Selling Wind Power

Many utilities are now selling "wind power" to their customers. The way it usually works is that the consumer commits to a certain amount of wind energy, typically less than your household would consume in a month and pays extra for the privilege. Signing on to a program like this doesn't mean that the energy delivered to the consumer's home was generated using wind power, only that an amount of electricity that you committed to will be generated by wind power at some time, if the conditions permit. The truth is that the energy generated by wind power would go onto the grid regardless of whether or not people signed up for these plans so in essence, what consumers who sign up for these plans are doing is agreeing to subsidize corporations that install and own wind power facilities beyond the amount they already do through taxes and increased fees to the grid provider.