Gift Cards For
Purchasing Electricity
(Submitted to BarterNews
by
Robert Hahl of Kilowatt Cards.)
Kilowatt Cards are gift cards that can be redeemed to pay for 10
kilowatt-hours of electricity in any residential utility account,
almost anywhere in the world. Electricity companies don’t accept
them, but they do at
www.kilowattcards.com and then send payments directly to the
power companies at the rate they normally charge home customers for
the same amount of electricity, including taxes and fees. These gift
cards are supported by the non-profit Kilowatt-Hour Card Corporation
(KHCC).
Kilowatt Cards are backed by goods, not promises. They are issued in
exchange for assets (e.g. firewood, food stores) then held by a
non-profit corporation, and later sold to pay for electricity as the
cards are redeemed. They can be redeemed for electricity worldwide,
resulting in a store-of-value (goods) and medium-of-exchange
(electricity).
Because energy is needed to produce or to use all goods and services
today “the ability to consume electricity” is a meaningful
definition of wealth. While some people want gold and silver,
everybody wants light, heat or transportation. Kilowatt Cards show
that paper notes can be redeemed for something useful. But KHCC does
not produce or deliver the electricity; they only pay for it with
national currencies, supported by investments.
One
purpose of Kilowatt Cards is to promote stable commerce and reduce
the boom-bust financial cycle, by letting people save and lend their
wealth in a form which cannot be diminished by currency inflation.
If electricity cards stay redeemable at face value they cannot loose
barter value as energy.
Traditional currencies have the attributes of being: (i) portable,
(ii) difficult to counterfeit, (iii) limited in supply, (iv)
non-perishable, and (v) easy to recognize. While electricity itself
meets none of these criteria, electrical capacity meets criteria
(ii) to (v), while paper cards representing payments for electricity
supply attribute (i).
Kilowatt Cards are gift cards not currency, but since they will pay
for anyone’s electricity, they are useful to barter for other things
— and as a store of value, worth a fixed amount of energy,
regardless of electricity prices.
They have fixed value because 10 kilowatt-hours is a physical
constant — a standard amount of work (in the scientific sense) that
one can evaluate intuitively: 10 kwh = 10,000 watt-hours, enough
energy to run a 100-watt light bulb for 100 hours (exactly), and
roughly enough to drive a Toyota Prius 25 miles. The typical price
for 10 kilowatt-hours is about US$1 to $3.
For
more information see
www.kilowattcards.com.
