity and water, even if it forces some towns to regulate them as in the case with OWBs...

I'm currently scrounging wood for next winter, my primary source of heat in my house is my wood stove.

Jay