Q+A
Cascade Community Wind Company (CCWC) is developing wind energy projects with the local community which rely on community-supported renewable energy. Here are some answers to some common questions.
Why is Community Wind any Better than Corporately Developed Wind?
Both have their place. Community wind has the advantage of being developed with direction from the community and with power staying in the community. Community-scale developments can often happen much more quickly than large projects. The most convincing argument for community wind is that more money stays in the community. A University of Minnesota study concluded that community wind has 5 times the economic impact on local value added, and 3.4 times the impact on local job creation, relative to a corporate-owned development.
CCWC wants the subscription money now, but the project isn’t going to be built for months. Why?
CCWC puts the money for your subscription directly into a certificate of deposit (CD) where it earns a small amount of interest until CCWC is ready to begin construction. In order to release the money, CCWC needs to get authorization from the designated community trustee who is under legal contract to make sure CCWC is ready to construct the project. In this way, CCWC can gather subscriptions in the time preceding construction and have it all ready when it is time to begin. At the same time subscribers know the money is not being risked in the early stages of development. Banks lending the money for the half of the turbine not covered by subscriptions need to see that the subscription money is in hand before they will lend that second half of the money. Click here to see a sample Virtual Net Metering Subscription Agreement SAMPLE VNMSA and a sample Declaration of Subscription.
What happens if the project doesn’t make it to construction?
If for some reason a project for which you have bought a subscription does not make it to construction, your money will be returned, plus interest earned from the CD, or you may apply that subscription to another project that is going forward.
Is electricity from the turbine going directly to my house?
Sort of. Community turbines are connected directly to the local distribution grid, so all the electricity is used locally and the amount of electricity imported from outside the area is reduced. On the other hand, there is no way to tell which electrons end up at which house. You are getting the renewable energy credits retired on your behalf, which is the main way to keep track of who is getting the renewable energy in a utility grid.
So how does community-supported wind reduce my power bill then?
PSE periodically pays the turbine project for the power it produces. For each one percent subscription, one percent of that payment will be credited to your utility account. The price PSE is paying the project for electricity will increase by 50% over the first 10 years. If the turbine produces about the same amount of power each year, the savings on your power bill would increase accordingly (hopefully more than offsetting any future rate increases), giving a degree of price protection on your utility bill.
What if I move?
No problem. Your subscription moves with you. Just let us know the new account to credit.
Can I buy more subscriptions than would cover my electric bill?
No. This program is designed to simulate having a smaller wind turbine or solar array on your own house. This is not an investment and can only be taken advantage of as savings on your power bill. But feel free to assign extra subscriptions to your mother’s power bill.
But can I buy more than one subscription?
Certainly, please do. For some turbines, one subscription won’t cover even an efficient home. We encourage you though to buy subscriptions that cover a bit less than your total power bill and then please try and conserve enough energy to cover the rest. Energy efficiency provides all the benefits that renewable energy provides, but with greater economy and elegance.
What if I end up using less energy that the subscription covers?
Good for you! In that case, you will slowly build up a credit on your utility account. Once you know how much of your subscription you no longer need (remember that the projects will likely be producing most of their power in the summer), you can get a prorated refund on a portion of that subscription.
Does community wind mean that the lights will stay on when the grid goes down?
Unfortunately, no. Utility-scale wind turbines rely on the grid to stay running and when the grid goes down, they shut down. Local production does diversify the utility’s energy sources and make grid failure less likely in some cases. If being energy self-sufficient is a long-term goal, community wind turbines can be integrated into such a system in the future.
Can I tie a subscription to a specific home?
Yes. Some builders have requested a way to help add green power to the homes they build. In addition to good insulation, sun exposure, and efficiency features, buying subscriptions tied to that building is a great way to accomplish that. The price of a subscription will be significantly less than the cost of putting solar panels on the house.
What if I want a subscription, but can’t afford the up-front cost? / How can I help those in the community who want a subscription, but can’t afford it?
CCWC’s website will have a lending tool which allows one community member to make a person-to-person loan to someone who wants a subscription, but does not have the cash up front. In this way, one person in the community gets to participate and another gets a modest interest rate on a loan secured by the subscription. The terms of the loan are the responsibility of the two parties, but CCWC suggests a term of less than 5 years and an interest rate between 4 and 7 percent. CCWC’s website tool (third party- operated) will service and keep track of these loans.
What about birds?
Wind turbines have a bad rap when it comes to birds. The truth is modern wind turbines on the whole have a very light impact on birds, thousands of times less impact than cars, cats, picture windows, transmission lines, and pesticides. Even if wind became our major source of energy, the impact of wind turbines on birds would not damage bird populations. That said, there are a very few corporate wind farms that do have significant avian impacts. One benefit of the community approach to wind development is that any unusual impact on birds will be noticed before there are enough turbines in an area to have a serious effect. Studies of Northwest wind farms show that in this area 2.2 common songbirds 0.68 bats, and 0.07 raptors are killed on average per megawatt per year. One car continuously on the road has more of an impact on birds than a 1-megawatt wind turbine powering 600 energy-efficient homes.
What are renewable energy credits (RECs) or ‘green tags’?
Click to view examples of CCWC Renewable Energy Certificates.
This link is a great description of renewable energy credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_tags. Renewable energy credits are the way the ‘renewableness of the energy is tracked. Since there is no way to distinguish green electrons from brown ones, renewable energy projects are assigned a unique ‘Renewable Energy Credit’ (REC) for every megawatt-hour they produce. Those RECs can be included as a part of a project’s power sales contract or sold to someone else. When a REC is retired the renewable power has been used, even if the REC accounting and the electrons took very different paths. In most green power programs you are actually retiring RECs not buying them otherwise you would just be a renewable energy middleman and not its consumer. Most RECs end up being used to satisfy a utility’s green power requirements, some are used by residences that ‘check the box’ and pay extra to have renewable power, and some are sold to events that want to advertise as being renewably powered. RECs in some sense are the bragging rights associated with renewable energy. All the soft benefits of renewable energy, beyond the electricity itself, are wrapped up in the REC, including carbon offsets, pollution reduction, self-sufficiency, national security, etc. RECs associated with a community project have the additional attributes of stimulating the local economy, supporting distributed generation, and strengthening community pride.
REC’s from a CCWC project are especially valuable in that you know exactly where they are coming from and that all the purchase price went to supporting that project. CCWC also ensures that RECs from its projects have what is called ‘additionality’. Additionality means that buying those RECs went directly to funding new renewable generation. Many REC’s that are bundled in utility green power programs come from existing projects that would have been built anyway; so what good did paying that extra money do? Also the money spend on utility program RECs often goes primarily to funding the bureaucracy of running the utility REC program and only a fraction ends up with the generator. For instance PSE recently decreased the price of their RECs to $12.50 per megawatt hour, still slightly more than half of that does not end up with the renewable generator. This is an improvement from the $40 per megawatt hour they used to charge and only 1/7th of that ended up with the renewable energy projects (that most likely would have been built anyway). So when you join a utility green power program you are mostly paying for them to have a green power program and not so much paying for the green power itself.
There are three ways to get CCWC RECs
A virtual net metering subscription includes the REC’s you are being renewably powered with a virtual net metering subscription
You can also get a REC subscription from CCWC for the price of a VNM subscription. You don’t save money on your power bill but will get quarterly updates on how much green energy was produced from your subscription. This is a great solution for those who don’t pay their own power bill, or who want to offset a non electrical energy use such as heating or driving, or are on a budget and want to use the power from our projects without the upfront payment of a full subscription.
Any RECs not subscribed to before turbine completion will be sold in bundles for $40 per megawatt hour as they are produced. Great for greening events. All proceeds will be used by the turbine owners to make loans to help start new projects.
You can see in all three instances your REC purchase goes 100 percent to creating a new renewable energy generator that would not exist without your purchases.
