Awhile back my family and I began discussing the topic of solar installation for our home. We have a great setup for it. Our house is on a hill with a very large south facing roof to take advantage of the sunshine all day long. No significant tree cover. And to top it all off we have a geothermal heating system.

Some quick math and some consultation with some local solar installer quickly showed us we could be saving 7-8000 dollars a year with solar installation. That would pretty quickly pay for a solar system. Combine that with state and federal incentives and it seemed like a no brainer. So we started talking to local installers, unfortunately that’s when we ran into an issue.

Apparently the power company we have makes it virtually impossible for installers to work with them. So much so that of the five companys we’ve spoken to all of them have told us exactly that and then essentially said they can’t help us. That brings us to the point of my post. Providing incentives for consumer solar is only one half of the process. There needs to be a legal standard that makes power companies work with solar installers or many people will be in the same boat we are. The company we have is not a small one. They supply power for nearly 9 million households. If they hold this policy, I imagine many others do as well. Widespread consumer adoption of solar is being massively handicapped by things like this.