We have been enrolled in the Windsource program for years now, ever since it was first started. Windsource is a program that XcelEnergy provides that you can opt-in to buy renewable energy to offset your energy use. While the actual watts going to your house are not necessarily “wind watts”, XcelEnergy is then purchasing that much wind energy to offset your usage. It’s a good program, relatively cheap and allows me as a customer to express my wish for renewable energy without installing it myself, which isn’t really feasible.

I found this blog post on The Deets that highlighted a benefit I didn’t even realize though about Windsource. Since the energy I’m buying is renewable, I don’t have to pay the Fuel Cost Charge. I didn’t even realize there were credits you got if you opted into Windsource.

The first thing I noticed is that we sure use a lot more electricity then The Deets does. We paid $29.30 on our most recent bill for Windsource. So just $29.30 went to XcelEnergy to then go on the renewable energy market and buy 830 kWh of power. I would have paid $23.48 in Fuel Cost Charge, but wait, wind energy doesn’t have that. So I get a $23.48 credit for that. That nets out to $5.82 net increase in cost to use renewable energy. There were 32 days in the billing period, so it netted out to $0.18 per day.

Join me and The Deets and sign up now.