Green Mountain Power in Vermont has started a program that provides solar and home battery storage for its residents at a low monthly cost. The program looks to get people off the grid, for that reduces the amount of energy drawn from the central grid. Thus it reduces costs for all consumers.

That's innovation in the 21st Century, unlike Norwich Public Utilities that offers a solar pamphlet that reads more like propaganda against green energy than something encouraging solar. It states that net metering is “the equivalent of your neighbors covering these additional (infrastructure) costs for you − subsidizing your preference not necessity.”

That is a line major utility lobbies in Washington use to defund net metering for profit motives. Their logic is flawed. It's like not being allowed to purchase an electric car because gas prices fund infrastructure. Also, a study from Lawrence Berkley Laboratory concluded the effects of rooftop solar on non-solar customers is negligible. Using NPU's failed logic, the consumer must certainly be "subsidizing their preference, not necessity” that is the Mountain Ash Solar Farm that they built with Solar City.

Modern families will not want to move to Norwich when their utility refuses to join the 21st Century. 

Philip Brose

Norwich