Neighbors May Soon Help Power Each Other
The new energy paradigm beginning to rear its head is for residential renewable energy systems to sell excess energy they produce to their neighbors. Utility companies now buy excess residential energy for little or nothing so a new system is being born. Technology is reaching a certain point where residential renewable energy systems can interact with the grid in such a way that whenever there’s high demand, a shortage, or a spike it will be responded to in an effective way automatically. If the utility companies want to stay in business this technology needs to be implemented quickly because more and more households are simply going off the grid due to the increasing benefits.
PG&E Offering $800 Electric Vehicle Rebate
Right now you can receive an $800 rebate from PG&E under the right circumstances for having an electric vehicle. As long as you’re an active client of PG&E, own or lease an eligible plug-in electric vehicle, and have your car’s registration up to date you are eligible for this rebate. However, PG&E does say funds are limited and it’s first come serve so it’s hard to say how long this will last. Also, you can only get one rebate per car in its lifetime so you may wanna save it for another time if you’re not strapped for cash right now. This rebate comes from a State of California program called the Low Carbon Fuel Standard. The goal of this program is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transportation by encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles. Clean electricity used to fuel electric vehicles has helped reduce green house gas emissions by 66 percent so far in California!
Solar and Wind Production Surpasses All other Energy Sources this January
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) just released data that shows new solar and wind generation created for the first month of this year was more than any other energy source including natural gas. FERC’s Data also shows that all combined renewables (i.e., solar, wind, hydro power, geothermal, biomass) now produces 21% of the total US generating capacity. That’s up from 16% five years ago so it’s going up about a percentage point every year. Total renewable generation capacity is at 254 GW and looks to surpass the total generation by coal in the US as well which is at 264 GW by the end of this year. This is all very exciting news for the energy revolution as all signs are pointing green!