We need Energy Unions now! (Dean, Clark, and SUVs)

The blackout has proven that "voluntary regulation" of corporations and "competition" don't work. Communities need to have control of their own energy, and their own power lines to distribute it.

Each community should have an energy union, modeled after our successful credit unions, owned and controlled by the members of the community and the customers that pay for electricity. The energy union owns the distribution network, and hopefully power plants as well. The mission of the energy union is to provide inexpensive, reliable energy to that community. The energy union should be democratic - one member, one vote. We don't need outside sharholders to siphon off profits, nor should we allow large corporations or rich people to have more votes in the system.

Each energy union can cooperate with neighboring unions, and set up a system like NCUA (National Credit Union Association) to help coordinate.

Instead of privatization, we need publicization - the energy grid should belong to the people who use it, and not be owned by outsiders who just want to make a profit from it. Same with the power plants.

What do you think?

I like the idea of decentralization of production. Why not take it all the way and generate your own power? Right now I figure I can install a 1.5 kilowatt system for my home for about $13K out of pocket. At present electric rates and my present consumption level it would take roughly 18 years to pay for itself, but any increase in rates (or in my power needs) would reduce that interval.

It may not be the absolutely best solution financially, but I think in the long run it's the right thing to do, like when millions of Californians replaced incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents last summer.

Who's with me?

The technology for everyone to generate enough electricity to run their own home or business is just not efficient enough right now, but I do agree we should move in that direction.

What do you think about having you and 50 of your neighbors cooperating? That will start to benefit from the scale - try cooperating with 50,000 people and it starts to make good economic sense.

Where you have solar panals on your home, that during the day make energy and feed it back onto the grid for the same rates you pay when you pull energy fromt he grid.

The net result is very low energy bills and a very balanced grid.

Energy companies won't invest in a better grid unless they can get a profit out of it by raising rates, and a lot of the increase in rates go to profits, not to upgrading the grid.

We need community ownership of the grid, and the power plants. A union styled after a credit union will do exactly that.

Putting solar panels on your roof and adding some energy back into the grid is a great idea too, and will work great with an energy union. You get a credit for the energy you put back into the grid. Everybody wins.

Customers of San Diego Gas & Electric can sell back to SDG&E only as much power as they buy from SDG&E. Any surplus continues to turn the meter backwards but it just goes into SDG&E's pockets.

The solution for early implementers and wannabe early implementers like me is a double hedge: Buy stock in the company AND lobby the Legislature to change the law to require power companies to buy back as much surplus capacity as their customers can produce.

Because of rising real estate prices a lot of Californians have enough equity in their homes to easily qualify for a loan to pay for a PV system, or at least for lower tech, lower cost items like skylights and direct solar water heating systems. The cost savings from your reduced power bill cuts a chunk out of the monthly loan payment, and the interest on the loan is tax-deductible.

Californians are sitting on huge potential to exploit solar power and most of us aren't even aware of it.

for any excess power.




Californians are sitting on huge potential to exploit solar power and most of us aren't even aware of it.

If you have a house or a business in southern California and you are not using solar power, you are almost throwing away money. The cost of solar panels is almost down to $3.00 a watt and with the cost of electricity out there, you can recover this fairly quickly.

For the month.

You still get charged between five and six dollars for infrastructure.

I'm not sure you can count on batteries to last for 20 years, so you might want to figure in the cost of replacing them once or twice.

Also, would you mind post a breakout of your expected costs? 13k for 1.5KW seems a little high to me, but I am not an expert by far.

Rough breakout of costs for 1.5 KW system (YMMV)

Solar panels, electronics, batteries about $15K ($10 per Watt)
Labor, sales tax, structural enhancements to house $5K
State rebate at $4.50/Watt subtract $6,750

Net about $13,250. VERY rough estimates.

Not sure about battery life, but I'd guess you would have to replace them somewhere between 5 and 10 years if they're anything like the ones used in RVs.

Is there a maximum wattage for the state rebate?

I don't have the cash situation to make the move yet. It's probably about a year or two off.

Is there a maximum wattage for the state rebate?

It appears there is no limit, but it's a limited time offer; decreases by 20 cents per watt every six months until it reaches zero.

To see what new and/or improved technologies might be coming down the pike in the next few years. The overall cost is just a little too high for me at this point.

I say give people grants to build solar technology, and to make people independent from the energy industry, and to help the pollution problem that is causing global warming. And after it is built they pay no electrical bills or tax or fee for what they get from solar.

If I was president, I would not grant any of the 50 billion they are saying to give the energy industry. I would give between $2000 and $20,000 to each house or apartment to build a solar system.

I might give the electrical industry two hundred thousand dollars to study ways to have and electrical transportation system.

No way! If they need money to fix their shit, they should have to raise their rates. Using tax money to subsidies utilities shift the burden from heavy consumers to people who use little energy through conservation or alternative energy.

If we owned the grid and the power plants, we could keep the profits for ourselves - why give away money at all?

All the private energy corporations want to raise rates so they can get more profits - why should we let them?

At least then they would have to compete with alternative energy on an even footing.

But why bother with them at all? We can hire the workers, and the management, ourselves. We keep the profit, and run our energy union the way we want to. Sounds good to me.

One example, the Modesto Irrigation District: http://www.mid.org

They supply power and water to several towns and cities, own their own power generation stations, and have a 100 year track record of providing reliable power to the areas residents. It is also a PUBLIC utility, operated by a board of directors elected by the people, and with all internal documents and operating policies and procedures open to anyone that wants to examine them.

During the initial part of the rolling blackouts a few years back, Modesto and the other neighboring cities with their own public utilities were the ONLY part of the state that DIDN'T have blackouts. We were self-sufficient, and remained powered-up when other parts of the state were dark. It wasn't until the PUC decided that this was "unfair hoarding" (being self sufficient and not relying on Enron was hoarding?) and forced the utility to sell its power on the state exchange that we experienced blackouts (at one point, the PUC forced the MID to sell 70% of its power to neighboring areas, not leaving enough for our own use). If everywhere had systems like these, there wouldn't BE any blackouts!

But PGE has spent 50 years fighting it and illegally ignoring the requirements. The residents of Modesto are obviously smart to have kept their system going for so long.

PG&E is a privately held for-profit company, and they will NEVER give up and turn into a publicly held utility. You need to STOP waiting for the energy behemoths to play fair (it just ain't gonna happen!) and take matters into your own hands!

1) Get a measure on the ballot to form a public "Energy District". That measure should define the territory that the district covers, the form of governance, and define it as the ONLY public electrical district permitted within its borders. You may also want to toss in a small bond to initially fund the new district.

2) Put a second measure on the ballot to add a $1 or $2 surcharge to the residents electric bills within the city with the stipulation that the money is ONLY to be used by the district to purchase the infrastructure from PG&E. As the PG&E customers pay their bills, they will also be contributing to the general buyout of the companies holdings in SF. As areas get bought up, the new revenue from the residents within the purchased areas will further improve the cashflow of the district and allow more PG&E resources to be obtained.

The laws are already in place in California to make the process easy, it just requires that someone spend the time to jump through the proper hoops.

I just joined an EMC in Transylvania County, NC. I don't know much about it yet, but they do claim that they are owned by the people they serve. Excess monies left over at the end of the year are assigned to members' capital credit accounts. The assignments are based on how much electricity each member purchased from the co-op. I do not yet know what incentives are in place for conservation, nor do I know if garden variety co-op members can serve on the board of directors. I intend to find out.

My back-up power is a 5-kW gasoline generator (with 2 hours on the Hobbs!), which I will convert to propane as soon as possible. Passive solar is planned for next year.