How does "selling wind power" work?

Seems like the power company would have records of where they buy the power from. If it is a public company I would assume the information can be requested by the public to see what power s bought from where. You can look up the Oklahoma comany and probably see wind turbines on google. Why do you think they would lie? I doubt it is an outright scam of the public, the thing that might vary is what percentage of wind power is purchased from week to week.

This is mostly a guess, because while I have an above average understanding of electricity, I am no professional. I would have to say, that they just add the wind power to their total, and it goes somewhere, and they can call it “green” because they know at least a certain amount of their power is wind generated.

It is kind of like having a jug of orange juice, and trying to figure out what part of the juice is the 1st glass and what part is the 2nd glass. They just sell you a glass of the total juice, knowing that at least some of their oranges were “green power”.

You don’t. They (your energy company) are buying electricity from a scource, at a profitable price, and combining it with electricity from other sources. It all gets transmitted along the same power lines and then is distributed into your grid.
The only way you can totally control your energy source is to buy your own windmill.
Or wait until a utilities company hits the market that is only buying from those sources. It will be too expensive right now and you won’t hire them. But maybe someday.

There is, obviously, a certain level of trust involved. But you trust in other areas of your life, so why not this one?

As @poisonedantidote suggested in the example of orange juice, you trust when you buy concentrated or bottled juice in a retail outlet that it’s actually all oranges, with no fillers, additives or adulterating agents (other than ingredients that may be listed for you to see as you purchase). And not every drop of juice that is processed is watched by some eagle-eyed whistleblower (or regulator) who would love to shut down the plant for malfeasance. The company producing the juice has a reputation to uphold, and if bad practices came to light about cheating on the product, then they’d be out of business and probably facing criminal charges.

In the same way, the power company has auditors who check the balance of orders placed by consumers such as yourself to see if there are offsetting purchases from the power company for alternatively generated power that at least equal the aggregate of orders placed by consumers over the period of time being audited.

So, no. It’s not a scam, but unless you’re the auditor yourself, you have to trust the process.

@josie
”Or wait until a utilities company hits the market that is only buying from those sources.”
It still gets transmitted over the same power lines, together with conventionally produced juice.

@ragingloli
Well, of course that is true. You never know exactly which electrons you are getting. Just like you never really know whose oil went into your gasoline. But there is nothing stopping a utilities company from contracting with a particular source.

At least you would know that they are only patronizing one producer in the market. Like I said though, that is putting all your eggs in one basket, and this early in the “new technology” craze, what happens if your windmill farm goes under, and your utility does not have a contract someplace else. They will pay somebody (a coal burner or nuke) for electricity at a premium. And thus so will you.

You are never going to see mass produced, affordable energy that is exclusively from wind, solar etc in your lifetime. There is too much other infrastructure that is still being paid for. Until it is paid off, and then makes a decent ROI, you are stuck with it.

In your lifetime, you will only be able to take satisfaction in knowing that new technology is being phased in. Unless you buy your own windmill.