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Apple Creates Energy Company, Looks To Sell Excess Power Into The Grid (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Mac: Apple has quietly created an energy subsidiary, 'Apple Energy' LLC, registered in Delaware but run from its Cupertino headquarters. The company has seemingly formed to allow it to sell excess electricity generated by its solar farms in Cupertino and Nevada, with plans to sell electricity across the whole of the U.S. But a set of Federal Energy Regulatory Commission filings suggests that Apple could have bigger ambitions in the power field. Currently, when private companies sell their excess power, they can only do so to energy companies -- and they often (varies by state) have to sell at wholesale rates. What Apple seemingly could to do, however, is sell directly to end-users at market rates. In other words, get paid retail prices for its excess power. Currently companies like Green Mountain Power can sell green renewable energy to homeowners all over the U.S. It wouldn't be a stretch to see Apple do this as a product in the future. Apple has told the FERC that it meets the legal criteria for selling electricity at market rates because it is not a major player in the energy business and thus has no power to influence electricity prices. It has requested permission begin within 60 days of its filing on 6th June.
This is a really interesting idea. Make everyone who is connected to the grid pay a fee for the infrastructure. Then let customers buy electricity from whomever they choose.
Actually, competition instead of government-regulated monopolies is a very Republican idea. Most conservatives support deregulation.
My wife makes our own renewable energy at home but I'm sure lazy people would prefer to buy it at the Apple store.
When I hear the word ENRON
Generating the power is one thing. Getting that power to the consumer is a different kettle of eels (electric of course). Those big asses power lines didn't put themselves up or maintain themselves. The grid's owners are going to want enough of a cut of the sales to probably make the project unprofitable, for the near future. I'm not telling Apple anything they don't already know but remember Enron. This was their business plan.
As time goes on, and "unibody aluminum" becomes commoditized, and eventually people are not interested in OSX or iPhones anymore; Apple, with plenty of cash reserves, starts investing more and more in power production, while over time, letting programmers go.
A hundred years from now, everyone thinks of Apple as the power company, and if they know at all, they think it's quaint that Apple started as a computer company, much like we think of Nintendo starting as a trading card company, or Nokia as a wood-pulp mill.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
*Sticks copper and zinc electrodes into an apple*
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
for it to work, you got to hold your devices correctly
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
That's what they like you to believe. In fact, Republicans stand for the status-quo. i.e., standing for big oil, big gas, big electricity or big (insert your favorite lobbying group here). A new player is bad news for Republican's interests.
Same reason they're against any type of green energy, bytheby
Electricity is fungible. It makes no odds which electrons you get, so long as the renewable energy company puts in the same at the other end. That is of course instantaneously impossible. But averaged over a period of time it's not. The more customers green electricity companies get, the more renewable power generators they build.
Apple's self-driving electric vehicle will need charging stations across the 50 states.
Expect them to partner with a roadside diner chain. charge car battery, get a bite to eat while a Genius services your iPad...
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.
Let say a country produces 10% renewable energy. We could say that all clients get 10% of renewable energy, on average. What happens if one client pay more to get only renewable? He/she gets 100% (that is in theory, because in practice the flow of electrons remains the same), while the rest decrease from 10% to 9.999%. No more green energy is produced, or consumed.
Therefore it sounds like a scam to me. In the end it doesn't matter if YOUR energy is renewable or not. What counts is the overall. And that can only be achieved through government regulations.
Is this about branding or about separating Apple Power from Apple Corp so they don't get overloaded with frivolous lawsuits baited by deep pockets?
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
That's what they would like you to believe. In fact Republicans stand for increasing the wealth and power of a small number of ultra-wealthy people.
They stand for the taxpayers subsidizing the wealthy. They stand for destruction of the environment. They stand for denying basic healthcare to the poor. They stand for using the resources of the government to develop their interests abroad.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You just can't appreciate the quality design. Some of us are willing to pay for the superior experience that comes from using Apple energy. Honestly, once you try it, you can't go back to using anything else. Even the so-called high-end electrons from other companies feel cheep and unpolished. Yeah, the specs may seem better on paper, but the brilliantly crafted combination of current and voltage you get from Apple just can't be matched. It's all about the experience.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apple's self-driving electric vehicle will need charging stations across the 50 states.
Expect them to partner with a roadside diner chain. charge car battery, get a bite to eat while a Genius services your iPad...
My God... it'll be beautiful!
And you'll have to buy very expensive Apple white wall outlets because Apple electricity is so insanely cool!
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
No they are not. There are millions of people who claim they are Republican purely because of abortion or some other dumbest religious close minded conservative views they have Yet they make less thank $250,000 per year
But somehow they are able to spell "think" and use punctuation........
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
> Therefore it sounds like a scam to me.
Either you're an idiot or you play one on TV.
I actually buy "green electricity" from a (carefully selected) provider. I don't give a hoot where the *electrons come from* (actually they don't travel very far, they just jitter a very short distance back and forth).
What I care about is where my *money goes to*: a company whose future investments will be renewables.
Of course, government involvement can do quite a bit as can be seen in what happened in Germany. These days, alas, they have been subverted by energy lobby groups.
So yes, call the governments out, do your thing as a citizen, but never forget: many "up there" are just mercenaries. Going to elections ain't enough, you have to vote with your wallet too. You gotta "vote" by any means available to you to make a difference.
Maths fail.
You are assuming that the total amount of renewable energy stays 10%. It doesn't. When one customer goes 100% renewable, the extra money they pay (not a lot in my case) goes to building additional renewable capacity, and favouring it when buying power. Demand for non-renewable energy falls.
So the percentage of renewable energy does increase, rather than simply transferring some from one customer to another. It also demonstrates increased demand, which attracts investors, so the effect is amplified.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
big oil, big gas, big electricity or big (insert your favorite lobbying group here).
Big Green Energy?
Same reason they're against any type of green energy, bytheby
Oops! I guess that doesn't quite work . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Let say a country produces 10% renewable energy. We could say that all clients get 10% of renewable energy, on average. What happens if one client pay more to get only renewable? He/she gets 100% (that is in theory, because in practice the flow of electrons remains the same), while the rest decrease from 10% to 9.999%. No more green energy is produced, or consumed.
Therefore it sounds like a scam to me. In the end it doesn't matter if YOUR energy is renewable or not. What counts is the overall. And that can only be achieved through government regulations.
It is just a game. Utilities have used the 'green power' option to get some customers to willingly pay more, they don't have to do a thing but make sure that they don't charge for more MWhs than they produce from renewables over a period of time. Since they'll be producing that power anyhow, the customer is not influencing anything. So in reality at a given time they may not be producing enough 'green' energy to supply all the 'green' contracts demand.
BTW, look at that Green Mountain Power link in the summary, you'll see the clearly fake customer quotes. No way would I ever contract with them.
Having a seperate energy company selling to end users can make sense.
Imagine you have 2MW power generation capacity, and you need 2MW for your own (in this case datacenter) usage, and you have the brand to attract end customers.
You could use your own power - but why, when instead you could sell 2MW "green" energy at the higher market rate to end users, and buy 2 MW "dirty power" at the lower wholesale rate, and keep the price difference.
c'ya haegar
He/she gets 100% (that is in theory, because in practice the flow of electrons remains the same), while the rest decrease from 10% to 9.999%. No more green energy is produced, or consumed.
As I explained, on average enough green electricity is generated to match the usage of those on green tariffs. Your scenario can only happen when the electric company is already exceeding their responsibility to provide green electricity. As extra consumers sign on for green power, the electric company would fall behind their responsibility and have to create more green generation capacity.
If this sounds like a scam to you, then you didn't understand it.
Don't get me wrong though, I'd prefer government regulations pushing ever upwards towards 100% renewable.
Actually, as electricity is supplied as AC, you just get the same electrons over and over again, first pushed into your device, and then pulled out, etc etc. Damn you electricity companies, making us pay for our own electrons, time and time again.
You can, however, simply buy power from the cheapest provider and then simply buy the Renewable Energy Credits yourself. No need to enrich the middle man. Result is exactly the same.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
A hundred years from now, everyone thinks of Apple as the power company, and if they know at all, they think it's quaint that Apple started as a computer company, much like we think of Nintendo starting as a trading card company, or Nokia as a wood-pulp mill.
Apple isn't becoming a power company. They are selling excess generating capacity. That's it. Nothing to see here. They are making a little extra cash off of an underutilized asset. Building a solar farm generates capacity in a step function. You can't scale it exactly to your need so you have to buy a bit extra. You can then sell this extra capacity very cheaply because it costs very little to operate. The expensive bit was buying it in the first place. For solar there aren't even any input costs, just a bit of administration and maintenance. So they'll add a tiny bit to the bottom line and do it with clean energy. Nothing super exciting.
You just can't appreciate the quality design. Some of us are willing to pay for the superior experience that comes from using Apple energy. Honestly, once you try it, you can't go back to using anything else. Even the so-called high-end electrons from other companies feel cheep and unpolished. Yeah, the specs may seem better on paper, but the brilliantly crafted combination of current and voltage you get from Apple just can't be matched. It's all about the experience.
To me, the big thing about it is that Apple energy just works. I don't have to worry about appliance compatibility, stuff like that. It's really worth paying a bit more. Plus, they now have electrons in a couple of different finishes. We still just use "space grey", but I think my older son is talking about using "gold" electrons when he gets out on his own.
Do you have ESP?
And Apple Energy will only power Apple devices. It won't work with other electronics.
I didn't say 10% of expected demand, I said 10% of total production. But anyways, that was just an example.
As long as there are enough people paying more for green electricity. But renewable production didn't start at 0 and people paying for green electricity did. So it was a scam at least for a while, not convinced it is no longer the case.
I would imagine the reason is so they can buy from themselves at locations where solar isn't viable for retail and remote offices. There might be a smattering of other reasons, but their own non-renewable energy consumption in the US is likely the primary driver. But, once you go that far, why not take advantage of the opportunity to sell to others?
This story is like this story.
Apple has generation capability. At times, they will have excess capacity. Selling that capacity back on the grid is a no-brainer. Setting up a specific legal entity for those purposes is also a no-brainer. And the analysis is self-contradicting; they say that Apple "could" seemingly seek to start selling power and get into the power utility business, "across the whole of the U.S." But their FERC filing has them taking the explicit...and non-trivial, by the way...stance that they most certainly are NOT a utility and have no plans to be. They're simply using clever legal rationale to make a case for charging a retail rate for their power, rather than the wholesale rate.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
You just can't appreciate the quality design. Some of us are willing to pay for the superior experience that comes from using Apple energy.
And I only have solid silver Monster brand wiring in my house. You can literally feel the quality of the electricity.
Peace is easy to achieve, just surrender. Liberty is much harder get/keep.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Is that why a Republican President (along with Republican-dominated Congress) allowed the fuck-ups like Enron, MCI, and Lehman Brothers to collapse, while a Democratic one bailed out GM, Chrysler (not the first one), and AIG?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I wonder what the proprietary Apple connector will look like...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
As I explained, on average enough green electricity is generated to match the usage of those on green tariffs.
That is only if you suppose those green tariffs are the only driving force for renewable electricity production. It isn't. Sometimes renewable is cheaper than the alternatives (hydro, mostly), governments may also enact some regulations favoring renewable.
Even if nobody paid the green tariff, there would still be some renewable production.
Don't forget that it doesn't stop at country borders. Quebec has over 98% of its production from renewable. If someone in San Francisco pays the green tariff, a US utility might end-up importing from Quebec. Quebec won't consume any less electricity so it will in turn import from coal or gas producers in the USA.
There is no green tariff in Quebec (why would they, with 98% renewable there is no point) so nobody will notice.
Your scenario can only happen when the electric company is already exceeding their responsibility to provide green electricity.
What makes you think it isn't the case in the USA? I read the production is 13% renewable. Is there 13% of the clients (or I should say clients representing 13% of the total production) paying that green tariff?
Though to get the fullest potential from your Apple Energy, you really need the right cables. Apple has partnered with Monster Cables to provide you with the best in energy transport technology. Though it does come at a price, at 300$ per 6ft of cable, it is going to cost you a bit more than the basic copper those utility companies are going to give you, but do you really want to trust your important devices to that?
It would seem like the best thing to do is to nuke the paper utilities by requiring anyone having utility status to be capable of demand generating some minimum threshold quantity of power, like 5 megawatt hours per day.
This would cut out all the non-producers simply looking to arbitrage the wholesale market, but be small enough that legitimate alternative producers could enter the market as well as self-producers (large backup generators or industrial plants with on-site power generation) still able to participate.
Not quite. Voltage isn't about the directions the electrons are going. However, the electrons do go to your device and back in a large loop (through the ground).
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
So Apple produces a crap ton of devices that ... use electricity. And with the possible move to sell electric cars... Does this not represent a competing interest and possible conflict of interest? If you're buying your electricity from the person making the electric devices, do they still have the same incentive to make energy efficient devices?
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Big Green Energy?
I can see their spokesperson now. He used to shill canned vegetables, but has moved on.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
God, I hope not, that would be a terrible future. "Renewable Power" isn't reliable, so 100% renewables would lead to rolling blackouts, or wouldn't be 100% renewables.
"Renewable Power" is a broad category. You are thinking narrowly of things like solar and wind, and ignoring nascent trends toward energy storage using increasingly creative methods.
But please, by all means, go ahead and continue to be close minded. That's the sure-fire proven way toward progress. ~
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.
That is only if you suppose those green tariffs are the only driving force for renewable electricity production. It isn't. Sometimes renewable is cheaper than the alternatives (hydro, mostly), governments may also enact some regulations favoring renewable.
People who pay for green tariffs want as much renewables as possible. So if there are other drivers too, that's even better. It's not a drawback.
What makes you think it isn't the case in the USA? I read the production is 13% renewable. Is there 13% of the clients (or I should say clients representing 13% of the total production) paying that green tariff?
It's per company.
That's not true. Hydro and batteries can smooth the gaps. And if you have a wide variety of sources, and a spread of locations, the gaps will be few.
But in any case, the fact is that we have to transition to renewables, because non-renewables, by definition, won't last forever.