More and more utility customers are embracing the “prosumer” revolution, purchasing and bringing solar, energy storage, wind and other clean energy resources onto the electric grid.

Such action becomes important as severe weather puts pressure on our power supply. For example, a year ago, more than 400,000 Oregon residents lost power during a winter storm.

In some areas, Oregon utilities are beginning to pay for prosumers’ resources, technologies that can help green the grid and even avert power emergencies. But utilities need to do more.

Both Portland General Electric (PGE) and PacifiCorp offer their customers incentives for purchasing solar or solar plus storage. Hopefully, this will create more prosumers who install and take advantage of clean energy.

PGE is now offering a Smart Battery Pilot under which it pays customers with energy storage – Tesla Powerwalls, for example – up to $40 a month for the ability to manage the batteries to support PGE’s system when needed.

Utilities need to offer more programs like PGE’s battery pilot under which prosumers are paid to lend their clean energy resources to the grid. This would be especially helpful in Central Oregon, which is blessed with plenty of sunshine that can be converted to solar energy.

Oregon could look to California, where San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) and the Marine Corps Air Station Miramar inked a deal under which Miramar would provide the utility with generation from its clean energy microgrid (consisting of solar and storage) during September and October 2021. The goal was to help avert electricity emergencies due to hot weather.

When prosumers feed electricity to the grid from their clean energy sources — or use their home resources to separate from the grid and reduce demand when utility resources are strained — they’re helping avoid blackouts. They’re ensuring utilities, businesses and households don’t fire up polluting fossil fuel generators.

With programs like PGE’s Smart Battery Pilot and, in California, the agreement between SDG&E and Miramar, utilities have the opportunity to help keep the grid from becoming overtaxed.

Prosumers who share their clean resources with the grid can also help utilities manage their “peak” or highest demand periods without requiring utilities to invest in building “peaker” plants, which are often based on fossil fuels.

Energy storage batteries and electric vehicle batteries are often sitting unused in houses or businesses. Oregon utilities need to take advantage of these and other resources and help move the transition to clean energy forward.

To achieve this goal, we need national and state policies that alter archaic rules and regulations. These policies were created before technology advancements began giving businesses and consumers more control over their energy supply. Many of these rules and regulations involve utility requirements, rate structures and territorial restrictions.

California policymakers are working on enacting some measures that benefit prosumers. For example, California SB 379 calls for shortening local governments’ approval process for firing up homeowners’ solar and storage systems. This type of policy would be helpful in Oregon.

Also helpful would be measures requiring utilities to approve the interconnection of clean energy projects to utility systems within a specific time frame. Too often, homeowners and clean energy project developers must wait months for interconnection.

Prosumers can help ensure the grid is clean, flexible and reliable, especially with the aid of new policies. This becomes more and more important as extreme weather poses threats to the reliability of the grid.

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