Once that “Save the Whales” bumper sticker wears off of your 1984 Pinto, you may want to invest in a “Free the Grid” upgrade.

An electric grid is a difficult thing to manage, so its care has been traditionally left to the power companies.  The state government usually acts as overseer/dictator/blind eye, depending on where you live, and most of us were happily ignorant of how power reached our houses unless we had a outage or an extremely high bill.

But with the advent of affordable renewable energy, all that changed.  If you try to slap a solar panel on the roof, or put up a small wind turbine, you’ll find yourself in a regulatory briar-patch that will certainly leave you with a few scratches.

Many utility companies are resistant to letting the little-guy into their power playground.  It’s not without reason – variable sources of energy can make leveling the grid quite challenging.  But they also have a vested interest in keeping their monopoly: a kWh saved is a dime they don’t receive.

The Network For New Energy Choices releases a report card every year, grading each state on its interconnection standards and net metering protocol.  Some big no-no’s include:

• Restricting eligibility to certain classes of electric customers
• Limiting program eligibility based on the size of individual renewable energy systems
• Preventing customers from receiving credit for excess electricity
• Capping the total combined capacity of all customer-sited generators
• Charging discriminatory or unclear fees and standby charges
• Requiring — or allowing utilities to require — unreasonable, opaque or redundant safety measures, such as an external disconnect switch
• Creating an excessively prolonged or arbitrary process for system approval
• Requiring— or allowing utilities to require — different technical provisions that vary by state to serve a distribution grid that is homogeneous nationwide
• Requiring — or allowing utilities to require — unnecessary additional liability insurance
• Failing to promote the program to eligible customers

You can see that there are many creative ways to suppress and inhibit distributed renewable energy systems without expressly banning them.  My state, North Carolina, got a big fat “D” for its net-metering policies.  How did your state do?

Can't get enough? Try these related posts:

1. King of the Grid
2. Free Money for Duke Energy Customers
3. Stupid Smart Grid!
4. PG&Eek!
5. Get your free solar panels…