International project-onsite renuable energy

A gas powered generator will not count as an onsite renewable.

Our project will get almost 100% of the power from PVs and Fuel Cell (it gets power from Natural Gas).

So, since the purchased energy will be very low, for achieving EAC6 we would have to buy just the 35% of that purchased energy from green-e sources?

Thanks in advance for your response!

The PV contribution is subtracted off the total electric consumption. The fuel cell production I think would be included in the total electric consumption.

In that case, to achieve this credit we would have to buy a bigger quantity of green energy than the consumed quantity. So it seems to be impossible for our project.

What about buying green gas instead?

You would not need to buy more than consumed. Subtract the PV and include the fuel cell production up to the total consumption if you are going to produce excess.

I am not aware of any Green-e gas since it is a fossil fuel.

Marcus I am sorry but let me see if I understood. I will make the numbers in a monthly basis.

- Let the monthly Total Energy consumption of the building be 10,000kWh/month
- The PVs will generate 20% of that consumption: 2,000 kWh
- The Gas Fuel Cell will generate 60% of that consumption: 6,000 kWh

So just a 20% of the total consumption will be bought to PG&E: 2,000 kWh

You are telling me that the PV contribution should be subtracted off the total electric consumption and the fuel cell production should be included in the total electric consumption.
Following this instructions, the total electric consumption should be taken as 8,000 kWh (10,000kWh - PVs constribution).
So, the 35% of the consumption would be 0.35 x 8,000 = 2,800 kWh

Thus, since we wont buy more than 2,000 kWh/month, I don't see how we can demonstrate that we are buying 2,800 kWh from green sources.
If we buy the whole 2,000 kWh from green sources that would be just the 25% of our "total" consumption.

The only alernatives I see are:

1) Buy this 25% (2,000 kWh/m) for 2.8 years, instead of purchasing 35% (2,800 kWh/m) for 2 years, which equals the global amount of green energy to be bought.

2) Buy RECs instead of green source energy

Yes I would think that you would need to either buy RECs or a combination of green power and RECs to obtain the credit. The total of the two in your example should be 2,800 kWh per month.

I suppose you could also extend the contract and get there that way too.

Both of your alternatives could work.

Now that I think about it again I suppose another option for international projects is to buy carbon offsets. In a way that is like buying green gas I suppose.