It seems to me that they need to have a special solar rooftop group, like GSLO:OTC or something. Even outsource it. Maybe they could afford to offer discount prices on the power, since they would be eliminating usual generator capacity, transmission losses and a lot of their RoW fire risk. They could set it up to only offer those services in fire risk areas where they need to eliminate their RoWs. Install scattered, smaller scale, solar cell generating stations and connect 1-10-25 houses. I think I've heard that they've been building large wind energy battery storage sites with Tesla, so those could probably be adapted to use solar. Avoids having to make a lot of those long RoWs. But then again, taking clients off their monopolized grids isn't typically a utility's favorite practice. Computer users broke free of IT with their centralized main frames with the advent of PCs for awhile, but then IT invented networks and chained us back up, then came tablets, smart phones and we almost broke free again, but now there are clouds. We're all shackled to a live streaming, instant messaging, computation as a service, cloud again. IT will never let us go free.
“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"
Solar rooftop panels can start fires; in fact one of the Musk companies took over a business that did such installations and burned down a Walmart because the original company screwed up.
As I suggested, there is no possible rate of return that offsets infinite liability.
Is "accidental" fire at 7 of 240 Walmart stores (<3%) a big enough reason to disqualify solar rooftops as a potential solution for reducing, or eliminating, what is seemingly claimed here to be an extreme fire risk on RoWs, even though there must be many, many thousands of trouble free solar rooftop installations all across the country and indeed the entire world. Is risk of accidental fire from solar rooftops greater than risk of accidental fire from faulty equipment installed on many miles of inadequately maintained RoW. As we know, there is risk in crossing the street and sometimes you just have to select the option that minimizes risk, rather than eliminates it totally. Let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater just because there was an isolated event (relative to total accumulated experience) caused by one particular installation contractor (the now Tesla's Solar City company), that also seems to, allegedly, have had a problem with maintenance. It is common for publicly licensed monopolies to be required to provide service to all, including isolated, customers. Cherry picking by providing service only to high profit locations is prohibited. Given that service must be provided to all locations at minimum risk to the company, solar rooftops still might be a good compromise.
As I'm sure you really know, liabilities may be large, but are not infinite. Actually in the USA, liabilities are minimal. 1B, 12B, 25B seem to be the range of the highest liabilities recorded. Maybe, just maybe, a bankruptcy results from time to time. There is (almost) never any criminal prosecution, personal liability, or resulting jail time given to those found responsible, not to mention the death penalty, as in some countries that take corporate and personal responsibility very seriously. Usually the worst is you might lose your job, but .. only if you have extremely bad luck. And, heaven forbid, the absolute worse thing, you might actually lose ... other people's money. The best options under those circumstances is to fill corporate (or personal) pockets, or both, first to pay your lawyers, but only if need be. Lobby legislature for emergency victim funding. Make up current loses with still higher future rates. BTW, speaking of unlimited liabilities. Whatever happened to the harikari culture. Ancient Japan never needed an army of lawyers. Now that's what I call taking your responsibilities seriously.
“What I told you was true ... from a certain point of view.” - Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Return of the Jedi"
