Ben Nelms had it half right in his editorial, “Corporate environmentalist killing cause,” but what I’ve run into is corporate greed standing in the way of individual environmentalists.

My wife and I decided to put our money where our mouths are and instead of grumbling about high electric bills that have no chance of ever coming down, we installed a solar photovoltaic electric system to provide part of our electric needs.

Our system was profiled in this paper last year as part of Earth Day and lots of interested folks turned out for our open house. The system works wonderfully, and on the one-year anniversary of our system, we had produced 68 percent of our electric needs for the year.

Hey, Ben, think about your electric bill being cut by two-thirds and a portion of your electric costs never going up!

But now I’ve run headlong into corporate greed that makes my system economically questionable. I happen to have Coweta-Fayette EMC as my electric provider, and they have informed me that they will no longer do net metering.

Net metering basically says that if I buy 100 kilowatts (kW) of electricity at night and provide them 60 kW during the day, then I only pay retail rates for the 40 kW difference.

For the first year I had my system, the EMC did net metering, but for whatever reason that will no longer be the case. So now I pay retail rates for the 100 kW I buy from them, but they will only credit me for their wholesale cost of electricity.

In effect, they buy my excess electricity wholesale, and turn around and sell it back to me retail.

And I would be remiss to mention, they also charge me an administrative fee monthly for the privilege of generating my own power.

It is corporate greed like this that will keep like-minded individuals from investing in clean renewable solar power.

There is good news for you, Ben, Georgia Power encourages people in their service area to go solar. Along with available federal tax credits, there is now a state tax credit for renewable energy. Georgia Power does net metering and pays a premium for excess electricity you generate and send them. They know if their customers produce a portion of their own electricity, that may be one less coal-fired power plant that has to be built.

Good for them, good for their customers and good for the environment.

I never envisioned regretting the day I had Coweta-Fayette EMC as a power provider, but right now Georgia Power is not being the greedy corporate hog stifling the environmentalist in me.

Larry Dove

Fayetteville, Ga.

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