power companies

I have just received a phone call from the company that provides the electricity to my home; it was a very interesting conversation.

They asked me if I would be interested in paying a premium to run the place on greenpower, sure it would cost me a little bit more in dollar but I would be saving in greenhouse terms.

This interested me so I asked how many kilowatt hours of greenpower do they produce and where are these green clean renewable power generators located. The person I was talking to couldn't answer this question, so I asked if there was some one in the office that could. Silence was the reply.

The next gentleman on the line I assume was the previous person's supervisor.

So I put the same question to him. The reply was rather vague. Some greenpower was being generated, but he gave no definite answer to the question of how much. There was also the inference that some of the money being collected in the greenpower scheme was being used to fund the development of this new generating plants.

So I said does this mean that if I pay the premium that only some of the power is from renewable sources and the rest is for future projects. I didn't receive a convincing answer.

The next question was obvious. If only x kilowatts of renewable are being generated (I still had not found out the figure) how many kilowatts of greenpower was being sold by his company?

He said he had no way of knowing that, so I pointed out that he would have a list of customers that had purchased greenpower and if they were receiving power bills their usage would also be know to the company. If not what sort of company were they running?

The reply was that that was private business information.

So how does the public know if their purchase of greenpower does come from sustainable sources? The company could be selling more greenpower than they produce.

I could see a way out of this dilemma so I asked the company representive how much would the company pay me if I spent around $30,000 to convert my whole enterprise to solar and sent the excess back on the grid. This would save me dollar since the batteries I would need would be far fewer and the company would have genuine greenpower to sell at the premium price.

It seems the company is not interested in these small scale solutions, which is a shame.

So why is the big end of town not interested in small investments like solar panels, backyard tanks or improvement to public rail services, urban rail networks? Is it because such investments can't be captured and controlled by private investors?

A decentralised power generation system would make sense since the more sources of power you have the more options you would have in time of power shortage and many small targets are tempting that a few large ones if you have terrorist leanings.