I don't think most utilities have a beef with shaving off high-tier consumption (well, I'm sure they miss the revenue, but they are not stupid enough to go back on years of telling their customers to conserve).
Their bigger concern is net metering, by which I can sell them solar power during peak hours at their retail rate of, say, $0.45/kWh and then buy it back from them at, say, $0.06/kWh at night, or maybe even 6 months later in the dead of winter.
Not paying for power you didn't use is one thing, but using the power company's own transmission network to arbitrage its rates with no fee does seem long-term unsustainable. If the current rates reached their ultimate conclusion, the power companies would have to make massive, massive investments in storage systems capable of buffering months worth of demand, as their net revenues trend towards $0.
Their bigger concern is net metering, by which I can sell them solar power during peak hours at their retail rate of, say, $0.45/kWh and then buy it back from them at, say, $0.06/kWh at night, or maybe even 6 months later in the dead of winter.
Not paying for power you didn't use is one thing, but using the power company's own transmission network to arbitrage its rates with no fee does seem long-term unsustainable. If the current rates reached their ultimate conclusion, the power companies would have to make massive, massive investments in storage systems capable of buffering months worth of demand, as their net revenues trend towards $0.