Until relatively recently New York State Residents were not able to choose their energy supplier. They were limited by whoever was the utility company responsible for supplying the power to whatever area they were living in.

Today, however, consumers can choose among a large number of ESCOs (Energy Service Companies/Energy Supply Companies) such as IDT Energy and others as their energy supplier.

This choice gives the consumer the option of picking among many companies which are now in competition for customers and are forced to provide the best possible services and prices in order to maintain their competitive advantage.

When researching which company is best for you, remember to look not only for good prices but whether there is an option to buy “green”, that is, to include some of your power sources from renewable energy technologies such as solar, wind or biomass.

In New York City consumers can choose to either continue with Con Ed (Consolidated Edison) as their supplier as well deliverer of power; or they can choose among many ESCOs  for energy supply, including IDT Energy , Direct Energy, Ambit Energy, and many others.

A committee of the U.S. Senate has decided to create a bank under the auspices of the Energy Department to distribute government loans and loan guarantees for projects which promote green energy using advanced technology.

The goal of this initiative is to support technologies that are environmentally friendly which also diversifies the country’s supply of energy and also reduces dangerous carbon emissions.

The Congress will appropriate about $10 billion to this new agency/bank.

The committee is hoping to finish the wording for the energy bill before May 22, the day that the Memorial Day recess begins.

Typically when we size a renewable energy system, because of the higher cost of larger wire, we usually will allow and account for a 2% line drop loss. Although, we don’t really follow this rule when it comes to battery cables. Oversize your battery cable and shoot for a 0% loss. American Wire Gauge (AWG) #4/0 is the minimum wire size we suggest for typical battery banks, but 500 MCM sounds good too. All right I’m kidding, 500 MCM is far too difficult to work with. We generally use X-Flex #4/0 cable, similar to welding cable with its fine strands and flexibility. Flexible cable is a lot more cooperative and can make your short battery-to-battery connections and longer runs much easier to deal with. You’ll find that Trace inverters don’t give us much room to work with so flexible leads are pretty important although Outback Power Systems has done a super job of making this much less of an issue with their well designed system components. The point is, in low voltage systems we need all the current carrying capacity we can get. We don’t want our cable size to strangle our batteries and we don’t want any high resistance connections interfering with our flow. A big pipeline will reduce resistance and give us a greater load surge capacity.

California Power Companies are obviously feeling the heat. Grid-tie systems are an extremely attractive option for those looking to go solar. When you take batteries out of a PV system you eliminate a costly component that requires maintenance. In turn, this eliminates the need for charge controllers, a large amount of wiring, disconnects, fuses, etc. This makes the cost associated with going solar plumet to a much more manageable level making solar financially available for most people. When we “do the math” on grid tied systems, we usually find very near term investment returns with the Net Metering laws on the books. For those of you that don’t know, grid tie systems offset our power consumption by spinning our meters backward whenever there is surplus power from our panels. In Net-metering states, California for example, the kW’s we send back into the grid are worth the same as the kW’s coming in. The power companies are trying to tax our use of the grid to bring the price they pay us for our power down to their “avoided cost,” the price they pay for power, instead of what they resell it to us for. This would negate the whole purpose of Net Metering and is only a ploy from electric companies to maintain their pollutive monopoly. The verdict is in, CPUC Rules Against Solar Tax! This is obviously a huge win for renewables. Visit SEIA