Is something good unraveling or is something good just beginning? The question arises when looking at Maine, where the Public Utilities Commission has proposed letting groups of customers own renewable power facilities.
The PUC is considering allowing up to 10 residential and business customers to share ownership of projects of up to 500 kW and participate in net metering with the local utility. Stringer Lisa Wood reports that the Governor's Office of Energy Independence and Security wants to expand the idea a lot; it would allow projects and net metering up to a cap of between 2 MW and 5 MW, and customers could share ownership across utility territories. The renewable source could be at the customers' site or elsewhere. This is far from negligible.
Needless to say, utilities in the state are not loving either idea. Bangor Hydro-Electric, commenting on just the PUC's smaller, single-utility proposal, said the state may end up with a lot of small, unregulated utilities within franchised, regulated utility territories. Administrative headaches and more. Indeed, such a plan would plow new ground, especially if the across-territories aspect came to pass. Billing headaches could be nightmares ... unless real computerized, smart-grid technology made it pretty simple. What is a state regulator to do? Would a utility have to redefine itself?
Those who favor preserving the utility tradition might figure that not enough residentials would be willing to get tangled up in energy projects, even just thinking about them, and that might well be true. There's a reason we hand certain jobs over to others. And of course, we have heard distributed-generation enthusiasm many times through the years. With the new drive toward huge new systems to deliver renewable power across thousands of miles, it's hard to know what models will make it. Still, in a state like Maine, small models seem possible.
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