Marin Energy Authority - Update

It has been quite a shock to find how we (the smart technologists) are ignoring the plight of our biggest smart grid customer, PG&E.

While we have been selling them our array of technologies for the smart grid, they have been fighting a competitive bid to supply electricity to the residents of Marin county by Shell Energy North America, a subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell.

A new government body called the Marin Energy Authority has been funded by the Marin County Board of Supervisors, and awarded a five year contract for electricity supply to this foreign oil conglomerate. But this is obviously the tip of Shell's aspirations. Now that they have a line in to PG&E, and can force PG&E to deliver and bill this energy to the customers, they can begin the same process in other communities.

But this is bad news indeed in the long term.

Shell get to cherry pick the supply of electricity, while PG&E need to deal with the complex issues of reliable delivery, the roll out of a smart grid to manage peaks and troughs of demand, and subsidies to support low income families.

And as their profits are eroded we have to assume that the budget cuts will slow down the investments in our Silicon Valley technologies.

I am not often one to rally to the support of a semi-government institution like PG&E, but fellow technologists this is not good for any of us. It is not even good for clean tech, for in the end Marin will fail to make the user savings also needed to reduce emissions. It is not OK to feel good about using "cleaner" energy (a highly questionable claim in the first place) while continuing to "guzzle" large amounts of energy in your home. Marin has been abjectly lacking in the uptake of smart thermostats and similar technologies to save energy.

How sad that the leaders have steered the community on this selfish path to make themselves feel good.

But the leaders have made a serious error of judgment in deciding for Marin residents that we should all be switched to this new supplier. Although each resident is automatically enrolled in the new authority, we do have the option to ask PG&E to keep us as their customer.

I call on all residents of Marin who pay an electricity bill to PG&E to contact them, and make it clear that they do not want to be any part of this new authority, who are potentially doing so such harm to the largest customer of innovation in the valley.

This list of articles on our web site will help familiarize you all with the issues.

To the City Council of Mill Valley re Marin Energy Authority

MarinIJ - to the Editor re Marin Clean Energy

Letter to Matthew Hymel - Marin Administrators Office

Supervisors OK loan guarantee for Marin Clean Energy

Marin Clean Energy - Marin County Civil Grand Jury

If you see this post, please can you both opt-out of this scheme, and let anyone you know to do the same.