this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2023
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That’s actually better than I thought.
In my city they had everyone switch to renewable energy, they sent Mail out stating that your energy source will automatically change unless you opt out.
LOL how are they going to change the energy source that powers an individual house if they "opt out" ??
Did they run separate power lines to every house that is on a switch between the power sources? It's not like a network packet that you can route to a destination, it's going to go down the lines the same way unless the circuit is broken.
My state separates power “distribution” as the responsibility of the utility, from “generation” as an attempt at a competitive market. I choose my source f power by choosing what generation company I pay. Clearly, electrons are electrons, but for the power I use I pay a 50% renewables company to generate
If 90% of households have clean energy selected, and 10% prefer to pollute, the city will buy the relevant amount of clean energy.
My city gave no option. It only buys clean energy
it's "ghost" economics, if for example i live in a house that choose to pay for coal power over hydro power, my money goes to the coal power plant (or at least not to the hydro plant) if i choose to pay for hydro, that money goes to the hydro plant instead (most likely not the coal plant)
if you actually dig into power co-ops and whatever other shenanigans you find, in the US at least, you will find there are multiple layers between "the utility" and who generates the power. For example, here where i live, we have a local power utility, who buys power from a power co-op, who buys power from power plants, and possibly other power co-ops? It's really disorganized, basically the TL;DR is that it wouldnt matter even if there were separate distribution lines. It's completely irrelevant based on the complexity of the actual market anyway lol.
Suppose Provider A is 100% renewable and Provider B is 100% fossil. Both providers generate power and feed the same grid (which is managed separately from the various energy providers). The same grid powers all homes. Householders get to choose whether to buy from Provider A or Provider B. If you support renewables then you buy from Provider A; their share goes up and B's share goes down. And vice versa for B. In addition the government juggles A,B as well as C,D,E,etc to provide the overall service to the country.
Same AFAIK -- Akron, OH.
Why do they need to ask? I ask as in the UK we all get our power from "the grid", and don't have much say over what the energy mix is there.
Because for some reason in my city “delivery” cost of the renewable energy costs 12% more than non-renewable.
it's more than likely that money is going to fund construction of new renewables.
That sounds like a problem worth solving, and I can't think of a reason it would be the case without using the words "kickbacks" and "corruption"
it's possible that it's corruption, but it's also possible that's just being skimmed and stuffed into production of more renewable energy. That would make sense, given that we need to build more renewable, and already have existing fossil fuel infrastructure.
From what i've dug into, the latter seems the most likely, especially given how much of a mess the power "market" is.