[ausev] Apples and Energy

[John Penry at Texrocks]

I used to live in San Antonio.

from: http://www.eere.energy.gov/greenpower/pdfs/36823.pdf

Austin Energy-In January 2000, Austin Energy, the municipally owned utility 
of the City of
Austin, Texas, launched GreenChoice, a program through which residential and 
business
customers can choose to receive 100% renewable energy generated primarily 
from wind and
landfill gas resources. In just 10 months, the utility had fully subscribed 
the initial 40 MW of
renewable energy supply planned for the program and has since more than 
doubled its renewable
energy purchases.
A key feature of the program is that subscribers pay a "green rate," which 
remains fixed for the
term of the utility's renewable energy contracts, which is generally 10 
years. The green rate
replaces the utility's standard fuel charge and, thus, GreenChoice customers 
are protected from
fuel cost adjustments caused by rising fuel prices. The utility is now in 
the third phase of
renewable energy supply procurement for which the green rate charge is 
3.3¢/kWh. At the
current fuel charge of 2.796¢/kWh, the effective green power premium is 
about 0.5¢/kWh for
new GreenChoice subscribers.


City Public Service of San Antonio-City Public Service of San Antonio (CPS), 
the municipal
electric utility serving more than 550,000 customers in San Antonio, Texas, 
offers a wind power
option to the city's retail electricity customers. The wind energy is 
available in 100-kWh blocks
for an additional $3 per month, or a premium of 3.0¢/kWh. Customers are not 
contractually
bound to the program and can enter or leave the program, or change their 
purchase levels at any
time. The power for the Windtricity program comes from the 160.5-MW Desert 
Sky Wind
Project in West Texas, from which CPS purchases the entire output.

The Austin plan is clearly superior.  If you go to the Windtricity website, 
you will see how misleading they are.


John

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gil Dawson" <Gil at Gil.Dawson.name>
To: "AustinEV News Announcements and General Discussion" 
<ausev at austinev.org>
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2008 10:40 AM
Subject: [ausev] Apples and Energy


> At 9:05 P -0600 1/14/08, John Penry at Texrocks wrote:
>>
>>If you were selling apples, and you had a basket of Granny Smith Apples, 
>>and
>>a basket of Delicious Apples, I could choose to pay more for the Granny
>>Smith apples, because I would get them from the Granny Smith basket.  But 
>>if
>>I cut the apples into pieces, and made a Waldorf Salad, you couldn't sell
>>two identical plates of salad and call one of them a Granny Smith Waldorf
>>Salad.
>>
>
> I love analogies...
>
> There's this apple market where all the apples are absolutely
> identical.  There's no Granny Smit, no Delicious, no concept of a
> kind of apple.  They's just apples.
>
> You do get to choose which apple grower gets paid, and you pay a
> different price depending on which grower you choose.  If you buy ten
> apples and say you want to credit Farmer John, you will pay the price
> set by Farmer John and Farmer John will get yor payment, minus
> commissions.  If instead you say your payment must go to Rancher
> Bill, then you pay the price set by Rancher Bill and Rancher Bill
> gets paid.  The apples are in all cases identical, so no one really
> cares where any individual apple came from.  What you are really
> saying is that you'd like your money for apples to go to Farmer John
> or Rancher Bill, for whatever reason, and pay a different price,
> depending on which source you care to favor.
>
> In a power distribution arrangement, the apples are, of course,
> kilowatthours.  One thing a little different from the apple market is
> that kilowatthours cannot be stored inside the market.  Every
> kilowatthour produced has to go immediately into some customer's
> meter, or be burned up in transmission losses.
>
> If one apple farmer cannot one day grow enough apples for his
> committed customers, then he might buy some from another grower,
> which is perfectly OK with his customers because all the apples are
> identical.  If he grows too many apples, then I'm not sure what
> happens.  I imagine the bookkeeping system must be rather complicated.
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