(Mass.) NStar plans to offer wind power alternative - Boston Globe

[Eugene]

Source: Boston Globe

Tuesday, July 24, 2007
NStar plans to offer wind power alternative

The Boston utility NStar plans to allow its residential and small
business customers to buy their electricity from environmentally
friendly wind farms -- for a price.

In a first of its kind for Massachusetts utilities, NStar is proposing
to let its 1.1 million electric customers in Boston and 80 eastern
Massachusetts cities and towns buy their power directly from a
wind farm in upstate New York and a second under development
in Maine.

Because the wind farms are more expensive than conventional
sources like coal and nuclear power, a typical homeowner would
pay a premium of about $7.50 to $15 monthly. The program, being
announced today, will need approval from state utility regulators
before it is launched, which could be as soon as Jan. 1.

Other utilities in Massachusetts and other states have launched so-
called green power programs, such as National Grid USA's GreenUp.
...

-snip-

The two major differences with NStar's plan is that it will have the
direct marketing power of the $3 billion utility behind it, and
customers will be paying for electricity from the 195-turbine Maple
Ridge wind project near Camp Drum in upstate New York and from a
44-tower wind project now under development at Kibby Mountain in
Maine expected to open by 2009.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2007/07/nstar_plans_to_1.html

[rox63]

1. National Grid already allows you to buy green power

I just signed up for their "Green Up" option here in MA. All of my electricity will come from a combination of wind, solar and low-impact hydro power.

[skids]

2. Here in South Hadley...

...we have a tiny utility, which I believe has some power coming from the Chicopee River dam, but of course that's supplemented/bought/sold/traded and all mixed in with other sources. Unfortunately if there is any way to buy greener KWh here I haven't heard of it.

I'm still amused by the Xcel people that signed on and then ended up paying less than fossil fuel users when natgas prices spiked.

[Eugene]

3. NStar's wind plan is illegal, rival says - Boston Globe

Source: Boston Globe

NStar's wind plan is illegal, rival says
Provider says utilities can only deliver power

By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff | July 26, 2007

Boston utility NStar's plan to let customers buy wind-generated
electricity is running into a gale of opposition from a rival "green
power" provider, who said yesterday NStar's program would
violate state law.

Although Attorney General Martha Coakley and the Conservation
Law Foundation, a Boston legal-environmental group, are backing
the NStar plan, Larry Chretien, executive director of the
Massachusetts Energy Consumers Alliance, said it violates the
1997 state utility restructuring law.

That law, Chretien said, limits utilities to being "distribution
companies" that deliver power that customers buy through the
utility from independent third-party energy producers and means
NStar can't legally become the supplier of power through
contracts with wind farms in upstate New York and Maine. NStar
plans to begin offering wind power by Jan. 1, pending state
approval.

-snip-

Read more: http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2007/07/26/nstars_wind_plan_is_illegal_rival_says