As the title suggests, I have three ideas for electrical companies. I am not listing them in any particular order.
1. Legislation has already moved to allow people to sell energy (such as excess energy from solar panels or wind turbines) and more will probably be passed to let companies buy and sell more energy to regular people. Most entrenched energy companies are spending a lot of money fighting this kind of legislation when they should be guiding it. Legislators are fond of putting provisions on their bills, why not introduce provisions that allow the above buying and selling of energy as long as a certain percentage of the income from such transfers must go to building and repairing infrastructure? If the current companies are smart, they would keep that required percentage lower than what they currently set aside for such activities and then offer new companies their existing services to help meet the requirements. Current companies would be competing on a more even footing than what some of the current legislation suggests, and would be able to make a profit by extending their infrastructure services to the new companies. Sure, they would lose their virtual monopolies, but that seems to be the direction that legislation is heading anyway. This would give them an edge in dealing with the future.
2. Rent solar panels (or wind turbines, natural gas generators, or fuel cells) to business and residential customers at a monthly fee that is slightly less than their current electrical bills. This idea can turn subdivisions into power generators, providing energy closer to the source ( thus requiring less fuel to meet demand) AND making a larger percentage of the company's power generation come from renewable resources (well, not for the natural gas or maybe even the fuel cells), which is something that will probably also be legislated in the near future.
3. Create an off-shoot that sells more energy efficient appliances in return for recycling energy guzzlers. They already do this to some degree, but if they do this on a larger scale, they can reduce energy consumption in high volume areas, cash in on government incentives, and hopefully make a profit on selling the appliances.
I'm not saying these are perfect ideas (nor are they fully developed), but I think that they would be steps in the right direction.
1. Legislation has already moved to allow people to sell energy (such as excess energy from solar panels or wind turbines) and more will probably be passed to let companies buy and sell more energy to regular people. Most entrenched energy companies are spending a lot of money fighting this kind of legislation when they should be guiding it. Legislators are fond of putting provisions on their bills, why not introduce provisions that allow the above buying and selling of energy as long as a certain percentage of the income from such transfers must go to building and repairing infrastructure? If the current companies are smart, they would keep that required percentage lower than what they currently set aside for such activities and then offer new companies their existing services to help meet the requirements. Current companies would be competing on a more even footing than what some of the current legislation suggests, and would be able to make a profit by extending their infrastructure services to the new companies. Sure, they would lose their virtual monopolies, but that seems to be the direction that legislation is heading anyway. This would give them an edge in dealing with the future.
2. Rent solar panels (or wind turbines, natural gas generators, or fuel cells) to business and residential customers at a monthly fee that is slightly less than their current electrical bills. This idea can turn subdivisions into power generators, providing energy closer to the source ( thus requiring less fuel to meet demand) AND making a larger percentage of the company's power generation come from renewable resources (well, not for the natural gas or maybe even the fuel cells), which is something that will probably also be legislated in the near future.
3. Create an off-shoot that sells more energy efficient appliances in return for recycling energy guzzlers. They already do this to some degree, but if they do this on a larger scale, they can reduce energy consumption in high volume areas, cash in on government incentives, and hopefully make a profit on selling the appliances.
I'm not saying these are perfect ideas (nor are they fully developed), but I think that they would be steps in the right direction.
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