Here is a wrench thrown into the mix to consider... the less folks are paying the electric company for their wattage, the less money is available to support the maintenance and upgrades of the grid's infrastructure.
Some Vt. utilities try to put brakes on solar boom - Yahoo! Finance
The Shumlin administration, lawmakers and Vermont's largest utility have been cheering the arrival of solar energy and "net metering" on Vermont's electrical generation scene, while smaller municipal and cooperative utilities have been pushing back.
Net metering allows owners of solar and other renewable power generators to put their excess power on the grid and run their meter backward, reducing their monthly power bills, sometimes to zero.
That's the rub for Washington and some other smaller utilities. They say that when net-metered customers stop paying, others are left to cover the costs of maintaining poles, wires and other operational costs. It's a warning some made during legislative debates at least as far back as 2008.
The announcement from Washington that as of Oct. 1 it would no longer take energy from residential solar systems larger than 5 kilowatts stunned renewable energy advocates who have long admired the East Montpelier-based co-op's pursuit of renewable sources for its power.
Washington officials, like those at the Johnson-based Vermont Electric Cooperative and the municipal electric department in Hardwick, say they worry that allowing some customers to roll their meter back to zero will leave others picking up the utility's fixed costs — sending crews out to fixed downed power lines in storms, running a billing department and the like.
Not collecting those costs from all members "results in a cost shift to those members without net metered installations," Washington's general manager, Patricia Richards, said in an email. "As a not for profit electric utility, which is owned by our members, our only recourse for recovering insufficient revenue is to increase rates."
