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To the good people at Community Energy:
I recently received your letter explaining that you would be raising your prices due to the "increasing price of solar power in New Jersey."
This at first confused me. The sun, though steadily burning its finite supply of fuel, surely cannot be appreciably different in the quality or quantity of its output. If it is, then I've got a lot more to worry about than an extra 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Solar technology has been around for some time, and any improvements in that technology should, on the whole, serve to make it cheaper and more efficient (else they wouldn't really be improvements, per se).
Then it occurred to me. In the time since we signed up for your renewable energy plan, the sun over New Jersey actually has grown dimmer and the hours of daylight shorter. I am happy to explain to you, however, that this phenomenon is known and understood. It is called "winter." It is the phase in the Earth's orbit in which the northern end of the axis points away from the sun, reducing the quality and quantity of light which hits the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere. Fortunately, though I can only prove it through the logically imperfect process of induction, I can say with reasonable confidence that by March 1 (your proposed effective date for the price increase) winter will have passed and New Jersey will once again benefit from a brightly shining sun. In fact, with the winter solstice having already been passed, you may have noticed that the days are already getting longer.
So, unless there's some other factor which I have failed to consider, you may relax and be confident that an increase in the supply of solar power is soon to come.
Sincerely,
Paul-Gabriel Wiener
I recently received your letter explaining that you would be raising your prices due to the "increasing price of solar power in New Jersey."
This at first confused me. The sun, though steadily burning its finite supply of fuel, surely cannot be appreciably different in the quality or quantity of its output. If it is, then I've got a lot more to worry about than an extra 2 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Solar technology has been around for some time, and any improvements in that technology should, on the whole, serve to make it cheaper and more efficient (else they wouldn't really be improvements, per se).
Then it occurred to me. In the time since we signed up for your renewable energy plan, the sun over New Jersey actually has grown dimmer and the hours of daylight shorter. I am happy to explain to you, however, that this phenomenon is known and understood. It is called "winter." It is the phase in the Earth's orbit in which the northern end of the axis points away from the sun, reducing the quality and quantity of light which hits the upper reaches of the Northern Hemisphere. Fortunately, though I can only prove it through the logically imperfect process of induction, I can say with reasonable confidence that by March 1 (your proposed effective date for the price increase) winter will have passed and New Jersey will once again benefit from a brightly shining sun. In fact, with the winter solstice having already been passed, you may have noticed that the days are already getting longer.
So, unless there's some other factor which I have failed to consider, you may relax and be confident that an increase in the supply of solar power is soon to come.
Sincerely,
Paul-Gabriel Wiener