The reason utilities fight homeowner power is because of the way the laws permitting it were written.
Those laws were written so that the utilities take all of the financial risk and burden.
Just because some homeowner sets up his own wind turbine and “goes off the grid” the utility doesn’t get to cut service to him.
The utility still has to maintain service to that customer even though they are not receiving any substantial income from him.
Also any excess power that the customer generates the utility is required to purchase from the customer at a premium.
Then there is the issue of power quality. These off the grid power producers have a bad reputation with putting low quality power on the grid which can cause havoc with the equipment of other customers.
The utilities have just cause to oppose independent power producers. The deck is stacked against them.
I am sure there are places where official permission to live in your own home is not granted without such hookup.
Check out reply #38
While I’m in general agreement with what you’ve written, I wanted to make one clarification:
It is in only a few states where “net metering” laws force the utility to pay retail rate for power from “home power producers.”
A map of metering regs for the US is here:
http://www.dsireusa.org/documents/SummaryMaps/NetMetering_Map.ppt
OK, in many of the states where you see “*”, the regulations require IOU’s (Investor-owned Utilities) to buy at retail rates, or rates higher than “avoided cost” rates.
In many of those states, the rural co-operatives are either exempt from having to buy user-generated power, or they need pay only “avoided cost” rates, and then often only up to a certain amount of kWh per month.
Same deal for solar power.
One more issue to add to your list: safety. The home-spun power system must disconnect from the grid if the grid goes down. Otherwise, linemen’s lives are at risk.
If a homeowner is "off the grid" then he does not have service anyway.
"The utility still has to maintain service to that customer even though they are not receiving any substantial income from him."
The utility does not have to provide power if a customer doesn't want it.
"Also any excess power that the customer generates the utility is required to purchase from the customer at a premium. "
Usually homeowners are paid less than wholesale for excess power that they produce.
"Then there is the issue of power quality. These off the grid power producers have a bad reputation with putting low quality power on the grid which can cause havoc with the equipment of other customers. "
If the home is "off the grid" they are not connected so they can not be putting poor quality power on it. Even with grid intertied systems, damage to the utility's equipment is just about impossible since a homeowner's inverter would be fried if the utility and homeowner's inverter sine wave ever got out of phase. If the phase does wander, the homeowner's equipment will disconnect from the grid, it's designed to do that. There is no way a little 5kw or so system could do anything to the "unlimited" capacity of the grid, the grid would win every time.
"The utilities have just cause to oppose independent power producers. The deck is stacked against them."
Just the opposite is true, the deck is stacked against the homeowner. Check these sites for very high quality grid intertied systems plus some good educational information on them: http://www.xantrex.com http://www.outbackpower.com