Is Solar Changing Utilities Or Are Utilities Changing Solar?

I am puzzled by PG&E's policy about residential solar panel systems. Excess power isn't credited in a straight forward manner to the homeowner. This attitude doesn't encourage homeowners to invest in solar panels. This policy must be changed, PG&E has to GROW-UP!

@joreilly: yes, I agree 100%. Typically, the excuse the wave is "why pay retail price when we can get wholesale". But, I don't think anyone is really expecting retail.
Something I think would really motivate people who get their electricity from a municipality would be to use excess electricity as way to pay taxes. This way if you over produced more than your taxes you'd get a larger rebate. Admittedly, not everyone has this option, but I think it would be a great motivator.

PG&E and other large private, for-profit corporations are scared about residential solar and think they can do better with taxpayer money for centralized installations and new power plants at their sites. They are right when you look at Federal and State subsidies for new nuclear plants in the billions of dollars of taxpayer-guaranteed costs-while-in-progress which Wall Street finds too risky. Take these away, examine a simple financing tool like feed-in-tariffs successfully being used in cloudy Germany and Gainesville FL to see how even these big corporations could profit from residential and small solar rooftop energy. Rooftop Revolution http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2009/0903.blake.html and articles in the Gainesville Sun 1/29/10 about Innovative Plan and Chamber of Commerce - they love the increased business. So would PSE&G because using this simple plan. they would increase their customer base, get inexpensive new sources of distributed energy without capital costs, new power lines, liabilities and ongoing fuel and waste costs. They can collect administrative costs for their power lines and get on with Smart Grid technologies while everyone around them benefits, economically, environmentally, community greater good and cooperation.
Everyone wins. Check it out. This all happened in Gainesville in 8 months using feed-in-tariffs and building on the working solutions in Germany. Get your power company to check it out as well, large or small, regional, private or coop, and ask your legislators to repeal pre-construction loan guarantees to level the playing field. Where were they going to get the billions of dollars in corporate welfare anyway? From overstressed taxpayers? Use Feed-in-tariffs instead and everyone wins.

I think you miss the value of the ability of the homeowner being able to store excess energy at full retail value or time of use value. The homeowner can take the power back at a time when it is needed at no additional charge. In the case of time of use the power is taken back at a greater value. Power taken back at off peak during summer is about $0.30 less than PG& E credits the account for the power stored at peak rates. I think it is a very fare arrangement as the consumer has been able to reduce the size of the solar system based on the added value of TOU power. I think you are talking about excess power beyond that what the consumer uses and what he should be paid for that. And the power company does provide the infrastructure to deliver the excess energy and therefore is due a return on their investment.

All power companies, coop or corp, have per diem charges and power charges. They are separate accounting profiles. The per diem covers infrastructure costs. The power charges cover power costs, wherever purchased. If it dosen't work out for them this way because of favored schemes of profiting, well, gee. We're so sorry.If anyonne can supply power to them to ofset peaks or otherwise, they, as public utilities, should be required to buy it. If it affects their stock value it may be because it is artificially inflated anyway, much like the federal banks,
It would be great if there were FIT's to induce establishment of the renewable base. Of course, it would also be great to have government that was not fearful of, or beholding to lobbiests

The best way to handle it is to bite hard, get a reliable bank of batteries, and go completely off-grid. Cut the utility's umbilical cord and make them suck hot death. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

It's about time utilities start to embrace solar. If they had started in the 1980s when the PV industry first offered utility scale systems, they could have prevented loss of grid monopoly and loss of revenue. Fifty years ago in 1960, Theodore Levitt wrote about short-sighted utilities in his classic Harvard Business Review essay, "Marketing Myopia" http://www.numotion.nl/download.asp?file=marketingmyopia.pdf "Who says that the utilities have no competition? They may be natural monopolies now, but tomorrow they may be natural deaths. To avoid this prospect, they too will have to develop fuel cells, solar energy and other power sources. To survive, they themselves will have to plot the obsolescence of what now produces their livelihood."

A national total of $363.7 billion U.S. dollars, was generated from retail sales of electricity in 2008.
Renewable energies produced only 7% of the the nations energy demands.
So lets figure 7% of $363,700,000,000.00 comes to - $25,459,000,000.00
Of that 7% only 1% came from solar energies, so that comes to... Oh! Look at that, only $254,590,000.00 a year.
My my. Aren't we the poor cousin?

BASED ON US DOE SATISTICS. Go to; http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/alternate/page/renew_energy_consump/figure1.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/esr/esr_sum.html

Look at what else I found out!

"Why We Don't Use More Renewable Energy?
In general, most renewable energy power plants have less environmental impact than fossil and nuclear power plants, but there are two main reasons why we don't use more renewable energy.

Renewable Energy Technologies Are Capital-Intensive: Renewable energy power plants are generally more expensive to build and to operate than coal and natural gas plants. Recently, however, some wind-generating plants have proven to be economically feasible in areas with good wind resources, compared with other conventional technologies, when coupled with the Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit (described below).

Renewable Resources Are Often Geographically Remote: The best renewable resources are often available only in remote areas, so building transmission lines to deliver power to large metropolitan areas is expensive."

Huh! Imagine that.

Go to: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/energy_in_brief/renewable_energy.cfm

From this,
http://www.colorado.edu/UCB/AcademicAffairs/ArtsSciences/physics/PhysicsInitiative/Physics2000/quantumzone/photoelectric.htm

to this,
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2009/02/wired_for_progress.html

with only $254,590,000.00 a year. That is a duanting task. A pity, that RE isn't allowed the same government subsidies the other, established, energy providers are for this purpose. But then, wouldn't that make RE just like them? Except RE is renewable and, to an extent, non polluting. I geuss one would have to be on a crusade of a sort, a solar jihad. "Damn the torpedos. Full speed ahead." "Give me liberty or give me death."
Pity about Earth.

Most important is the feasibility of the technology which varies by region and by site. In Southern California distributed PV on Warehouses seems practical. Unless concentrated solar, or another centralized alternative is cheaper. If a 120MW project in New Jersey doesn't pencil out, then the investors shouldn't make any money and the utility shouldn't encourage any new projects under the same cost conditions. I like the policy of shifting the risk of a project away from the utility.