Gore's solar panels

Instapundit, links to "ecotality" and writes:

AFTER ALL THE FLAK HE GOT for his Belle Meade mansion's energy use, Al Gore is installing solar panels. Ecototality has a report, and photo.

Ecotality:

Tennessee is not a mandatory “net metering” state, though the local electric utility that serves Gore’s house does offer the option for customers who generate their own power.

Nashville Electric Service, which distributes Tennessee Valley Authority power, allows customers to sign up for TVA’s “Generation Partners” program, which buys customer-generated “green” power at a rate of 15 cents per kilowatt hour. ...

For all the grief - deserved, I believe - that I and others have given Gore for his use of “carbon offsets” to pretend to be “carbon neutral” rather than actually personally living the he wants others to live (while some people actually do the hard work to live green), it’s good to see him trying to “walk the walk” with solar panels.

The implication is that Al Gore could have easily installed solar panels on his house earlier but he refused until the combined efforts of bloggers and a Tennessee think tank shamed him into applying for a permit.

Is that storyline true? Apparently not:

March 21, 2007 — By Erik Schelzig, Associated Press

BELLE MEADE, Tenn. -- Zoning rules in Al Gore's upscale Tennessee neighborhood have prevented the former vice president and environmental activist from installing solar panels on his roof.

Gore bought his multimillion dollar home in 2002 in Belle Meade, an exclusive city encircled by metropolitan Nashville, and he has embarked on an ambitious renovation. But his contractors ran into a legal barrier last summer when they sought to apply for a permit to install solar panels on the roof.

Terry Franklin, Belle Meade's building officer, said the town only allows power generating equipment to be placed on the ground level. "Solar panels are generators," Franklin said.

"We told them they couldn't do it," he said. "They wanted to try anyway, but we convinced them it was something the board wouldn't allow." ...

Belle Meade, the nation's fifth-richest town according to the 2000 Census, developed the zoning rules because many of its homes have backup electric generators. The area has several tall trees and residents have discouraged Nashville Electric Service crews from pruning those near power lines. Power outages from falling branches have forced several residents to purchase backup generators.

Gore's contractors had argued that silent solar panels should not be equated with noisy gas- or diesel-powered generators, but they ultimately agreed not to press the issue while the city considered changes to the code.

New rules on April 1 will allow homeowners to install solar panels on their roofs. But there's a caveat: "Solar panels may be installed upon the roof of a building so long as they are not visible from the street or from any adjoining property," according to the ordinance.

Gore's roof does have flat areas where the panels could be placed, Franklin said.

The builders at Gore's home plan to make the application for solar panels once the new ordinance goes into effect.

"We just sort of had to wait until they caught up with things," said Steve Rick, Gore's architect. "I didn't think it was worth fighting because we knew the change was coming."

To summarize: Gore wanted to install solar panels as part of a renovation project he undertook shortly after he bought his house. Though his electric utility would have allowed him to do that, local zoning rules prohibited solar panels. Since these rules were changed two weeks ago he's now applying for a permit, but he may not get it because the roof on his house is not flat.

Really what this shows is how difficut it is to get distributed generation installed in a regulatory environment that favors large centralized electricity production (zoning as well as generation regulations). The cards are stacked against those who want to install solar panels (or microturbines, etc.) when they happen to live in an area that has arcane laws prohibiting that sort of thing. Ideally, there would be no such regulations anywhere in the country--except minimum safety regulations of course. Even more ideally, there would be a number of companies providing distributed electricity production equipment (solar panels, microturbines, etc.) at no up-front cost to the consumer, instead recouping the initial capital investment costs by chargeing the homeowner for the electricity generated on a per-kilowatt basis just like a regular utility does.

But either way, once regulations are loosened to allow distributed generation, market forces can take over. I believe that'd be the sort of free-market solution both us lefty types as well as the libertarian types could support. Plus, maybe we could talk about solutions rather than "hype" Al Gore's electricity consumption. That'd be nice.