Vt. utility wants to limit customers' solar power

[jpak]

http://www.wcax.com/story/23140589/vt-utility-wants-to-limit-customers-solar-power

EAST MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) - A new pang of growing pains for renewable energy in Vermont: the Washington Electric Cooperative says it will limit the ability of its customers to use net metering with solar power systems beginning in October.

Net metering allows residents who install renewable energy systems to put their excess power on the grid, and Vermont law requires utilities to take some of that power.

But Washington Energy Coop says it has met the requirements of the law, and it fears that allowing residents to add more than 5 kilowatts of home-grown energy to the grid will force other customers to pick up a larger share of the cost of maintaining that grid.

<not much more>

The revolution is on...

yup

[Squinch]

1. Yup.

[searchingforlight]

2. Washington Electric is a very small utility.

They are a petri dish of problems that are going to arise as individual customers generate their own power.

No, in theory no one should be prohibited from using solar power. However, there are huge maintenance costs for providing a grid. Every line, pole, wire, insulator, lineman hour, truck - you get the idea. The way the system is now the ways to charge those costs to all customers who use power (even self-generated) have not been ironed out yet. It is also unfair for those who can't afford to or choose not to go with solar to foot the bill for the collective charges.

It will probably require a raise in prices of service across the board and I think that is a burden no one wants.

[kristopher]

3. The term to focus on is "stranded costs"

There are easy mechanisms for addressing the costs involved in transmission and distribution, the idea that there is justification there for limiting solar is pure hokum.

The actual issues involved in these efforts are either ideological or self-preservation on the part of those who own generating assets that are being pushed into red ink by the growth of no fuel cost energy sources.

When we consider the plight of those who own the coal and nuclear plants that face shutdowns without covering the investments made in them, it is good to consider what happens in other areas when change forces itself onto people's lives. How many jobs have been protected from the whims of those same investors when they wanted to outsource factory production overseas? How many fisherfolk have lost their life savings invested in boats as their catch quotas have been reduced due to factory ships (funded by the same investor class) decimating one fish stock and then moving on to the next?

I say screw them. Strand the centralized generating assets made obsolete by development and expansion of a socially critical renewable infrastructure. Let them take their losses just like the rest of society is forced to do.