I know in some cases Electric companies will buy energy from someone who's solar panel's/wind turbines are overproducing. I think the system's have to be properly grid tied, i.e. either installed by or inspected by someone from the power company. I know that they don't pay much, but if you had a diesel generator running on waste vegetable oil.like if you made an arrangement with a restaurant to pick up their waste oil for them, it would be nice to be able to do so on a regular basis instead of going to them every so often saying Hey, I ran out of oil, I need some more. I guess I'm specifically asking about AEP. (American Electric Power) I live in Findlay, Ohio. I was on their website but couldn't find the answer to this question. Thanks!
Yes, you can sell energy to the grid but it's often not cost-effective. You have to look at your equipment and operation cost, as well as the cost per kWh that your utility pays. Also, WVO is not as easy or free to come by as it used to be, as demand is now much higher. Restaurants usually don't give away their waste oil for free any more, as fuel companies now pay restaurants to pick up their used cooking oil. You can buy grid-tie inverters that plug into the wall outlet for reasonably small amounts of generation (about 1500 watts or less). For larger amounts of generation, you'll want a professionally-installed inverter and meter. The cost of electricity is so inexpensive per kWh that even if you did manage to source free WVO, the income from selling the electricity likely wouldn't even cover your costs to set up and maintain the generation equipment. Your system would also likely produce more emissions per kWh than the utility generation stations. You may have to deal with legislation for the emissions and/or noise, depending on how populated your area is.
I manage social media for AEP. You can find more information about installing generating equipment and connecting to AEP Ohio's distribution system here: bit.ly/1dqZvGl You also may want to check out our guide for systems that generate less than 50kW: bit.ly/1eXLHpR If you have more questions, contact our Distributed Generation Coodinator at dgcoordinatopr [at] aep dot com.
Hi. I don't know if the power company will buy the electricity from you, but it's worth a call to them to see how you can leverage this ability. I think you're right, though. I think that you have to be able to put that power into the grid, meaning that you have to have the power company come out and approve the set up and then put a meter on your line so that they can measure the amount of power you are generating. I believe that you can easily set up some agreements with local restaurants to get their used fry oils and such. You might need to purchase some specialized equipment in order to recpature the oil and bring it back home, but I think that this will be the easy part. Good luck!
