.... To me, the appearance of investor and entrepreneur Elon Musk at the Edison Electric Institute's annual convention in New Orleans was a "wind of change" moment for the august electric utility. It was a signal that the industry was coming to terms, or trying to come to terms, with new forces that are challenging it as a business proposition in a way that it hasn't been challenged in a history of more than 100 years....
...At EEI's annual convention in June in New Orleans, Musk didn't tell his audience what he thought would happen to the utilities as their best customers opted to leave the grid, or to rely on it only in emergencies, while insisting that they should be allowed to sell their own excess generation back to the grid. Musk also didn't venture an opinion on the future of the grid - and his interlocutor, Ted Craver, chairman and CEO of Rosemead, Calif.-based Edison International, didn't press him.
Instead Musk talked glowingly about the electrification of transportation, implying - but not saying outright - that the electric pie would grow with new technologies like his Tesla Motors' electric car.
...The great dark cloud hanging over the industry is that of social justice. As the move to renewables becomes a flood, enthusiastically endorsed by such disparate groups as the Tea Party and environmentalists, the Christian right and morally superior homeowners, and companies like SolarCity and First Solar, the poor may have difficulty keeping their heads above water.
The grid, the lifeline of U.S. social cohesion, remains at threat. Utilities are jumping into the solar business, but they have yet to reveal how selling or leasing rooftop units - as the Southern Company is about to do in Georgia - is going to save the grid, or how the poor and city dwellers are going to be saved from having to pay more and more for the grid while suburban fat cats enjoy their sense that they're saving the planet......
