Renewable Incentives

Renewable Incentives. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

Everywhere you look there are opportunities to get into clean, green technologies. From the home to the farm, both residential and commercial, incentives abound. Chris Drake, Energy Solutions Program Manager with Avista Utilities in Spokane, Washington says that there are plenty of ways you can take advantage of these incentives.

DRAKE: Avista Utilities distributes electric and natural gas to customers in Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho and we offer customers interested in generating their own energy the ability to interconnect with our system and there’s different types of incentives and ways to get some economic value out of that.

According to Drake, people in their service area have some choices.

DRAKE: Well Avista offers choices for customers interested in interconnecting to our system and I guess first off I would make the distinction between interconnection options and incentives because both have an economic value and they’re kind of interchangeable in the customers mind, but basically there’s two paths or processes

The first option is called “Net Metering” where you can actually offset your electrical usage.

DRAKE: And if you generate more than you use your meter actually spins backwards so you kind of use the Avista electrical system as a battery and since you are reducing the amount of energy that Avista needs to serve you, you’ll also be able to apply for an energy efficiency incentive that’s typically 20 cents per kilowatt hour for the first years generation and then in Washington State we also have a renewable generation incentive.

Drake says the other option is selling power back but you are not offsetting any of your own usage and then are not eligible for an energy efficiency incentive. There are many different options for alternate power generation.

DRAKE: While although it’s probably still the most expensive, solar has the most application and pretty much anybody can find a good solar site on their property. Wind is going to be much more, you want a good wind resource if you are going to invest that type of money in a wind turbine and so now you are starting to look for certain areas that have a good average wind speed and the anaerobic digesters you are going to be looking for some sort of fuel source there. Usually dairy and those types of agricultural applications – might able to take a look at that.

If you have any questions about these programs contact Avista Utilities.

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

www.harvestcleanenergy.org

www.avistautilities.com/services/renewable/pages/default.aspx