Dive Brief:
- A Carolinas utility trade association wants North Carolina utility customers to be able to sell privately generated electricity to the grid, the Charlotte Business Journal reports.
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A group sponsored by E4 Carolinas and the Energy Production and Infrastructure Center at UNC Charlotte is calling for significant changes to North Carolina utilities to accommodate the increased penetration of renewable resources.
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The group hopes to introduce a variety of changes in how electricity is produced and consumed to better reflect the technologies available in the market today.
Dive Insight:
States from New York to California are revamping policies in an effort to adapt utility business models to the proliferation of distributed energy resources. Now North Carolina is joining those efforts.
The N.C. Utility of the Future Steering Team has issued a report calling for a new utility business model in the state.
The report is “the most significant comprehensive thought process toward evolving North Carolina’s electric utility industry since development of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard concluding in 2007,” David Doctor, CEO of E4 Carolinas, told the Charlotte Business Journal.
The report says the way power is regulated, distributed and paid for is outmoded, using policies and practices created in the 20th Century as they struggled to keep up with demand. Now as new technologies and green energy proliferate, utilities need to shift to a more modern model, the report said.
“Significant improvement in the economics of generating technologies such as solar, microturbines, and fuel cells have made bi-directional power flows a practical reality, potentially creating grid integration challenges for these distributed energy resources,” the report states.