Tesla Motors Announces A New Home Battery; Living Off The Grid Will Soon Be Status Quo

[tblue37]

68. Well, considering that they have successfully lobbied legislatures to impose

outrageous extra fees on those who get much of their electricity from solar power, I imagine they will find a way to prevent or burden the use of electrical power that the big companies do not supply.

Oklahoma Utilities Hit Homes Using Solar With Extra Fee

Anyone living in Oklahoma planning to power their home using a rooftop solar panel will soon be charged a fee for the right to do that while still being connected to the local power grid.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin signed the "solar surcharge" bill into law on Monday, permitting utilities to charge an extra fee to any customer using distributed power generation, such as rooftop solar or a small wind turbine.

Distributed generation is seen in many parts of the country as a way for cities and homeowners to modernize their power system and become more resilient in the face of extreme weather, brought about in part by climate change. Rooftop solar and wind turbines generate clean energy to help to keep homes’ lights on when the power grid fails.

Oklahoma's new law states that it is aiming to prevent the majority of utility customers from "subsidizing" those with solar panels on their homes who offset the cost of electricity and grid maintenance costs by generating their own power and feeding it onto the grid and receiving credit for the power they generate.

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http://www.weather.com/science/environment/news/oklahoma-alternative-energy-taxes-20140423

ON EDIT: And don't forget, whenever those solar and wind power customers generate more power than they use, they contribute that extra power to the grid, but are not compensated at all for it. They are forced to donate that extra power, and then they get charged extra because they are not paying for power from the grid, since they ended up with more power from their solar or wind generators than they needed to use.