The solar panels glinting in the sunlight above Dave Egles' house wouldn't look at all strange in suburban Dallas or Los Angeles.

But Egles lives in Fernwood, and as befits the funky Victoria neighbourhood, his panels signify something revolutionary. What's unusual about Egles' solar system is that it's the first in British Columbia to be "intertied'' with BC Hydro's power grid. On a sunny day it generates about one kilowatt-hour (kWh), enough to run a refrigerator. The rest of the house draws what it needs from Hydro. But if all the appliances were unplugged, the system could actually feed electricity back into the grid for anyone to use. And that's what has B.C.'s power monopoly worried.

"BC Hydro's not used to having 'non-utility generators' in the city;" says Egles, the president of Victoria-based Soltek Solar Energy Ltd. "If every house in this neighbourhood had a solar system, we could probably supply most of our own electrical needs, and even those of people living around us."

For decades we've known that someone will eventually have to come up with new ways to generate electricity. Giant hydroelectric dams destroy rivers and cost plenty to build; oil and natural gas are finite and increasingly expensive resources that contribute to global warming. And, worst of all, distributing the electricity generated by all those dams actually wastes as much as seven percent of it.

One day, many of us may depend in part upon neighbourhood solar collectives, local wind farms, and backyard hydrogen fuel-cell generators. But British Columbia is light years behind other places when it comes to encouraging these alternatives, and in large part that's because we've become comfortable relying on a sluggish, monolithic crown corporation for our power.

Egles knows all about this. He's grateful that Hydro worked with him to install his solar system, but he notes that the company still insisted on repeatedly testing his gear to make sure its workers wouldn't get electrocuted even though such protections are automatically built into all certified solar equipment. BC Hydro also installed a one-way meter to ensure that Egles won't get credit for any surplus power he feeds back into the grid. In many towns in California or Oregon, on the other hand, a certified solar dealer could've simply installed the equipment, and the local power utility would be required by law to buy Egles' leftover electricity. (Such "net metering laws exist in 33 states; for a list, see www.awea.org/policy/netmeter.html)

So far, there aren't many financial incentives for other homeowners to follow Egles' lead. Systems like his cost around $20,000, and because Hydro has a mandate to provide power at the lowest possible price to B.C. residents, electricity here costs only six cents per kWh. At that price, it's hard for alternatives to compete.

In California, by comparison, where power generation has been largely deregulated, this past spring prices topped 30 cents/kWh, and that has sparked a boom in solar, wind and other micropower projects across the state. As Egles notes: "If B.C. ever gets deregulated, all this stuff is going to take off."

Could that happen? Probably not. The B.C. Liberals have already said that they won't privatize Hydro, and news stories of blackouts in California and Alberta have given power deregulation a bad rep in this province. Public interest groups say the poor can't afford higher electricity bills, and B.C. companies argue that cheap power gives them a competitive edge.

But the benefits of cheap power can be deceptive. Not only does it deter the development of alternatives, it also provides little incentive to conserve, and that costs more in the long run. Guy Dauncey, a Victoria-based sustainability consultant, notes that residents of the five U.S. states with the lowest energy prices (Louisiana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Alaska, and Texas; see www.eia.doe.gov/pub/state.prices/pdf/rankings.pdf) also spend the most money on energy per person over the course of a year.

"When energy is really cheap, the tendency to waste it more than counteracts the lower cost," he observes. "It's not to our benefit to have cheap energy."

Dauncey doesn't favour total deregulation, but he does think there are some policies from the U.S. we could emulate. For instance, seven states have surcharges on electric bills that steer money into "public benefit" funds, which help pay for consumer rebates on alternative energy equipment, fund conservation programs, or are used for research. As well, some states have altered the "renewable energy portfolio of their utilities, requiring them to meet up to 100 percent of all new energy demand with green sources. So far, BC Hydro has only committed to 10 percent.

Hydro's reluctance to embrace alternatives is the product of its corporate culture. Because it's a government monopoly, says Marc Jaccard, a professor of resource management at Simon Fraser University and the former head of the B.C. Utilities Commission, Hydro is often "subject to the whims of individual players", especially premiers. Under Bill Vander Zalm, for example, it introduced the PowerSmart conservation program. Now, thanks largely to the visions of Glen "Megaproject" Clark, Hydro is plowing ahead with the controversial GSX pipeline and plans to have it fuel several giant natural gas-fired power stations on Vancouver Island.

What's especially frustrating is that while it pushes the GSX, Hydro is also preventing smaller, independent enterprises from using the gas they already burn for heat to cogenerate their own electricity. Jaccard knows of one Vancouver company that recently installed a gas-powered microturbine in one of its buildings, for example, but Hydro forced the company to pay a hefty "standby charge" for backup power, and wouldn't let it sell any of its surplus electricity to anyone else.

"Small-scale cogeneration will do very well in the next 10 years in many parts of the world" Jaccard says. "We have this totally untapped potential, and BC Hydro's blocked it every step of the way."

Hydro may be waking up to the new reality, however. Spokesperson Elisha Odowichuk says the corporation's currently looking at several "community energy" projects, especially those involving wind power and microhydro (small "run-of-the river" turbines), which make more sense in cold, wet and gloomy corners of the province. And on June 15, Hydro announced that it is seeking companies to bid on construction of a 20-megawatt (MW) wind, microhydro and tidal-power "demonstration project" on Vancouver Island.

Still, that's pretty tiny when you consider that 10 days later, the Oregon-based Bonneville Power Administration announced seven new wind power projects that will be up and generating 830 MW by 2004.

Even bigger changes could be in the works. On July 17, Richard Neufeld, B.C.'s new minister of energy, mines and resources, announced that the Liberal government is undertaking a broad review of Hydro, and in particular what percentage of its new energy should come from green sources and what role private companies may play in providing it.

It's about time. If the government makes good on its promise, Dave Egles' radical home-solar system may get its moment in the sun after all.

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