With a nation-leading community solar program, changes to the compensation scheme for participants shouldn’t be taken lightly. ILSR offered these comments to the MN Public Utilities Commission in February 2018 about preserving high values for the state’s “value of solar” calculation.… Read More
Across the country, utilities are battling their customers over solar, and typically trying to undermine customers that want to cut their energy bills by installing solar arrays. But not all fights end with one side or the other “winning.” In April 2016, New York utilities—already starting down the road to a new market structure under the … Read More
Earlier this week, the Public Utilities Commission of Hawaii approved the proposal of the islands’ largest utility to end net metering for solar customers. It’s the culmination of a years-long battle and a proxy in the national fight between utilities and solar producing customers. It’s also the first big decision taking Hawaii away from the “energy … Read More
This subject has been updated, please read our newest piece: Distributed Generation (Still) Under Fire, published May 2016. Need evidence that utilities are fighting back against their customer’s desire to generate their own power? This map shows where policies like net metering are undermining the ability of utility customers to exercise their desire for self-reliance. I developed … Read More
Complete nonsense. The most socialistic thing I’ve ever heard. That’s just two quotes from a value of solar conversation between ILSR’s John Farrell and Karl Rábago of the Pace Energy and Climate Center that took place online on July 8, 2015. More and more people are installing solar, significantly reducing their purchase of electricity from utility … Read More
A new report released this week asserts that utility-scale solar is much more economical than small-scale solar. The clear implication is that we should let incumbent utilities build or buy solar from large-scale arrays instead of allowing customers to generate their own power. There are several reasons to seriously question the mistaken assertion that big solar … Read More
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 provide more value to the electric … Read More
In his Sunday Wall Street Journal commentary on May 17, Brian Potts suggests that cost is the bottom line in the electric customer shift to solar, and that rooftop solar costs too much. But his defense of the utility’s view of energy costs leaves a big hole in the big picture: the value of solar energy … Read More
Principles, Structure, and Policies of Energy Democracy Energy democracy can best be described as an electricity system that empowers the individuals and communities that have the energy resources of the 21st century (e.g. wind and solar) to economically benefit from their use. It shares the principles of utility 2.0 – an efficient, low- carbon, and flexible … Read More
