I may be missing the point here. But in my understanding and in the past practices of the utilities located in our state and the country as a whole are something like what is following. Net-metering is for small producers homes small business etc up to 1 megawatt "but not in our state" then we have what is called feed-in-tariffs for larger producers wind farms small scale hydro 1-250 megawatt and the like the next is large independent power producers producing 250 megawatts or above.
What most people throughout the country are looking at according to my understandings dealing with the groups who write these deals are as follows.
Net-metering would like to allow direct payment of excess amounts of power produced above what is used by the home or small business owner. This would allow them to achieve a faster payback of system cost. IE use power produced in the home first, second allow the excess power to be put on the grid and latter allow it to be taken back off the grid at an equal credit, and third the excess produced after this point should be paid for by the utility not given for free.
Feed-in-tariffs are for large scale renewable providers we must also understand that when looking at employing people to operate these projects we are looking at megawatts to make these projects financially feasible for these producers. But the main purpose is to give these producers a guaranteed price they will receive for each unit of power "usually mega watt" put onto the grid.
And the last is beyond our scope as they are negotiated by the utility and producer.
A few notes.
Many utility companies throughout our country are placing solar and in some places small wind on residential and commercial customers properties. They will then allow the property owners a credit or some type of payment for allowing the companies to do this. Basically utility net metering this is being done in many western states but is also being done in MI, NC, TN, NJ, and even in OH, VA, MA.
The percent of load is a utility problem that is not only associated with net-metering but also is a problem with non-inductive loads. These problems create harmonics and load imbalances on the distribution lines and are serious problems and will continue to grow with the use on more non-inductive lighting loads "HID and compacts fluorescent loads" along with the non-inductive inverters used in renewable energy systems. But all of these problems are utility problems and can be solved by the utilities but at some cost. This will require more transformers being installed less load sharing among these transformers and capacitance banks added to smooth out the sages and swells along with larger distribution lines. Another note is this is also one of the reasons our utilities do not do more with energy efficiency savings programs.
I do not believe we have feed in tariffs which is the level of production large-scale wind would be listed in. Maybe we should start looking at this legislation in the next year. This may be the time to put regulation in for these projects.
I also believe the percent cap on net-metering should be raised from what it is now. But this would have a problem with the utilities profit margin.
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