Vermont Launches 'Cow Power' System

odyaws writes "Central Vermont Public Service has launched Cow Power, a system by which power users can opt to buy 25, 50, or 100% of their electricity from dairy farms that run generators on methane obtained from cow manure. Cow Power costs only 4 cents/kWh more than market price, so a household like mine would only pay $5-6/month more at 100% usage. The big question now is whether Vermont-based Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream will use power generated from the manure of cows treated with Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone."

Comments

Economy!

[PresidentEnder]

To be honest, I don't care about the environment. I ride my bike because it's cheap, not because it saves trees and whales and penguins (or, for that matter, humans).

Given the way market forces work, it wouldn't surprise me if this eventually fell to a price comparable with regular power, and stopped billing seperately. I mean, seriously, what else are they going to do with this stuff?

Re:What it actually costs

[Doc Ruby]

We're going to spend a $TRILLION on the Iraq War, and we're paying at least 50% more for gas than before we invaded. If we all ran on cow power, we'd have saved at least that amount. How do you like it?

Re:Yes, we are cheapass

[stonecypher]

by paying an extra 1.6 cent/kwhr ... I am almost completely green for $120 a year.

Wow, when did the Amish hit slashdot? Given a 200w power supply consumes 144kWh/mo assuming a 30-day month, that's $28/year for the PC alone. If you honestly think you're running a truck and a house on four and a quarter modest PCs' worth of power, then you need to replace your calculator. Apparently it's getting bad results on all the low voltage.

(Don't even try to tell me it's a margin issue. I'm measuring margin size. $120 margin / 144 * 12 * (365.25/360) is the margin size.)

For a sense of scale, at this margin, the average air conditioner will consume about $270 per year. A Toyota Prius gets about 10 kilowatt hours per gallon of gasoline (search for "500w of battery drain"), and the government says it gets 55 mpg, so even if your pickup was actually an efficient car, your 1.6 cent per kilowatt hour margin will consume (10/55)*1.6 = 0.18 kilowatt hours per mile. The government cites national gas price averages every Monday, which yesterday was $2.97. Therefore, you will burn $120 of margin in (12000 / 0.1818 / 297.3) = 221.99 miles. This means that if you have no power drain at all in your house - you don't even have anything plugged in and turned off - then you drive on average 0.6077 miles per day. Most people drive more than that just getting to the grocery store twice a month.

(I actually did the math as one big equation, to get around rounding error. If you do it yourself based on my averages above, you're gonna see 0.586. I didn't feel like writing out everything to 20 places.)

Yeah, dude, you're a bastion of cheap green energy. Time to check your numbers.