Tuesday, January 11, 2011

The Electricity is Free, as Long as You Pay for the Power

What would be your say to an offer by someone (or a company) who comes to you with a proposal that you find logical enough and hard to refuse?

Say this: A representative of a company comes to your house and offer you to pay his company a cheaper rate (or at a preset price) of what you pay for your electricity bills (to TNB) -- and all you have to do is sign an agreement for his company to set-up some photovoltaic solar panels on your roof and chargers in your house for free. And this agreement would last up to 20 years or according to your needs.

The good news is that you only have to pay the average cost of energy the year they install the panels. 

So, basically, it costs you nothing. You pay the same amount (or cheaper) for the energy as you paid for the dirty energy from the your local electricity supplier (TNB), and you're sheltered from price increases.

This is what is happening in the United States now.

A company in Colorado Citizenre, came along with this idea and is offering to put solar panels on your house at absolutely no cost. But, those solar panels will not be yours. Just sign up for their 25 year plan, and you don't even have to put down a security deposit! 

The deal is you get to use the green power from your solar panels, but you have to pay the company for it. Continue reading here.

Another start-up company in the US SunEdison also made this offer to a US electronics and office supplier Staples.

Staples find that it couldn't refuse the offer — employing a financial model that could give solar the edge it needs if it's to provide a significant portion of the world's energy.

Under SunEdison's plan, Staples would get solar panels on its retail rooftops at no upfront cost and without any monthly equipment fee. Instead, it would agree to pay SunEdison a preset rate for the power the panels generate over a period of 20 years.

Jigar Shah, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, SunEdison
Staples has now installed about 10 megawatts of solar capacity at more than three dozen sites — the equivalent of 2,000 typical household solar installations.

The advantages of SunEdison's plan go beyond the monthly savings relative to the cost of grid electricity, in that it also eliminates the typical risks of ownership. Staples doesn't have to worry that the panels will underperform or be damaged. "If our solar system is a lemon, then you don't have to pay," says Jigar Shah, SunEdison's founder.

Continue reading here

I hope our TNB or any local independent power supplier would do a research and start a project on this soon. As compared to what they're getting in the US, there's so much sun here and we're not making full use of it.

Related articles: Solar House/Solar Energy System

Making A House Solar Panel

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