Saturday, 30 January 2016

Vancouver Renewable Energy Co operative

          Recently in the news and attempting to get the city of Vancouver to make it easier for permits etc., to allow everyone to put solar panels on their homes.              

                            Vancouver Renewable Energy Cooperative,  

Its difficult to determine if this is a co operative or a business.  Their description of their cooperative is every one shares equally in the work and profits?  I think the term Co-operative suggests something else to everyone that might get involved with them.

 The same principles involved with SolShares doing the leasing program, and Vancouver Renewable Energy, a business?   All interrelated, SolShares prospectus does say one "could lose all their money"  and its "a risky investment", buying shares.  VREC  does all the installations but clearly state they have no obligation, financial or otherwise in anything that may or could go wrong or not meet expected results from the SolShares business/co-op- whatever it is.

Solar Panels in BC will increase GHG’s not reduce them.

The  VREC/SolShares  recent news  on TV made  it appear that solar was to be the saviour to future energy requirements and GHG reduction in BC, nothing could be further from the truth.

This requires an understanding of how the grid power in Alberta mostly from coal and gas is so different from BC where power is clean green hydro power.

VREC mandate is to reduce Green House Gas, in BC no solar panels decrease any GHG. Solar panels don't fall out of the sky, they take a lot of non renewables to make and transport, to somewhere where the sun doesn't shine?  Solar panels might last 25 years, but makes less power every year with age and become toxic waste.

The graph below in Red shows how Alberta power demand reduces at night, they cannot shut down their non renewable energy plants quickly, BC takes that unused coal power in Blue, from around midnight till morning.  No solar panels in BC work at night that I know of, there is no GHG reduction from BC solar.
Because BC doesn't take Alberta power in the day the only time solar works if its sunny.....read link below.








Alberta can’t shut down their coal and gas plants quickly as can hydro, their power is either wasted or sold to BC.  BC buys it in off peak hours (at night) for 2.6c/kWh saving our water in our reservoirs.  Alberta buys our  green hydro power back when demands(daytime) require more power,  10.4c/kWh.    BC hydro is a net exporter of power, to BC’s advantage, receiving almost 4 times more for our hydro power.

The solar promoters in BC would have everyone believe we are buying coal power and BC solar panels will help reduce the GHG’s.  The opposite happens, solar only works in the day, it has nowhere to go to reduce GHG’s, and if BC did not take Alberta coal power at night, this would be power wasted and really increase GHG’s.




Alberta has stated by 2030 they will have shutdown their coal and gas plants.  Site C will be on line, BC will be clean green hydro power with power to export, probably to Alberta, they will have a hard time replacing all that power no longer made from coal or gas.   Public money or any money spent on solar power in BC is misguided and misinformed greenwashing.

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