Thursday, February 09, 2006
Clean and wonderful
I thought I kept up to date on this kind of stuff. A friend of mine told me a couple days ago that we Ontarians (as Dalton would say) can choose to buy our electricity from this company called Bullfrog Power that ensures that you support renewable energy sources. You pay a 30% premium on your electricity for it to come from wind or "low impact hydro". I've heard of similar ideas in the US, but didn't know anything like this existed here yet.
I'm pretty sure I'll sign up for this service, but I'd like to know first what happens when more people are buying power from them than they can supply. I assume my local electricity company does not continue to buy power from them on my behalf if they can not supply it. Then the local company (ie. Toronto Hydro) must buy power from somewhere else, which I guess would be Hydro One. Is the additional 2 cents per kilowatt-hour used at least for developing more wind turbine locations? I'll have to do some more research.
Here are a couple discussions I found.
Treehugger
Energy Sustainability Community
And something else related and interesting, in case you are thinking about how the wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day.
I'm pretty sure I'll sign up for this service, but I'd like to know first what happens when more people are buying power from them than they can supply. I assume my local electricity company does not continue to buy power from them on my behalf if they can not supply it. Then the local company (ie. Toronto Hydro) must buy power from somewhere else, which I guess would be Hydro One. Is the additional 2 cents per kilowatt-hour used at least for developing more wind turbine locations? I'll have to do some more research.
Here are a couple discussions I found.
Treehugger
Energy Sustainability Community
And something else related and interesting, in case you are thinking about how the wind doesn't blow 24 hours a day.
Darren J 2/09/2006 03:54:00 p.m.
1 Comments:
I happened upon Bullfrog a couple months ago (purely by accident) and was also amazed that Torontonians had this option. Since we're in a condo we can't sign up individually (we're not seperately metred for hydro), but a few years down the road when we're in a house I'll definitely be looking in to it (I'll also be looking at a lot of solar options too).
