Harnessing the Wind
The power company responsible for much of the Boston area, NSTAR, recently announced that beginning in January (pending approval by state regulators), 1.1 million customers in Boston and beyond will be able to sign up for NSTAR Green and buy half or all of their “power directly from a wind farm in upstate New York and a second under development in Maine.”
A report in the Boston Globe notes that while other Massachusetts utilities have offered small-scale green-power options, NSTAR’s will be backed by a major marketing effort and the electricity will be purchased directly from wind farms rather than simply invested in wind facilities. “Technically, NSTAR customers would not get their power directly from the Maine and New York wind farms, because it is impossible to transmit electricity through the power grid to a specific meter. But by paying for the turbines at Maple Ridge and Kibby Mountain to feed into the interconnected New England and New York power grids the same amount of power they’re drawing from conventional sources closer to Boston such as coal, nuclear power, and gas- and oil-fired plants, NSTAR customers signing up for the program would be able to say they use the equivalent of 100 percent wind power.”
NSTAR “is signing 10-year contracts to buy a total of 30 megawatts of power from each installation, in total equal to the demand of about 45,000 homes or small businesses. That’s around 2 percent of the utility’s average total demand,” and CEO Thomas May told the paper “We hope the program is oversubscribed and we have to go back and buy more.”
I hope so too. In fact, nothing would make me happier.
Naturally, there’s a bit of a catch, as the Globe notes: Across the country, less than 1% of customers have signed up for green power options offered by their utility companies. In NSTAR’s case, “Because the wind farms are more expensive than other sources such as coal and nuclear power, a typical homeowner would pay a premium of about $7.50 to $15 monthly.” That’s 1.75 cents per kiloWatt hour if you buy half your electricity from wind or 3 cents per kWh for the full option.
$15 more a month? In Boston, that’s the equivalent of oh, two restaurant lunches, or five cups of coffee, or (in my case) a book or two. Hardly seems like a sacrifice, does it?
As soon as this program is approved, I’ll be signing up. I hope others, both in Boston and beyond, will join me in taking a simple step forward and making a statement of commitment to renewable energy. To me, that’s worth a sandwich or two every month. Is it to you?
opinions powered by SendLove.to
8 Responses to “Harnessing the Wind”
Speaking of alternative power, does any one know much about this geothermic setup? Now the article is from a newspaper, which always get science wrong, but if the numbers they are quoting are accurate and there is as little downside as they claim….well, there’s no reason not to do it tomorrow.
The 7 or 8 million dollars to drill a well is far less than the cost of constructing a nuclear or coal powered plant. Granted that is just the beginning because of the need to construct the other infrastructure. I would think that the actual costs between geothermal and coal/nuclear would be very close to the same. There are additional costs to coal/nuclear that must be added in, in addition. For coal: the railroad lines, mines, and environmental pollution mus also be factored in. For nuclear: the mines and costs of storage for the spent fuel must be considered.
Therefore, geothermal power doesn’t look that bad. I would like to see a full cost analysis between the different systems.
“As soon as this program is approved, I’ll be signing up. ”
Good for you, Jason!
Congratulations on making an excellent decision.
Sorry.
I meant to say, good for you JEREMY!
As always, the utilities that hold monopoly power over the generation and distribution of electricity must be carefully monitored, that is, regulated, if the potential for green energy is to be realized. The utilities have not been friends to the environment, and they could be doing far more to enhance our move toward the realization of increased use of alternative energy options.
An excellent case in point is our own utility, Xcel. Their Wind Source program reached an important and critical tipping point last year. Because of the increasing cost of carbon based fuels, wind energy actually became less expensive than coal and natural gas, for the production of electricity. Because of this, those who had signed up for the program, including myself (100%), were receiving a discount on electricity, rather than a surcharge. This generated some highly positive publicity for Xcel, and resulted in a waiting list of companies and individuals wanting to sign up for the program. Unfortunately, but perfectly consistent for the utility industry, Xcel successfully petitioned our Public Utilities Commission to artificially inflate the cost of wind power, because “our customers expect to pay more for alternative energy.”
A highly profitable utility that could have become an environmental hero, chose instead to continue its decades-long pursuit of environmental villainy. Of course, our Public Utilities Commission shares the blame, but as with so much else in government today, that regulatory body has been stacked with industry friendly allies, rather than with knowledgeable experts working for the public good.
Once again, this underscores the vital need for government regulation to assure that the public interest is the highest priority of our government, and that we are applying incentives to move us in the direction we need to go and which the public widely supports. In this case, actual market forces were providing the most powerful incentive in many years, to decrease our reliance on carbon based fuels, and our emissions of greenhouse gases and other pollutants. And once again the all too cozy relationship between industry and government crushed this incentive. Meanwhile,Xcel built a massive coal-fired power plant, at their rate payers expense, which they now admit they do not need to provide power for Colorado. As a result, Colorado ratepayers are defrauded, while the utility gets a free power plant from which to sell power to those in other states who did not finance the building or operation of the power plant.
The geothermal energy article strikes me as consistent with other things I’ve read about it. It also reminds me of how important it would be if we could achieve some breakthroughs in energy transmission capabilities. Just think of using geothermal if we could get the energy from locations near Yellowstone where the heat is much closer to the surface and distribute it to cities on the West Coast and Midwest efficiently.
There are 2 less appreciated but more widely available forms of geothermal. One is using the thermal mass of below-surface earth to improve efficiency of heat pumps for cooling and especially heating. A heat pump typically takes heat from outside air in winter and blows it into the house. When it’s very cold, there isn’t much heat to extract from outside air, but the ground just a foot down maintains remarkable consistency in temperature suitable for transferring to tubes of water or antifreeze for use in space heating.
The other, and similar, is to allow the thermal mass of the earth to warm or cool the air entering a house so it needs less heating and cooling. This is accomplished by drawing outside air down to foundation level before bringing it into the house. Here’s an example.
GreenDreams,
If I ever get to build a house from scratch and can afford what I want I’ll incorporate both of those technologies and others as well into it. Once I looked for the heck of it at a housing development where every house sat on between an 1.5 and 2+ acres. It was a requirement for every home to use a geothermal heat pump system.