A Year In Mill Valley

Marin Energy Authority: Will It Support Electricity Buybacks?

frank — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 06:08:22 +0000

I was talking to some friends in Sausalito tonight, and the subject of solar energy came up. As we were talking it dawned on me that the houseboats are the perfect places for putting up solar — no obstructions anywhere. So when I got home I sat down and wrote this email to supervisors Charles McGlashan and Hal Brown Jr.. I’ll let you know what they say in reply.

To: Charles McGlashan, Hal Brown Jr.
Subject: Idea and questions regarding Marin Energy Authority

Dear Charles and Hal,

I am a resident of Mill Valley and was talking with some friends on the house boats in Sausalito tonight about solar energy, and we came up with this idea:

– we would like to create a solar energy cooperative on the houseboats
– the cooperative would put solar cells on every houseboat (they’re perfect places for solar due to lack of solar obstructions)
– the cooperative would sell the excess electricity back into the grid

The problem with doing this today — where PG&E is the buy-back partner — is that we can’t sell more back into the grid than we take out of the grid, i.e. they have a net zero policy. This means there’s no incentive to build out the solar capacity to its maximum, something we would obviously prefer to do.

Questions:

1) Has the Marin Energy Authority considered having a policy of buying back any/all excess electricity generated by solar, even above and beyond the amount used by an individual household(s)? And if so, at what rate?

2) On a smaller scale, we have neighbors up the street who have great southern exposure while we have almost none. We would like to split the cost of putting solar on their roof, and have half of the electricity generated credited to our account? Is this something the Marin Energy Authority has considered?

Thanks in advance,
– Frank Leahy

On a related note, I’ve been getting emails from something calling itself the “Marin Common Sense Coalition”. If you look at the bottom of the website you can see it’s an astroturf campaign brought to you by PG&E “This information was provided by Coalition for Reliable and Affordable Electricity, a coalition that includes Pacific Gas and Electric Company”. Yep, definitely astroturf.

Day 6 The End

frank — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:34:10 +0000

We started this trip at the house of a friend of Chris’ near Douglas City. It’s on a road called Top O’ The Grade. I don’t know what we were thinking leaving the car there. But it wasn’t so bad…all downhill from Weaverville to Douglas City and only two and a half miles of the final uphill. Took a quick shower, hopped in the van, and now we’re just about home. Using google maps we can see that there is traffic on 37 so we’re taking 80 through Richmond then across the Richmond San Rafael bridge to Mill Valley.

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Day 6 Weaverville wood carvings

frank — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:28:28 +0000

More Bigfoot! Better than your average carvings.

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Day 6 Weaverville

frank — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:23:28 +0000

Whoa. Turn the corner and here we are back in civilization. We’ve been on roads the last three days where we could often ride down the middle of the road for 20-30 minutes without seeing a car and now we’re back in the big city. Or so it seems. We haven’t had anything one would call cuisine, or even seen many vegetables the last six days, so stopping at the Garden Cafe in Weavervill was a real treat. Superb toasted veggie sandwich with a fantastic red pepper soup. Well worth a visit if you’re going through Weaverville.

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Day 6 more hills

frank — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:13:18 +0000

Nowhere near as many hills as yesterday, but plenty nonetheless. Felt as though I hit a tipping point yesterday. Slept well last night (as opposed to the night before when I got no more than 3 hours of sleep at the Hummingbird B&B) and woke feeling strong and rested. It’s too bad we’re not going for another week to 10 days because that’s where the weight loss has happened for me in the past. Maybe next time…

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Day 6 last day

frank — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:07:53 +0000

Left the KOA campground at Trinity Center at 9:15 and spent an hour alongside Trinity Lake. At one point we crossed an arm of the lake with a boat ramp that was at least a mile from the water. Looked as though the lake is between 50 and 100 feet below where it should be.

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