Architectural Technologist – Utilities Don’t Want You To Have A Solar Panel On Your Roof

The rooftop solar business is booming as more Americans in fact more of every one across Europe look to cut energy costs, go green, or just spend money on a cool conversation piece. As great as this is for homeowners hosting dinner parties, it’s bad news for utilities who are losing out on business Newsweek reports.

Utilities are very set in their ways. The only way to distribute electricity, as far as they’re concerned, is from one centralized location out to the masses. Allowing home owners to plunk panels on their roofs is a foreign, disruptive concept. So, they’re fighting it:

In some cases, utilities are actually taking direct steps to thwart rooftop solar. Two weeks ago in Colorado, the state’s biggest utility, Xcel, tried passing a surcharge on homes and businesses using rooftop solar power. The rate hike would’ve generated $180 million, $55 million of which was slated to help fund Xcel’s newest coal-fired power plant, the Comanche Unit 3, due to come online this fall. The public went ballistic, and with pressure from Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter, the proposal was eventually shelved. In early July, New Mexico‘s biggest utility, PNM, filed an official request to dramatically reduce incentives for businesses and homeowners to install solar panels, and is now fighting with state lawmakers over whether it has the right to exclusively own solar panels systems hooked up to its grid. During California‘s last legislative session, Southern California Edison, which serves 13 million residents, pressured a Palm Springs assemblyman to pull a bill he’d introduced that would allow the city of Palm Desert to pay solar users for the excess power they generate.

This is deplorable, and the utility companies taken to task for there action, we need to develop and work out better ways to generate power, but letting the utilitiy companies control it is not the way. Is this happening in the UK or Europe, I can’t tell yet,  but we should be aware of whats happening.

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