A handful of U.S. utilities have discovered they can save money by encouraging small rooftop solar projects—the same projects utility industry leaders have insisted were too expensive and unreliable to be practical.

The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) in New York, for instance, is paying developers to build solar panels on top of buildings in tiny towns that are experiencing population booms but don’t have enough electric grid infrastructure to bring in the electricity they need. The pilot initiative will allow the utility to avoid spending more than $80 million to build new transmission lines and grid equipment.

"It’s actually cost-effective to add renewables" this way, said Michael Deering, LIPA’s vice president of environmental affairs.

The program reflects some utilities’ changing relationship with distributed generation, or DG, the name for small-scale energy generators like solar systems and micro wind turbines that produce electricity close to where the power is used.

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via InsideClimate News http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20130912/why-are-some-big-utilities-embracing-small-scale-solar-power