Dive Brief:
- In a wide-ranging interview on the future of the electric utility industry, Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning predicted advanced storage and distributed generation could remake the industry but also said utilities aren't going anywhere in the near-term.
- Baseload generation will remain necessary for the foreseeable future, Fanning told Bill Loveless in a conversation with USA Today.
Dive Insight:
Southern chief Fanning told Loveless, the former host of Platts Energy Week, that while technology is remaking the utility grid the industry will not go the way of the telephone companies which couldn't compete with the disruption of cell phones.
"Absolutely not," Fannning said, though he cautioned that "the notion of what the infrastructure may be, may evolve."
Fanning also said his company wants to provide customers with the ability to put solar panels on their roofs, but balked at the idea of a third-party installer like SolarCity coming in, saying the utility is better situated to give customers what they want. "The answer to any of these issues can't be about us. It's got to be about the customer," he said.
In the longer-term, he said advanced storage has the greatest potential to remake the industry. "That has the ability to enhance [distributed generation]'s penetration," Fanning said.
SolarCity recently announced an expansion into Texas markets, initially in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, by partnering with electricity retailer MP2 Energy to provide solar that will compete with utility rates without local incentives. The company also recently opened an operations center in Albuquerque, making New Mexico the sixteenth state where the leading U.S. residential rooftop installer is active.
