Less green to go green

Running a home off green energy in College Station is likely to soon become cheaper.

The city is working on lowering the cost of participation in its Wind Watts program, which allows customers to buy wind power for an additional fee on their electricity bills. That fee would drop by 75 percent.

Houses that use 100 percent wind power currently pay an average of about $20 more per month. Customers may also use 50 percent wind power for $10 more and 10 percent for $2. Those estimates are based on a home using 1,000 kilowatt hours per month.

Under the new pricing plan, customers would pay $5 for 100 percent wind, $2.50 for 50 percent and 50 cents for 10 percent.

The savings would be found by reducing the Green College Station Share fee, which was included in the program when Wind Watts was created in 2009. The fee doesn't actually pay for wind power, but goes into another fund used to plant trees around the city. About 55 percent of the $165,177 in Wind Watts revenue goes to the plants. It has paid for trees along University Drive and William D. Fitch Parkway.

City officials said the share fee was included in Wind Watts under the assumption that people paying for green power would also support the planting of trees around town. But this year's council -- six out of the seven members weren't members when Wind Watts was approved in 2009 -- expressed confusion as to why it was ever included if the goal was to encourage people to enter the program.

"Wouldn't more people do it if it was cheaper?" Councilwoman Julie Schultz asked at a meeting Tuesday.

The price change would be the third adjustment since the program was implemented. Still, enrollment has dropped in the four years from a peak of 581 customers in 2010 to 511 this year. City officials said they suspect that the economy has been a reason for the reduction.

College Station signed a six-year contract in 2009 to buy 10 megawatts of wind energy each year, but only about four percent of that is purchased by Wind Watts customers. The rest of the energy is spread out among regular customers.

The city's contract will expand to 30 megawatts in 2015.

That low participation number has caused some conservatives to criticize the program, saying it has lost money. David Massey told the council this week that it is common for utility companies to buy wind energy, even without a Wind Watts program. Most just average the cost in to every customers' bill, he said.

"Not everybody that buys wind has an optional wind program," Massey said.