Power to the people: how we can have our electricity cake, and eat it, too

We've been waiting for some months now for details on how Alberta's new carbon tax and greenhouse gas reduction policies will affect our monthly bills. We'll still need to wait until after the government presents its first full-year budget to get them.

But that doesn't mean we can't speculate on outcomes, and hope to affect how the decisions are made.

Speculation: all this is going to cost us more, if we make no changes to how we live. Hope: that individual efforts to conserve and to invest in green energy will produce an appreciable payback.

We can reasonably assume that introducing a provincial carbon tax is going to affect the unit price of all the forms of energy we use. That's the point of the whole exercise: paying closer to the full cost of our energy use — including the cost to the environment. But that should also mean that reducing consumption and/or switching to green renewables should have a real payback.

With electricity in Alberta, that's not exactly the case right now.

I've been keeping a file of my old power bills for a couple of years now. In fact, that's become quite easy, as my utility keeps them for me with the switch to online billing. Here's what I've noticed.

Our monthly power usage varies widely over a year, but our household runs quite nicely on less than 500 Kw of power per month, averaged. As every householder knows, there are variable costs and fixed costs within each monthly bill.

I found it a bit ironic that in the months in which we conserve best, the delivery costs are higher than the energy costs. In other words, try as we might, we can't conserve our way to appreciably lower power bills. Add to this the new costs of a carbon tax, plus the downloaded costs of the new power lines being built (which we won't use, but are widely expected to serve export opportunities), it all means that saving money on our power bills through conservation alone is just about impossible for Alberta householders.

You may as well just leave all the lights on, for all the difference it makes to your monthly bill.

That anomaly can't help the province's plan to reduce our carbon footprint.

So incentives to conserve, and to invest in green power alternatives must become part of the plan. I want to suggest a way for Alberta consumers to get a break — to have their electrically-produced cake and eat it, too.

Alberta needs a healthy dose of home power generation. Solar panels on our rooftops already make long-term sense today — there are about 1,000 solar-powered homes already connected to the grid. More than half of those were added to the grid in the past two years and we should see many thousands more of them after carbon taxes are introduced, and if the province removes some administrative barriers.

One Alberta site I have found, Solar Hero, suggests a 6-Kw solar array on my house or garage would have a payback of 16-19 years, under current billing conditions, and assuming annual 3.5 per cent inflation of regular grid costs through 25 years.

We all know that in the past 13 years, our electrical power bills have gone up by just over eight per cent per year, compounded, since deregulation. With the addition of the carbon tax, plus having Alberta power customers pay for two huge new power lines, power generators and distributors together will not likely keep power bill inflation to less than 3.5 per cent.

Solar Hero reports the cost of one watt of solar power installed on a home was about $9 in 2007. In 2014, you could have that for as low as $2.50 per watt, and the price continues to drop as efficiencies increase. After an initial investment of $13,000-$17,000 (Solar Hero's figures) for a 6-Kw array, you would wait for 16 years or so to get your money back, and then make a slight profit.

I want a better deal.

My next car is going to be a plug-in hybrid, meaning I will park it in the garage and recharge it on free solar power, which I will use exclusively for more than 80 per cent of my car trips. I'll run my dishwasher and do laundry during the day, when the sun is shining. I'll sell the power I don't use at the going rate, and just eat the monthly fixed costs of being connected to the grid.

I want my cake, and I want it free for the estimated minimum 25 years of a solar array's working lifetime on my property.

I want the government to make achieving that easier for me, and for all other consumers.

If we agree that we need a carbon tax, then we have to agree to remove barriers that hinder making conservation and investment pay.

I'm waiting, like you, for the details in the next provincial budget.