harry wrote:

And how many homes in the utilities service area are even up to
current code? I'd bet many homes in many service areas have only
10kA AIR.

The utility that is being ultra-conservative may have to consider
that older homes in their service area may not even support this.

Can you just imagine the hue and cry when some homeowners are told
they have to spend a couple hundred bucks to upgrade their service
panel because of changes in the utility's distribution?

Small scale locally generated power makes no difference to these
problems. In fact it helps.

Our regional and municipal electricity distributors are not pointing the
finger at the capability or specs of residential service panels or
neighborhood distribution / stepdown transformers as the reason why they
won't let small-scale (less than 10kw) roof-top PV systems to connect to
the grid.

They are saying that the local sub-station doesn't have the "capability"
to allow for a handful (or perhaps even a single) small-scale PV systems
to be hooked up and they would need to "upgrade" the sub-station in some
way.

For more about this, see he

http://www.greenpowertalk.org/archiv...p/t-13885.html

And less relevant, he

http://www.canadianenergylaw.com/201...ofit-projects/

All the arguments put forward here about why homeowner-operated PV
systems (with nameplate rating under 10kw) are not being allowed to
connect to the grid through their own bi-directional revenue meter have
not addressed the issue as to how the connection of such a PV system can
possibly affect or influence the operation of the regional municipal
sub-station supplying power (at 20 kv?) to the neighborhood in
question. The sub-station is "insulated" from direct exposure to any
individual home by at least 1 step-down distribution transformer (in our
case, a ground-mounted distribution transformer supplying maybe 20 homes
- our electrical service runs underground - not on poles in our
neighborhood).

There may not yet even be a single residential PV system that's been
connected to the grid for the area being served by the sub-station in
question.