Circumventing a decades-old pact providing a market monopoly in exchange for public oversight, an investor-owned utility has proposed legislation to allow it to build a new natural gas plant criticized for its financial and environmental impact, and then stick customers with the tab.
The people of the United States didn’t elect Donald Trump. Approximately 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than Donald Trump, while approximately half of the population stayed home. In typical Donald fashion, he is trying to take revenge by pulling the country further into the gutter.
What happens when utility companies lose ground as their customers cut consumption and seek innovative technologies like rooftop solar? New business ventures to capture customer interest? Other new technologies?
As state regulators restricted the ability of home and business owners in Nevada to receive sufficient compensation for solar on their rooftops, some large companies started looking towards other options.
Incentives designed to make rooftop solar feasible for a wider range of consumers are under attack nationwide, threatening new solar development as well as the consumers that already have rooftop panels. The staunchest opponents? Utilities which say, despite a growing body of research to the contrary, that rooftop solar hurts other ratepayers and their bottom lines.
Originally posted at ilsr.org. The U.S. electricity system is undergoing the biggest change in its 130-year history. The scale of electricity generation is rapidly shrinking, from coal and nuclear power plants that can power a million homes to solar and wind power plants that power a few to a few … [continued]
Originally posted at ilsr.org. It seems crazy that electric companies would have anything against customers who spend their own money to reduce their energy use with clean, local solar power. But any number of utilities are slapping excessive fees and charges on customers with solar to slow or stop them. Here’s … [continued]
Originally posted at ilsr.org. American electric utilities are creations of the 20th century, depending heavily on their protected monopolies to deliver economical electricity. But the growth in energy efficiency, cost-effective distributed energy like solar, and sophisticated tools for energy management (like smartphone apps) have introduced many competitive pressures. Can we … [continued]
When Robert Nohavec of Park City, Utah; Jabbar Graham from Cherry Hill, New Jersey; and Don Born, of Waldoboro, Maine installed solar on their homes, they had something unexpected in common. They were all giving back to their electric company and their community. That’s because solar energy systems tend to … [continued]
Originally posted at ilsr.org If your electricity—generated from imported oil—is the most expensive in the country and your solar resource is terrific, you’d expect your electric company to be making great strides toward renewable energy. On Hawai’i, the progress toward clean energy is in limbo, because island’s largest electric utility—largely … [continued]
