About 6 weeks ago I made the switch to Green electricity by enrolling with Bullfrog Power (www.bullfrogpower.com).
Semantics aside, the electricity consumed by our house-hold now comes from 100% renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and hydro-electric dams.
It works like this, Bullfrog feeds back into the electrical grid, the same amount of electricity consumed by Bullfrog customers. By doing so, we collectively reduce the burden on Ontario's coal and nuclear power plants and reducing harmful emissions.
Of course there is a cost :-) Instead of paying 5.3 cents per kilowatt hour, I pay 9.1 cents. When I tell people this, they freak out because they think their energy costs are going to double, but what most people don't understand is that distribution costs make up the majority of your electricity bill not your actual energy consumption. Bullfrog says it costs only $1/day more, but based on my monthly electricity usage, its actually a little less. I consume an average of 18kwh of electricity per day. At that rate, switching to Bullfrog costs me an extra 66.6 cents/day or a whopping $240/year!
Not on that, but they have a super cool feature that lets you graph your consumption. This is a graph of my actual consumption for the last 3 years. I'm spotting an upward trend here - I'm trying to figure out why this is the case!
Aside from feeling good, switching to Bullfrog has many positive outcomes:
- We reduce our dependency on coal and nuclear sources of energy.
- We take the strain off the province's maximized electricity grid.
- We reduce the need to build additional coal and nuclear plants.
- We send a message to the energy companies that we want a green alternative.
I recall reading in the newspaper a few months ago about the argument against building wind farms off the coast of eastern Canada because people felt it would ruin the view. People didn't want to see wind turbines spinning out in the middle of the ocean as they look out from shore.
Its funny, people don't seem to feel the same way towards gas stations that clutter our towns everywhere you look.
1 comment:
Our household just celebrated our first anniversary as Bullfrog Power customers in Ottawa. On the final tally we saved 2.0 tonnes of CO2 during the year at a total cost of $114 more than we would have paid for polluting electricity. Really, joining Bullfrog Power was a no-brainer for us.
Alette from www.greenlivingottawa.com
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