Safety reasons are not spurious – they are very real. Another utility next to ours had a case where they turned off the distribution circuit for work. There were so many solar inverters feeding into the network that they confused each other for grid power and thus did not turn off as they were supposed to during a grid outage. That would be a deadly situation for anyone working on the line. There are no apologies for utilities acting in the interest of their workers.

The biggest reason to own your own solar plant is that you control the whole setup. If something is wrong, you throw the disconnect and fix it, no third party involved for either maintenance or metering. More importantly, there is money set aside for this kind of work that makes it cost advantageous to do so.

If you live nearby the solar interconnect, those electrons flow to you first, so you can feel better about getting the green benefit, rather than someone 50 miles away.

Utilities have been and will continue to impede the growth of the distributed generation industry. Tactics such as complicated regulations, net metering caps and spurious safety concerns are very effective in slowing down the market and increasing costs for non-utility installations.

Dave Galanis
Pebble Creek Partners