Utilities Feeling Rooftop Solar Heat Start Fighting Back

[Purveyor]

If you wonder why America’s utilities are rattled by the explosive growth in rooftop solar -- and are pushing back -- William Walker has a story for you.

A flip-flop wearing Walker stands in his driveway pointing to a ubiquitous neighborhood feature – solar panels on the roofs of five of six houses nearby. He lives in Ewa Beach, a development on the sultry leeward coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu built on land cleared of sugar cane fields.

Shade is scarce and residents here call their homes “hot boxes,” requiring almost round-the-clock air conditioning. Hawaii, which imports pricey oil to power its electricity grid, has the highest utility rates in the nation -- at 37 cents a kilowatt-hour, they’re more than double California and triple the national average.

With bills for 1,600 square foot houses like these running as high as $400 a month, solar is seen as less a green statement than an economic no-brainer given state and federal tax credits for as much as 65 percent of installation costs. Almost every day since Walker and his wife Mi Chong moved in last April, solar installers came rapping on the door, hawking a rooftop system.

They finally bought one: an 18-panel, $35,000 installation producing 5.9 kilowatts of power financed for $305 a month. It would be connected to the grid under a system known as net metering that essentially lets residents deduct the value of their solar-produced electricity from their power bill and even be paid for electricity in excess of that.

more...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-26/utilities-feeling-rooftop-solar-heat-start-fighting-back.html

[LanternWaste]

1. utility co is telling everyone "we just need more time to figure out stuff that we've known about...

Yeah.... the utility co is telling everyone "we just need more time to figure out stuff that we've known about for 30 years." From the article:


"Utilities, seeing a threat to about $360 billion a year in power sales and a challenge to the hegemony of the conventional grid, are feeling the heat and fighting back. HECO, despite criticism from Hawaii’s solar industry, denies the moratorium is anything more than an honest effort to address the technical challenges of integrating the solar flooding onto its grid."

[SoCalDem]

3. This is precisely the reason why utilities should always be commuinity-owned

and should NEVER EVER be sold out to private companies.

Co-ops owned by communities and operated by community paid workers, would always be planning way to reduce costs to the people, and would have embraced solar from the beginning.

People who have a vested interest in keeping prices high (so THEY can make big-bucks) will always cling to the old ways (the ones that are already in place).

We have known about solar for DECADES, and without interference, by now we should have houses with solar shingles that provide power..garages with hook-ups for our solar cars.

The only utilities that people should be paying for these days, is water/sewage treatment, because they require a lot of intricate treatment to make it safe for us and the communities.

Heating/cooling & other electrical needs should be compliments of our sun

[onethatcares]

2. here in sunny west coast florida

we're being fed the horseshit that we don't get enough sun to make it worthwhile.

But we are lucky enough to have to pay 3.5 billion dollars for a nuke plant that will never be built thanks to our forward

looking repuke legislature and duke energy.