British Gas Electricity

[BoxBasher]

If what JohnD wrote is accurate, and I have every reason to trust him, then your employer can't possibly know that it's using only green electricity.

It depends.

If you use X amount of electricity, and you then commission an equal amount to be generated and pumped into the National Grid by a "green" company then you can argue that your demand is met by the supply and you aren't increasing the demand on the mucky generation systems...

The company I work for actually runs one of its wastewater sites is entirely self-sufficient when it comes to electricity. Power is generated via turbines powered by gas made in the digestion of sludge from human effluent (posh phrase for sh1t). At certain parts of the day it actually puts power back into the national grid.

 

[JohnD]

In the case of hydro-electric, once you have built the plant, it costs very little to run. So if you have a billion metres of water behind the dam, you're going to use it all, and generate a billion bucketfuls of electricity which you will sell for the best price you can get. If the co-op offers to pay you a premium price for it, you can take their money, but you can't generate any extra electricity from the billion metres of water, whatever the price.

AFAIK, only one significant new hydro-electric scheme has been (is being) built in the last 50 years.

edited: Corrected to 50 years (it's Glendoe, by Loch Ness)

 

[Softus]

Apologies for not being overly clear.

On the contrary - I think you were clear, it's just that I disagree with your conclusion.

The company I work for only pays for green energy. The green energy contracts are written, if im correct, so that for the amount of energy the supplier sells to the green customers, the supplier will buy an equal amount of green energy from the market, thus creating a balance.

It's a nice idea, but I think that's an impractical proposition. Just imagine the amount of time it must take for new and cancelled contracts to filter through the administrative layers and reach those who decide how many buckets they should fill.

For the second quote, I was referring to electric being bought in batches - the energy used by the customers on green contracts must be equal to or less than the amount of green energy bought by the supplier, in order for the green contracts to be legit.

It always makes me suspicious when I see the words "must be", because it suggests that your conclusion is either the only logical one, or the only one that you're able to imagine.

No offence intended Crafty, but I think your view is a bit naive - I suspect the period over which green energy sold must balance green energy generated is rather large, with a correspondingly large hysteresis.

And the final quote - The more people sign up to green energy, the more green energy will be produced to meet demand.

Well, yes, that makes a kind of inevitable sense.