Alaska Public Radio Network's AK opened their program this morning, Chasing the Sun, with a segment about my friend and former colleague on the Friends of Mat-Su board of directors, Mimi Peabody. She and her husband, Will, live off the power grid in their home up Clark-Wolverine Road, northeast of Palmer. The interview-tour ended with mention of House Bill #288, which has been pre-filed for the impending Alaska legislative session by Homer Representative Paul Seaton.Seaton may be my favorite GOP Alaska legislator. He has introduced many innovative bills over the years, mostly having to do with fishery issues, habitat protection and public access to redress of grievances against the state, and against powerful corporations.
In his past efforts, Seaton has teamed up with such unlikely allies for a Republican as the Republican Moderate Party, Friends of Mat-Su, the Alaska Center for the Environment, and the Northern Alaska Environmental Center.His House Bill seeks to allow people like the Peabodys to be able to force power companies to buy power from people on-line who, from time to time, produce more power than they can store or use. 36 other states have such legislation. The idea has been around for a long time. It is called net metering, and here's how it works:
Net metering programs adopted in many states offer the potential for individuals or businesses to realize financial benefits from installing renewable energy systems. Net metering allows consumers to offset the cost of electricity they buy from a utility by selling renewable electric power generated at their homes or businesses back to the utility. In essence, a customer's electric meter can run both forward and backward in the same metering period, and the customer is charged only for the net amount of power used. By definition, true net metering calls for the utility to purchase power at the retail rate and use one meter. States have adopted a number of variations on this theme.
6 comments:
Could it be long before we have stationary exercise bicycles hooked up in the home to generate electricity? Then we can actually save money while getting and staying in shape. Sure the amount of electricity generated would be minuscule and you'd receive only a few coins savings, but it'd be something. And what a great incentive to want to get on the bike and lose some weight! "Kids, if you want to watch TV or go on the internet tonight, you need to generate some electricity." Especially useful if one is living as close to off the grid as possible.
I have been living off the grid with solar power for 12 years now. I am still dependent on my diesel gen for much of the winter, but as Home Electric and other start looking at the coal beds as the next best thing I am more and more sure that it is the right choice.
I would like to see more small scale electric, with hydro and tidal sources. There is so much opportunity here in Alaska that we could be in the lead nationally.
Thanks for the heads up on the program, I will try and download.
Mark
In the Tanana Valley, GVEA's SNAP program supposedly encourages power producers to feed into the grid, but it's not net metering as I understand it. Instead, you have to buy a separate meter, pay for the grid-worthy hookup, etc. GVEA has tidily shunted the cost of this setup to the individual power producer, rather than spreading it out over the whole membership, which means the startup cost is much higher and therefore provides an obstacle to decentralized power generation. I looked into doing this, but just couldn't afford the solar panels and the hookup as well. The SNAP program does provide incentive in that the producers get paid decently for their power, but that also is funded by individuals who kick in extra money on their electric bill just for the program, a voluntary donation. Still, it's a good program, and is generating a lot of interest in the Fairbanks area. A couple of bloggers are following it: Common Sense and Comity and the GVEA Issues blog, and groups like the SCANFairbanks blog.
thanks for the links, deirdre! I'm going to try to follow the progress of HB 288 through the session.
My understanding is that the Alaska house will supposedly have a decision on HB288 net metering by the end of this month, (august 2008).
Now is the time to get those last minute letters, emails etc of support into the representatives.
here's the link to all contact info.
whoiops, the link.
http://house.legis.state.ak.us/
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