Saturday, September 22, 2012

How To Sell Electricity Guide

By Casandra Newton


Residents and entrepreneurs in regions where the power supply is expensive and erratic may often wonder how to sell electricity. There is no simple answer because it is based on the feasibility of producing excess renewable energy at the location in question. Not to mention state laws and utility company policies governing the purchase and sale of energy.

Selling power back to the grid is always going to be easier in states that have net metering laws. This means they have to purchase power back from consumers at the same rate at which they sell it. This provides consumers with the financial motivation to install the setup required to produce renewable energy.

As a practical matter, it needs a net meter. This meter can add units when power is being taken from the grid or remove units from the total when power is fed into the grid. In this way, the consumer only gets a net bill where the power fed into the grid has been subtracted from the overall amount consumed.

If the customer has fed in more power into the grid than was taken, then the utility company owes the customer. In this case, some companies will pay cash while others will carry forward the difference on to the next billing cycle. State laws do not govern this issue, so it is usually decided by the utility company's power purchase policies.

A solar panel setup or wind turbine is going to be the best choice for both commercial and residential power production on a small scale. The choice between these two depends on the area in question. Rural settings with wide open spaces will benefit from a wind turbine while urban structures will find it more feasible to install a solar panel array on the roof.

The next step is determining whether to store the produced energy in batteries or link it up directly to the grid. Energy stored in batteries needs to be reconverted to AC using an inverter. On-grid systems produce two products that can be sold separately. One is the actual electricity sent to the grid and the other is an REC (renewable energy credit).

As per EPA regulations, one REC is created for every 1000 kilowatt-hours. The utility pays the seller for the metered amount of power and for each REC. This REC can also be sold separately to another buyer who wants to balance energy production from non-renewable sources such as fossil fuels.

A huge amount of money is being poured into R&D and testing of innovative business models. Plugged-in electric vehicles are being considered as a distributed set of storage units that can be tapped for power. Several countries have adopted a Feed-in Tariff (FIT) program where consumers are paid to use their own renewable energy.

Consumers covered by an FIT scheme additionally make money by selling excess power and by not having to pay the utility bills. Considering all this, it's fair to say that the real problem is not how to sell electricity or what to do with it after it is produced. The main hurdle is setting up a system capable of producing enough renewable energy for both personal use and sale.




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