Bringing Clean Energy To Connecticut

To the Editor:

Recently The Bee reported on the desire to have the town purchase clean energy. I support this initiative and have researched the topic over the past winter to provide alternatives for the company I work for.

Since I was not at the recent meeting, I’ll assume the following point was covered, but it was not mentioned in the article, in fact there is a slight misstatement from Ms Quinn.

“A homeowner paying about $150 a month for electricity on a conventional program would end up paying about 25–40 cents a day more on average to ‘receive’ clean generated power.”

First, when I researched Community Energy last fall, the cost for going green was about 1.2 cents higher per kilowatt hour more than conventionally generated energy.

Also, a homeowner or business in Newtown, will most likely not receive clean generated energy unless new clean production is developed here in Connecticut.

Electricity is normally consumed from the closest point of production, which saves on energy loss through resistance of hundreds of miles of wire.

Therefore, it is unlikely that the actual electricity produced by wind farms in Pennsylvania or hydropower in the Southeast would actually make it to Connecticut.

When most companies sell green, they don’t actually guarantee that green energy is delivered to you (unless they build a plant on your site), they are just selling their production somewhere else into the grid, but you get to take the credit for it since you paid the higher price.

I would suggest the town managers ask about the plans the energy company would have in developing production in Connecticut, and also to check production and sales records to make sure there is production capacity to take on another large client.

Sincerely,

Keith Thompson

20 Mount Nebo Road, Newtown                                      July 24, 2007