By Jeff St. John | Greentech Media
U.S. utilities see both threat and opportunity in the rise of customer-owned solar systems. Sure, all that new distributed generation could help them avoid building new power plants in the future. But it could also threaten utility business models, unless they’re able to “flip the DG equation” to make it work for them.
These are some of the top-line findings of Black & Veatch’s Strategic Directions: U.S. Electric Industry report released Tuesday. In its eighth installment of its annual survey of more than 500 utility executives, the engineering and consulting firm took a close look at just how utilities are incorporating distributed generation (DG) into their future plans.