Duke Explores Rooftop Solar as Panels Slow Electricity Demand, CEO Says

Being a Duke customer and a registered vendor, may have it's advantages if Duke decides to get serious about solar. Thus far, they have made little effort to support the solar industry in North Carolina, where this reader lives and operates a solar business. I would be very interested in any real substance regarding what their intent is. I advocate for renewable energy products at
http://alternativeenergyproductsgroup.com/wordpress
My name is Richard Viers, and I invite you to contact me if you are interested in Solar and other alternative energy devices.
Duke Energy if you are listening, we need to increase the presence of roof top and commercial as well as utility volume in solar, I am here to service any projects you might have.

Duke should explore a partnership with EnergySage.com to promote rooftop solar to ratepayers and offer an attractive financing option to develop rooftop assets to get out in front of this issue. This partnership could include compelling educational content and use of the new Marketplace platform to give ratepayers multiple financing and purchase options from a network of pre-screened, high quality providers. These options are then presented to consumers in a clear, apples to apples format with analysis tools at their fingertips. What a nice program! Jim Rogers, please contact john (at) energysage (dot) com to get this going today!

Interesting to note that Duke sees this as a short term opportunity but a long term threat. In contrast, PG&E just sees threat: http://runonsun.com/~runons5/blogs/blog1.php/solnews/its-on-pge-declares-war-solar

What is lacking is for either of these companies (or any IOU for that matter) to see the long-term opportunity. But adapt they must, or cease to exist.

I doubt they will cease to exist, they have been adapting, and buying energy from solar farms. They just see the roof top installations as a threat because they can no longer run the rates up and up without anyone being able to fight back.. Energy companies have been playing with fire for a long time. Back when they had that big hulla baloo in California because of the group that was causing deliberate black outs so they could cheat the consumer is what really set the ball rolling for people to fight back... Personally I believe they will find a way to tax roof top installations in most states so they don't lose the tax revenue they are not getting from the utilities. Government has been in bed with the energy companies and such for a long time. They get huge tax incentives to build something more they can profit off the public from. Then the government can raise more revenue and around and around it goes...

It is actually nice to be hearing from a power company what I have been saying for a few years now.

We need to convert our electricity utilities from power generation to power assurance companies.

So if they are farsighted enough to take advantage of it now, they could be in very good shape later on down the road.

Normally I do not associate Duke Energy with good decisions, but they are not in my area, so maybe they are smarting then I have been given the impression they are.

Long watcher, I like the way you put it. Assurance company. There are multi billion dollar assurance companies all around us, and the concept has been with us since the first insurance salesman walked up to the first home of a prospective client. I actually believe that the idea might be something that we should all be seeking. Thanks for your insight. Richard Viers Alternative Energy Products Group.

Right now, I pay $8.54 for a line fee (technically $7 for the line, $1.54 in city taxes), I honestly would not mind if I had to pay a little extra. I think of the line fee as what I pay instead of batteries/residential energy storage. At the time I installed my system, minimal non-fossil fuel backup would have been about $5-6000 and full (off-grid capability) backup in the neighborhood of $12,000. And this is not including the replacement of the batteries at the ~10 year mark.

So the choice was $8.54/month or $6-12,000 for assured power 24/7 (or reasonably close to that). It would take many months for that $8.74 to equal even the low amount of $5,000. I figure the break even for battery backup is a line fee of about $30/month currently if using the low number and $50-60 if using the high number. I of course expect the utility assurance companies to offer significant savings because of scale, so realistically, I would be okay with something in the $30 range.

Note though I would expect an even higher level of confidence in the system, but that is the point of converting them from power generation to assurance. They would switch more effort into maintenance of the grid infrastructure and in fact would probably be encouraged to do significant upgrades to save money in the mid-to-long term.

Part of the reason certain insurance companies are trusted more then others is they have a reputation to maintain. Same applies to cell phone companies and internet providers. I would rather pay a little bit extra to have that extra confidence that the service I receive is the best I can get for my money.

Interesting quote:

"If the cost of solar panels keeps coming down, installation costs come down and if they combine solar with battery technology and a power management system, then we have someone just using us for backup," he said.

I take the antithesis of that statement and say that if the price of utility power continues to go up, if the grids keep dropping when freak storms and natural disasters hit, then a backup is exactly what the grid will become.

More and more people are using the grid as a backup generator everyday.

The electric utilities need to become more service minded and offer customers products and benefits beyond being 'just for backup'. Some actions will encourage consumption of electricity and thus leverage fully depreciated generation assets, avoid stranded assets, and enable investment in more efficient generation assets. For example: utilities can encourage the adoption of electric vehicles and use their buying power and good credit to diminish the barriers posed to consumers by the high initial capital investment for a new car. Many financial options could be offered: leases, rebates, and fleet rental, etc. The utility would reap the benefit of new load demand (typically at night, off peak) and the customer would benefit from reduced operation and maintenance costs associated with transportation. The most clever utilities will push hard to make use of these newly distributed electric storage devices to improve grid reliability and internal cost performance. This represents the kind of win-win where the customer benefits on all fronts (lower cost, no gas station stops, superior performance, lower maintenance cost) and the utility leverages its existing assets to the fullest extent while offering superior and new services.
Because generation assets have relatively low utilization rates (i.e. many plants sit idle throughout the year until the moment of peak demand) the potential is large for the utility to purposefully and beneficially smooth the demand curve profile without the addition of any new power plants due to the customers' beneficial additions.
Market challenges from new products many be a novel experience to the utility industry, but many other markets have survived and thrived by embracing change and improving themselves. If utilities don't find a means to do so, they will have only themselves to blame for not having looked, given their many advantages as incumbents with an established (often captive) relationship to a set of customers.

I'm still waiting for the "smart" grid upgrades. So far all I've gotten is a new digital power meter which saves the utility the payroll of a human meter reader. For this "benefit", I get to pay more!?

The problem with utilities is that their monopoly on power generation is no longer assured. I strongly believe the smart utilities should be promoting increased electricity demand by way of plug-in cars. These could/should be able to connect to a truly intelligent grid and charge at the lowest point of the demand curve at night to help base-load generators. That should also happen to coincide with lowest TOU cost of electricity.

I also believe that at some future point the car/house interface (charger) should be smart/capable enough that if TOU rates are too high on the grid the charger will reverse current from the car to the offset house/grid electricity demands down to a SOC on the car at a user-set threshold like 80 or 90% SOC. That would put ready reserve onto the grid.

What I REALLY wish? I wish that I could get a second grid connection with a TOU meter so that I can sell PV generation when the grid needs it at peak rates and buy generation to charge the car at low TOU/demand times, all without a PPA. Seems to me that would go a long way to smoothing out the RE and EV impacts on the grid. I'd even accept an agreement for that meter to be dispatchable if the utility needed to dispatch generation=PV, or demand=EV. Since that would be a separate metered connection my main house would remain a grid-dependent power hog. Why can't our "smart" meters be dispatchable on the "smart grid" they tout so much?