The future of electric utilities is being shaped at this moment more by renewable technology’s lightning development, than by pro-active planning on the utility end. Those utilities that decide to lead and embrace new technology will succeed, and those that pursue a holding action will meet the same fate as landline-based phone companies, dead-tree news organizations, and film-based camera makers in decades past.
Zachary Shahan in CleanTechnica:
I ended up producing 80 videos from my time at the 2015 Abu Dhabi Sustainability Week in January. (It’s going to take a while to share all of those here on CleanTechnica.) In January, I shared the first article in a “Michael Liebreich Interview Series,” which came about through a dinner with Michael and his many useful insights into clean energy and electric vehicle matters. That first article, “Cheapest Solar In The World,” was a pretty big hit, but I think this one could outperform it.
This video comes right after a panel Michael was moderating, and right before he invited me to dinner. It is about the intriguing future of utilities, and an idea Michael has come up with that is quite compelling. Just watch.
Three years ago, the nation’s top utility executives gathered at a Colorado resort to hear warnings about a grave new threat to operators of America’s electric grid: not superstorms or cyberattacks, but rooftop solar panels.
If demand for residential solar continued to soar, traditional utilities could soon face serious problems, from “declining retail sales” and a “loss of customers” to “potential obsolescence,” according to a presentation prepared for the group. “Industry must prepare an action plan to address the challenges,” it said.
The warning, delivered to a private meeting of the utility industry’s main trade association, became a call to arms for electricity providers in nearly every corner of the nation. Three years later, the industry and its fossil-fuel supporters are waging a determined campaign to stop a home-solar insurgency that is rattling the boardrooms of the country’s government-regulated electric monopolies.
The campaign’s first phase—an industry push for state laws raising prices for solar customers—failed spectacularly in legislatures around the country, due in part to surprisingly strong support for solar energy from conservatives and evangelicals in traditionally “red states.” But more recently, the battle has shifted to public utility commissions, where industry backers have mounted a more successful push for fee hikes that could put solar panels out of reach for many potential customers.
One Utility, Detroit based DTE, is following the utility commission route to attempt to undermine community efficiency standards, in hard hit communities trying to recover from decades of hardship.
In 2014, the city of Ypsilanti became the first Michigan municipality to convert all its streetlights to LED.
The new bulbs use up to three times less electricity, provide better light, cost less to run and immediately reduced Ypsilanti’s carbon footprint. But the main motivation for a quick, full conversion was the bottom line – the financially struggling city, in a year, cut its DTE Energy streetlight bill by 29 percent, or $176,000.
To pay for $500,000 in capital costs associated with conversion, the city implemented a approved a special assessment district requiring all property owners to contribute $114 per parcel.
The fee wasn’t especially popular among residents, but lighting the streets using less electricity at far less cost was too good of a package for city leaders pass up, and around 1,100 streetlights were converted over a two-year period.
Now, those savings could be eliminated.
Under new DTE-proposed rate changes, the cost of running high-efficiency LED lights will increase while the cost of running far less efficient high-pressure sodium and mercury vapor lamps will drop significantly or only increase marginally.
And that has upset the many local government leaders and environmental groups across southeast Michigan working toward converting streetlights as a means to save money and meet environmental goals.
Several officials questioned the change and said it appears the only reason DTE, which is a private utility that’s publicly traded, is raising rates on more efficient technology is to sell more electricity by making LED technology less attractive.
Regardless of the motivation, those opposed to the rate adjustments agree that absent a financial incentive, the growing movement to switch to the cleaner, cheaper and more efficient LED lights will quickly die.
The Southern Company was revealed in recent weeks as a primary funder behind climate denialist ‘scientist” Willie Soon. Here, Southern CEO Tom Fanning poo poos threats to utility business models.
Below, more from Liebrich on the impact of Energy Efficiency on utilities.
The bottom video doesn’t work
Yet another example of how: [Renewable energy ] + [utilities] is an equation best solved as a publicly-owned non-profit endeavor.
If these energy utility CEO’s had any vision at all, they would not be lobbying
AGAINST against renewable energy, they would be lobbying FOR public ownership of the electric utility system. At least then, they and all their employees would have jobs for the foreseeable future.
Somebody is going to start building that parallel renewable-energy-only electric utility system that we all agree we need. When that happens, we are going to see electric utilities beg to be annexed into a non profit network.