Dive Brief:

• Southern Co. unit Georgia Power wants regulators to slap additional charges beginning next year on anyone installing solar panels.
• The utility is the latest to argue that users of distributed generation do not contribute enough to the maintenance of the power grid.
• The solar industry, which has been booming as the price of photovoltaic panels has plummeted in recent years, sees efforts by utilities to raise the cost of solar power with added fees as a move "to kill solar," in the opinion of Bryan Miller, vice president of SunRun, a solar financing company.    

Dive Insight:

Tiffs similar to the one in Georgia are being played out between utilities and renewable energy advocates in scores of other states that have policies supporting distributed generation. The utility industry's concerns are exacerbated by forecasts of flat or even negative growth in power demand. The factors highlight the need for utilities and state regulators to move with some urgency to reform decades-old business models.