I read somewhere that you are always supposed to start a blog posting with either a question or an anecdote, thus drawing in the reader. But what if I don’t have any readers yet?

This addition to the Community Energy webpage is a new endeavor for us, though hardly a new format for the new media-savvy among us. Allow me to briefly introduce myself, the goals of this adventurously named blog (maybe we’ll transition to “Shooting the Breeze”, “As the Blades Turn”, or another punny derivative) and invite you to join us in this ongoing conversation. We hope this format will attract readers who, like me, are fascinated by day-ahead transmission constraints in regional transmission organizations.

Actually, I came to this business, and this company, over six years ago with a deep interest in environmental issues. At that time, Community Energy consisted of six people, and was pioneering a new and unique business model aimed at growing the availability of wind-generated electricity. That model continues to serve as our backbone, and has led to exciting growth. As witness and contributor to that growth, my colleagues and co-workers seem to think I may have some insight that is worth sharing with a larger audience, and I am excited to do so.

Among the many tasks I handled at the beginning included creating and mailing our first invoice to a customer, Carnegie Mellon University (they are still a customer, by the way). Now, our finance and accounting department consists of staff on both coasts, and we serve over 115,000 customers nationwide. We used to only sell Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) generated at two wind farms in Pennsylvania. Now, we have built our own wind farms in multiple states, source from dozens of new projects around the country, and are part of the world’s largest wind power company by installed capacity.

This blog is admittedly still a technical work in progress. Currently, it allows us to post content, and receive reader emails. We are working on enhancing these capabilities to include functionality such as an interactive reader-posting format, along with other tools we hope you will enjoy and use.

We want to hear from you. We hope to address your questions, tackle issues we hear about in the media, discuss important subjects facing our industry, and generally make this format as useful to our readers as possible. So please write to us at CommunityEnergy@newwindenergy.com.

We thank you in advance for taking part in this with us, and look forward to a fun, fruitful discussion.