Uprooting Our Relationships with Our Power Utilities

As I wrote in my post called Utilities Wage Campaign Against Rooftop Solar – But It’s a Bit More Complicated Than That:  The subject is made even thornier because, as the author mentions, distributed generation means reduced loads at or near peak, which, given the perverse rules by which utilities are regulated, is actually bad for them; it means that the utilities cannot justify the construction of new power plants which they would bill back to the rate payers at a profit.

A friend from the southeast portion of the U.S. writes:

You are 100% correct Craig. 

Solar reduces the midday peak load in FL and southern AL so they don’t have to build another plant.  Georgia Power keeps charging more billions of dollars for the Vogtle nuclear plant they are building, which was much more expensive than they said, and locked Atlanta ratepayers in for many decades against their will.

The PSC (Public Service Commission, the utility regulatory body in Alabama) is controlled by Alabama Power; I think they pay for their elections.

I can’t comment on the specifics in your area, but yes, generally, this is gross.  There is no chance for success here until we can develop a cooperative, non-combative relationship with the utilities that serve us.

Of course, this is naive, akin to asking lions to become vegetarians.  We need to uproot the whole thing and replant it from new seed, as I said the other day.