Good to know especially if you are planning on buying a plugin to be powered by solar. Want to cut reliance on your fossil-fuel-burning utility, but don’t have space for solar panels? Easy, the sales pitch goes, buy a share in the new “community solar array” being built on the outskirts of town. But experts and regulators say there’s a catch. Some of the biggest marketers of such deals are stripping the “green” benefits out of them and selling them elsewhere, leaving homeowners with a small discount on the same electricity they were using before. Severin Borenstein, a business administration professor at the University of California at Berkeley, who has followed the issue, described it this way in a blog post this month: “If you’ve installed solar at your home and are now basking in the I’m-saving-the-planet warm glow, you may be in for a splash of ice water. There’s a good chance someone else has purchased your halo and is wearing it right now.” Buyer Beware: Solar Power May Be Missing Key Ingredient - ABC News
