Accenture Survey Finds Utilities Must Adapt to Increased Solar Power Use

Global management and technology company Accenture has a new study out showing a rise in residential and commercial solar installations as well as large scale solar distributors. Unfortunately, a lot of utilities aren't ready for the extra power being fed into their part of the grid.

Thirty-eight percent of utility executives who responded to Accenture's survey found that their utilities are going to have to upgrade or deal with operational problems. Challenges such as needing to provide power and voltage support, more interconnection requirements as well problems with grid stability when islanding occurs.

Survey found that 51% of solar panel systems are customer owned, 34% are owned by utilities and 15% are owned by a non-utility developer or distributor that sells large amounts of generated electricity to utilities or on the wholesale market.

David M. Rouls Accenture's managing director of Smart Grid Services said that solar power has great potential to be a source of renewable energy because of the cost of panel production coming down but utilities will have to adapt and change to accommodate the coming large scale solar electricity supply that will be feeding into their smart grids.

Read more survey finding by Accenture.