Alternative Energy Is One Click Away

While investing in an alternative energy system for one’s home or business is highly desirable for those with a conscious about their impact on the environment and concern about endlessly rising utility costs, the up front costs can be prohibitively expensive, and there are sometimes physical and regulatory hurdles that must be overcome. Not many individuals, families, or business owners have the $30,000 or more dollars it typically costs to install a solar photovoltaic or mico-wind turbine system to provide renewable green electricity energy for their home or business. Luckily, with the advent of the Internet, Alternative Energy Is Just One Click Away!

What many environmentally conscious consumers do not realize is that alternative energy is just one click away on the Internet. Running one’s home or business on solar or wind powered renewable electricity is as simple as filling out a form on the Internet and clicking “Accept”. A hefty upfront investment is no longer required to use renewable electricity for your home or business. There are now dozens of companies in the United States that offer a wide variety of renewable electricity options that allow electrical consumers to obtain 1% to 100% of their electricity from renewable energy sources. Consumers can sometimes even select the type of renewable electricity energy that they prefer to purchase, such as 100% wind or 100% solar.

There will be no noticeable change in your electrical service, and in many states you will continue to receive one bill from your current utility that breaks out the cost of the renewable electricity that you signed up for and the cost of delivering the electricity to you, which will still be done by your local utility. Your local utility will still be your point of contact if you have a service disruption. They will remain your service provider, despite the fact that you are purchasing your electricity from a renewable energy third-party supplier.

A question many people wonder about is how does this all work? How can one actually purchase renewable electricity from a third-party supplier that then utilizes a local utility to provide the renewable electricity to consumers like yourself? It’s not as if they can install a direct wire from a solar array or wind farm to your home or business. The best way to explain it is that by signing up for renewable electricity, you are buying that electricity from a third-party supplier that must in turn invest in renewable energy projects to meet their customer’s demand for renewable electricity. More demand for renewable electricity means more investment in renewable energy projects, such as solar arrays and wind farms and less investment in traditional electrical energy production sources, such as coal, natural gas, and nuclear powered electricity generating stations.

Of course, there is a cost for purchasing renewable electricity from a third-party supplier. Typically, you can expect to pay from one (1) to five (5) cents more per kilowatt hour (kWh) for renewable electricity, which will be a line item on your utility bill. While using renewable electricity from a third-party supplier is hassle free and helps expand overall renewable energy use, you will not realize the cost savings of generating your energy “off the grid” via your own solar panels or wind turbines. You will still have to pay rate increases imposed by your utility for delivering the renewable electricity to your home or business, and rate increases your renewable electricity third-party supplier imposes. For many, this trade off is worth it since there is no large upfront investment (which can include finance charges), no long term commitment, no regulatory hurdles, and no worries about physical damage to one’s roof.

If you are interested in purchasing renewable electricity from a third-party supplier, the best place to start looking is on a website set up by your state that is dedicated to connecting consumers with third-party renewable electricity suppliers. The two leading renewable electricity third-party suppliers in the United States are Green Mountain Energy (http://www.greenmountainenergy.com/) and Sterling Planet (http://www.sterlingplanet.com/). However, there are many other renewable electricity third-party suppliers throughout the United States, and not all suppliers serve all states, so find ones that serve the state in which you live. In the Internet era, Alternative Energy Is Just One Click Away!