POWER GENERATION
Cheaper renewable energy in US shows up Eskom’s nuclear folly
In January 2013, a study commissioned by the Edison Electric Institute predicted utility companies in the US would fall into a death spiral as electricity consumers installed rooftop solar panels to make some or all of their electricity for less than it cost to buy power from the grid. The companies would sell less electricity and they would have to increase tariffs to meet their fixed costs. Higher tariffs would see more consumers defect from the grid, particularly as solar photovoltaic (PV) panels were becoming cheaper and more efficient. That would lead to still higher grid prices and more defections. In other words, a death spiral. Well, it did not happen, and we can learn much from examining the tactics used by the utility companies to escape the descent into bankruptcy. As they saw it, the first problem was net metering, a scheme in which home owners could feed the surplus power from their PV panels back into the grid. If, for instance, a customer used 1,000 units of grid elec...
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