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Thank GOD I live in Texas (Katy, TX just west of Houston) were I can choose my own re-seller. My 12 month contract is 5 cents per kw hour. Last month, paid under 50 bucks in electricity. That's right bitches! We got smart people that can actually read and understand the free market to make it work. Last time they deregulaed the market in California, it was an epic fail. Again, exact opposite in Texas, we know how to make it work!

http://www.powertochoose.org/

I kind of get the solar/wind power buyers who pay more. There are a smattering of people for whom paying extra for "renewable" power has some religious meaning even though the actual power they use may be from non-renewable sources. Fine. We salute your noble personal sacrifice for the cause of sustaining renewable energy.

What I completely don't get is why someone would be an *Apple" renewable power buyer. I see renewable as the basic "brand" here and don't understand why anyone would specify Apple power. Even device fandom doesn't explain it to me.

This looks mostly like a set of corporate constructs to lessen the regulatory burden and increase Apple's flexibility to both sell its excess power and maximize whatever financial advantages it has in terms of tax structure.

It seems to me like one of the weird side effects of massive profitability and lack of investment in product diversity or expansion is that some companies seem to be drifting into almost financial company status, where the business imperative shifts to structural tactics to expand profitability versus expanding the existing core business.

GE kind of did this a decade or so ago, where its finance unit became so important to the business that some people thought the company should be evaluated as a financial company not a manufacturer.

That's exactly what it is. Deregulation of the electricity market sent us on this path in many states. Deregulation created new job titles like "Energy Trader" and "Energy Market Analyst". Such people get paid very handsomely to play the energy market exactly as if it were a stock market.

Setting up a "power company" doesn't even require physical infrastructure of any kind anymore. You can set up the appropriate legal entities, purchase electricity in bulk wholesale, market your "service" to the public, and sell to individual consumers all from the comfort of your home office. The Texas electricity supplier market is full of such "paper" utilities. Every state is a little different, but that appears to be the mechanism by which Apple is doing this.

As far as I know, it is very unusual for a company to sell their excess power like this. A more common arrangement is to have a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA), which is basically a contract to buy X MW-h at Y price for a term of Z years (10-20 years generally). Then, if the company has excess electricity, it sells to the grid at the wholesale price. There is often ample opportunity for making huge profits using this method since the PPA price can, and often is, much lower than market rate. This allows entities such as large hospitals to run on PPA power most of the time, use their emergency generators for emergencies, but also fire up their generators on days when the market electricity price is very high for extra cash. This type of structure is good for the market since it gives critical electricity users reliable and redundant power options, and also gives the grid excess emergency capacity.

As someone in the industry, this development of a company selling electricity directly to consumers is somewhat troubling. These "paper" utilities cause enough problems- many of them use confusing and predatory marketing and pricing plans. I truly believe we need to sort out those deregulation issues before we allow even more non-utility companies to enter the fray. Electricity used to be a trusted market, where people may have paid too much, but the pricing was honest and everyone generally got the same deal. All the nontraditional players entering the market are turning it into something more like the life insurance market where the sleaziest sales teams are the biggest winners.

Correct. Anyone who says otherwise doesn't live in Texas; a state built on sanity, unlike Cali. It's nice that aside from Alaska and Hawaii, we are the only other state that has its own electric grid. Currently, I'm paying just under $0.09 per kWh on average w/ 12 month contract. Love it!!!!

http://www.powertochoose.org/

Too late. That and variations on it have been tried in several countries -- so far with little success as far as changing outcomes is concerned.

From what I remember (and it may be urban legend as it has been a long while since I heard of it) some guy once registered a whole bunch of phone companies with names like "anyone", "the first one" etc. So that when people were wanting to be connected by the operator (this was way back when) and the operator asked them which long distance service to use the callers not caring who they were routed through replied with things like "anyone" etc so that their response matched one of these companies. The operator then duly connected them via the explicitly named company. The kicker was that it the back end he leased his service from the main players but charged a huge premium above what a regular long service would charge.

I would not be surprised whatsoever if that were true. In Texas, we have an electricity market and can choose the company that generates our electricity. When I lived in Connecticut, they had the same sort of market. Some of the companies are actual electricity producers (Reliant/NRG, Startex/Constellation/Exelon, etc) while some are just utilities on paper. The paper utilities range from active ones, who buy and sell electricity on the market minute by minute, to passive ones, who basically just resell at a higher price. The resellers at the bottom are of varying grades of sleaziness. I've seen lawn signs planted on public land advertising electricity at about 20% higher than average. Same scam, different implementation.

I'm paying roughly $0.105/kWh here in Texas where the energy produced is only from 8% renewable (per the EFL). When I was on a 100% renewable wind contract, think I was paying $0.123/kWh hour. Of course, the actual power generation isn't really distributed to my home. But it is being used in place of fossil fuels somewhere else on the grid.

Ever since Texas had deregulated markets where the resident could chose from REPs, prices got cheaper. The trick is to keep jumping from REP to REP after each contract expires. Otherwise, you will fall back to market value prices (inflated) and the current REP won't offer you the same deal that it does for new customers. So again, to save money expect to jump from REP to REP each year. It's a painless process really. They just make shitloads of money off people too lazy or complacent in paying the bill without really paying attention. FYI, I jumped from Tara Energy to TXU. I've heard bad things about TXU, but the deal was too good to pass up. After this contract is up, I'll be jumping ship again. I recommend Tera Energy by the way. I would have stayed with them had they offered me a better deal on contract renewal, but they were too late in continued negotiations as I already signed up with TXU, but I digress.

http://www.powertochoose.org/

The main problem is that utility companies are for-profit. Your electricity should not be run by a for-profit organization, period

Not this. Not this at all.

Oddly, Texas is doing it correctly. I was able to choose who provides my electricity. The rates are competitive. If I wish to get my power generated from windmills, or solar, or magical rainbow farting unicorns, I could simply pay a different provider. They have a handy website too.

In Houston, TX I have (as of this moment in my ZIP code) 259 service providers to contract out my electricity. Price per kWh ranges from 6.9 cents to 15.3 cents. I seriously doubt all 259 will work together to screw customers over with shady contracts. This isn't the cell phone industry were talking about.

http://www.powertochoose.org/

You can't switch electric companies like you can cell phone companies.

In your state (and Minnesota?), that might be true. In mine, it's not. I have the choice of many power generation companies:

http://powertochoose.org/

I can choose variable rates or fix my electricity rate for up to 24 months. I can also choose electricity solely from renewable sources (it's usually a fraction of a cent per kilowatt-hour more, compared to non-renewable sources from the same provider).

Rather than imposing a tax on producers, Minnesota legislators should consider giving consumers this kind of choice and let each individual decide whether they want to pay more for electricity from a renewable source.

The funny thing is: renewable sources are reportedly the least popular in the most "liberal" parts of Texas. I guess that when it's time to write that check, the money in their wallet is "greener" than their desire to save the planet.

http://www.powertochoose.org/_content/_compare/showoffers.aspx
Cheapest 100% clean electricity I found is $0.111 / KWHr.
Cheapest "Dirty" electricity I found is $0.102 / KWHr.
How is 11.1 THREE TIMES as expensive as 10.2?

I defy anyone to point me to an occasion anywhere where a utility has decreased prices to consumers once they got the increase they wanted from the PSC. Hell, I defy anyone to show where any of this renewable powerplant technology has had the effect of lowering the cost to end consumers.

In Texas, consumers choose their electricity generator. A portion of the bill is paid to the incumbent that provides transmission and delivery. The Texas Public Utility Commission (PUC) runs a website that summarizes all of the offers:

http://www.powertochoose.org/

Cutting to the chase: there's a webpage that shows all the generators offering service for your ZIP code. Enter a ZIP code in one of the big metro areas, and you'll see lots of choices that can be sorted by various factors:

• Average Price/kilowatt hour
• Rate Type (fixed, variable)
• Renewable energy content
• Term (in months)

You can also filter on any or all of these factors. I just committed to another year, choosing a plan that was 100% renewable energy content. The generation company offers otherwise equivalent plans with renewable and non-renewable content, and the 100% renewable content is exactly 0.2 cents/kWh more than non-renewable.

The renewable energy is indeed more expensive, but only a bit more than 1%. But in Texas, the problem is transmission: we are on our own grid (separate from western and eastern US grid), with limited interconnection to the others. So, renewable energy must come from within the state, and there's a limited amount of it.

BTW, The Texas PUC no longer sets electric rates, except for the "Provider of Last Resort": the electricity generator that is automatically chosen for a customer if their current generator is unable to provide service.

In Texas they deregulated the power companies and it has worked out quite well http://www.powertochoose.org/electricchoice/changed.asp/

It has increased competition and lowered prices.

I think several of the things I mentioned would also work in Texas, but it's true that different places do have different problems. I use a lot of energy to heat my house, whereas I suppose you use a lot of energy to cool yours. So some of the solutions may be different, but they do exist. For example, I suspect that solar power has a lot more potential for you than it does for me. And with three times the land area you have plenty of space for wind farms, in fact the BBC reported that "According to a US Department of Energy study, most of the electricity needs of the whole country could be provided by the wind power potential of three states: Kansas, North Dakota and Texas". Anyway, although I can't speak from personal experience of living in Texas, here are some made-in-Texas ideas.