Expected Consumer Behavior
In
a surprisingly frank report, a group of US power utilities published a
report late last year that spells the doom that the industry sees coming
if people keep turning to solar panels and other reusable power
sources. The report went mostly unnoticed until a blog picked it up. In
it, we hear some of the fears that the power utilities have from this
increased usage of solar panels. In an industry that has remained
unchanged for so many years, this is the first time when their business
model could actually be threatened in a serious way.
In
recent years, the cost of solar panels has gone down, so has
installation fees while the efficiency of these panels has gone up. This
mix means that the resulting consumer behavior is to see panels not
only as a backup source, but as their primary power source. More and
more homes are installing solar panels on top of their roofs, and there
will come a point in the near future where the effectiveness will be
high enough where most of the power that comes through will be enough to
sustain a typical family home, with the grid only being used for
backup.
The
report spells out some of the things that will be needed for this to
happen, like the combination of these panels with batteries and power
management systems, and the improvement of micro turbines. The report
also makes the link with the telephone system, where few would have
predicted a decade ago that land lines would become endangered as people
move to cell phones as their primary form of communication. It could
well be that in 10 years, we start seeing a shift where people producing
their own energy with solar panels, wind turbines and micro generators
would be the norm.
