Dive Summary:
- "Solar is growing so fast it is going to overtake everything," Jon Wellinghoff, chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), told Greentech Media at last week's National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas
- Wellinghoff noted that "solar is going to be the dominant player and "once it is more cost-effective to build solar with storage than to build a combustion turbine or wind for power at night, that is 'game over.' At that point, it will be all about consumer-driven markets."
- Wellinghoff also suggested installed solar capacity "could double every two years." GTM Research confirms that it expects installed global PV solar capacity to double over the next 2.5 years. Here's a chart showing GTM Research's projection of global PV solar capacity and another chart showing its projection of U.S. PV solar capacity.
From the article:
The Crossborder Energy study in California concluded the benefits of DG are near retail rates, he noted. “If utilities say that study is wrong, let’s get their studies and the studies from the solar side, and let’s have a hearing, let’s have full discovery, and let’s have a fully litigated process. That’s what regulatory commissions at the federal and state levels are for, to put all that data on the table and see what the accurate answers are.” [...]
If he was put in charge of updating the retail utility business model and pushing it to incorporate DG, Wellinghoff said, he would introduce more competition.
“I would unbundle utility services,” he said. “I would do a full analysis of anything not now competitive, like the distribution system, and then try to ensure I could recover costs in a way that adequately reflected all costs and benefits for all users.”