green and ethical electricity

st999

If I switch to green and ethical electricity company that only generates electricity from wind and solar power, how can I be sure that I am getting green and ethical electricity and not electricity from a nuclear power plant or even imported from France?

Especially on a windless dark night when no wind or solar electricity is being generated.

At this moment I am looking out of my window at some windmills on a hill nearby and not one of them is turning.

Do the green and ethical electricity companies store the electricity somehow to use in these situations?

Also how can this electricity be kept separate from the dirty radioactive electricity from a nuclear power station?

Or should I just say to Hell with it and go with the cheapest option?

rogerblack

Storing is _HIDEOUSLY_ expensive.
It's solely accounting.
You use 2345kWh a year.
They purchase 2345kWh of 'green' electricity.

I note that coal plants emit more radiation than nuclear.

penrhyn

In other words you get the same electricity as everyone else as all electricity generated is fed into the national grid.

molerat

st999 wrote: »

Or should I just say to Hell with it and go with the cheapest option?

The correct answer. All the electricity you receive will be from mixed generation. All the "green" tariffs do is charge you more for exactly the same electricity that everyone else uses.

macman

You can't pick which power station feeds your supply! You get your electricity from your local power station via the regional DNO, regardless of who bills you.
All you can do is pick a supplier who buys or generates a high percentage from green sources.
Ecotricity are probably the top pick in that category, as they are actively investing a large amount (proportionally to turnover) in wind power. However, they are still minnows compared to the big 6, who have about 95% of the market.
Storing electricity is not commercially possible. The only real example is pumped hydro, which actually wastes more than it generates (but the 'storage' is done using cheap rate power at night). It's not feasible on any large scale.

miss_2010

We can't really expect that all we are using for electricity comes from the environment e.g wind, water etc. at all times because these factors have as well variables that affects them such as season. All we have to do is to find the supplier that is really committed on promoting energy source from the environment and keep its sustainability.A supplier that maybe not all the electricity comes from the environment but most of it.

penrhyn

I heat my home by gas. I use five times more gas than electricity.
How do any of these so called environmental schemes meet my needs?.

grahamc2003

'Green' energy tariffs are a bit of a con really. The thing which drives 'green' capacity is subsidy, not demand. Once the 'green' capacity is constructed, then there is an obligation for all of it to be accepted onto the grid (at elevated prices of course). i.e. the owners of that 'green' capacity don't have to find buyers for it. They sell it for a high price whether anyone wants it or not (and sometimes it can be very inconvenient for the grid to accept).

If there were no 'green' tariffs, there'd still be exactly the same amount of 'green' capacity built and the same amount of 'green' generation consumed. The 'green' capacity varies with the level of subsidy - a high level enourages more, a low level less, and with no or even moderate subsidy, we'd have no 'green' capacity. It needs a high level of subsidy and a guaranteed buyer for every bit of generation to be worthwhile for investors. (Think of this approach for Mars bars - wouldn't it be great for the makers if they got paid 3 or 4 times the market rate for mars bars AND they knew they could sell, with no marketing or other costs, every one they produced, even when no one wanted to buy one!

This is one reason why electricity bills are guaranteed to rise quickly over the forseable future irrespective of any other factor, since the total subsidy (loaded onto our bills of course) rises each year.

macman

penrhyn wrote: »

I heat my home by gas. I use five times more gas than electricity.
How do any of these so called environmental schemes meet my needs?.

You need green gas:
But slow progress so far.
http://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-green-energy/our-green-gas

penrhyn

So thats my house and 20,999,999 others on the waiting list then. Frack me! Hang on I've an idea.

grahamc2003

Tempting to do a bit of maths to get a feel for the scale of 'green gas'. Like take UKs annual gas consumption, halve it (since the aim is to supply 50%), and see how much waste material is needed and the size of the processing factories required to generate that much gas pa.

I haven't done the maths yet - but frequently you find the numbers simply don't add up (i.e. you may find the UK only produced 1% of the waste food required as an example, or something similar).

But if Ecotricity thinks this is simple and viable, why aren't they doing it today? They can't be negotiating a multi-million grant or other subsidy from the taxpayer before they do anything can they? The usual case is that these schemes are nowhere near viable, so 'please give us lots of money to make them profitable for us, even though intrinsically nonviable''