14 April, 2013

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities | Grist

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities | Grist: So rates would rise by 20 percent for those without solar panels. Can you imagine the political s***storm that would create? (There are reasons to think EEI is exaggerating this effect, but we’ll get into that in the next post.)

If nothing is done to check these trends, the U.S. electric utility as we know it could be utterly upended. The report compares utilities’ possible future to the experience of the airlines during deregulation or to the big monopoly phone companies when faced with upstart cellular technologies. In case the point wasn’t made, the report also analogizes utilities to the U.S. Postal Service, Kodak, and RIM, the maker of Blackberry devices. These are not meant to be flattering comparisons.