It's just a matter of time before the idea catches on here....
Over in Denver, folks are getting a bit riled over a bid by their electric utility company, Xcel, to impose a new monthly fee on customers who install solar panels. Solar users, it seems, are sometimes able to power their homes without purchasing any electrical energy from Xcel. This, of course, means that they're not paying any money to the company. You can see how this might be problematic for the company, because the whole idea is to collect money. Clearly, something needed to be done.
Solution: create a fee that applies to anybody with solar arrays.
The monthly fee, which would pay for distribution and transmission of energy, would go into effect in April 2010 and would have to be paid to Xcel, regardless of whether the solar customer used any electricity that month.
It's certainly creative. But what the company seems to be glossing over is the fact that when solar arrays are able to produce power, costs for Xcel are lowered - because they don't have to pay to burn as much coal to produce electrical energy. No wonder the folks are growing restless: they pay tens of thousands of dollars to install the solar arrays and inverters and whatnot, then the utility company wants to charge them for not using their coal-fired product.
