Canadian Chat → Re: Bullfrog Power -- an interesting concept

The OPG site shows about 50%. Which is still impressive.
»www.powerauthority.on.ca ··· ontracts
I thought it would be less than 10%
Thanks for bringing this to our attention.
I guess a lot of things came together. FIT projects comming online, combined with industry leaving the province, have allowed us to decommission coal plants and tip the ballance.

Edit: Ooops. Re-reading my link, I note that the chart represents contract capacity not actual output or usage. Knowing that, the 2/3 from green sources statement is very plausible since gas is often commissioned as backup for the green sources.

The graph on that page shows 63.6% as clean energy, very nearly two thirds. 21085 MW total, 13,406 MW are clean. Considering the Americans get much of their power from coal, and almost all the non-clean energy in Ontario is the far cleaner natural gas, I think stuff like this "bullfrog" thing is a scam.

Talking about a scam, they want to charge $40 for "green power" in a 2000 sqft house in Quebec.

Quebec gets 96.4% of energy from green sources, almost all of that renewable sources. And these Bullfrog people want $40 a month to somehow improve on that. Total scam.

EDIT: It really is a scam, they just spend the money on PR stuff, they don't actually put your money towards actual green power. Any green power that is generated would be consumed with or without the Bullfrog people. They're just preying upon peoples' sense of guilt. The government should really shut them down for fraud.

Agreed.

Technically it's not a scam, however, there's no way to confirm whether the emissions reduction is being double counted, once by the entity, usually the government, when it sells the electricity wholesale to local utilities, and again by Bullfrog Power when they "sell" the energy to their customers. Consumers should realize though, that they are being double charged if they under contract with Bullfrog Power: The 1st time to pay for the green energy generation at the provincial level sold by the local utility, the 2nd time when they "buy" electricity from Bullfrog Power.

Like all-electric vehicles, this is a niche product only, because the vast majority of customers will not pay a premium that isn't recoverable over the contract term.

When I first signed up several years ago I was a bit skeptical too. I did talk a bit with them via email in '07. My basic understanding is the premium is used to invest in and compensate green energy producers and acts to accelerate the creation of projects faster than what the current government incentives do. It is slightly different than a carbon offset. With a carbon offset for example they might plant X number of trees to compensate for Y amount of carbon to remove what you put in. With bullfrog they promise to create a kWh of green energy for every kWh of energy you use and that it is energy that would not have otherwise been created without their program. (Which is key)

I do agree with the comments that it is niche and not for everybody. My roof is shady so solar isn't a good option. I don't feel like fighting angry mobs near goderich trying to plug a 200 km extension cord directly into one of their wind mills. So for me bullfrog is a good alternative.

Bullfrog definitely encourages conservation in their newsletters and highlights it as way to mitigate the increased costs of their program. I recently got one of those handy power use monitors from them to help identify how much hydro things in my house use.

Does the 2/3 stat for Ontario green energy include nuclear? While nuclear may be renewal (we have lots of atoms don't we?) and IMHO the plants in ontario relatively safe, it isn't considered green by many.

Ok, I see. I was only considering renewable as green. After all, natural gas is a fossil fuel, just like natural coal, but cleaner.
The contract chart will always include significant portions of gas, since to my knowledge, gas is required to back up solar and wind sources on rainy calm days.

Tenant, that chart is what I was expecting to see. Itty bitty slice of wind/solar.

All in all I see no issue with others supporting and promoting BF. it needs to be done.