On Tue, Jan 16, 2001 at 09:49:00AM +0000, Matthew Kaufman put this into my mailbox:
Of course, if we had *real* deregulation, my price for power as a commercial user would closely reflect the utility's cost for power, and they might even charge me differently by time of use whether or not I wanted that... then the cost equation changes for item 1, and I'd have an incentive to go look at the true costs of item 2.
Given that, is there anyone in the San Diego Gas & Electric area (fully deregulated, passing on the generation cost to consumers -- my residential power bill was $215 for december, after the state-mandated 'price reduction') who's looked at the costs of doing this, and possibly found it cheaper to run off of the generators? Also -- again to throw something out there -- there is at least one hosting company that touts itself as running entirely off of solar. (see http://www.enn.com/features/2000/07/07262000/solarhost_14768.asp; solarhost.com is what I'm thinking of). Has any other large commercial entity looked into the economics of installing a PV array say on the roof of the building above and around the cooling packs, etc? At the very least, I would think it would be a good way to supplement a battery network. Or perhaps (going even further out there) a wind generator or two? -dalvenjah -- Dalvenjah FoxFire (aka Sven Nielsen) I once heard the voice of God. It Founder, the DALnet IRC Network said "Vrrrrrmmmmmm." Unless it was just a lawn mower. e-mail: dalvenjah@dal.net WWW: http://www.dal.net/~dalvenjah/ whois: SN90 Try DALnet! http://www.dal.net/