American household electricity bills are at a five-year high and rising faster than inflation. Utilities are now moving to block one of the few technologies that lets consumers generate their own power — and critics say the reason is simple: lost revenue.
NPR reported this week that electric utilities have persuaded lawmakers to delay votes on plug-in solar bills in at least five states — Georgia, Arizona, New Mexico, Washington, and Wyoming — by raising safety concerns.
The US Energy Information Administration projects the average residential rate will reach 18 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2026, up from 17.29 cents last year — part of a five-year run in which electricity prices have climbed more than 30% and are now rising faster than overall inflation. Plug-in solar panels, which require no installer or utility agreement, can start cutting a bill the day they are plugged in.
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In Georgia, Emily Pateuk, a lobbyist for Georgia Electric Membership Corp., testified that the panels posed risks to utility lineworkers, warning that a system could continue generating electricity during an outage and push power back onto the grid. The committee chair declined to hold a vote after she spoke.
Consumer advocates and safety researchers say the objections don’t hold up. The technology to prevent reverse-current flow already exists, and the Utah law — the first in the country to support plug-in solar, passed in May 2025 — requires certification under UL Solutions’ formal testing program, launched on January 8.
“There are ways, from a technological standpoint, to mitigate those potential hazards for utility workers,” Ken Boyce, vice president of principal engineering at UL Solutions, told NPR.
German utilities made the same arguments roughly a decade ago; with more than 1.2 million systems now registered there, researchers found no safety incidents among customers who used the panels as instructed, according to a paper funded by the US Department of Energy.
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In Wyoming, supporters told lawmakers the systems stop generating power the moment the grid goes down. Nathan Nicholas, an attorney for Rocky Mountain Power, countered that without utility connection agreements, his company would have no way to track where the devices are or verify their certification — and that the legislation put safety “out of the hands of the utility and on the consumer.”
Lawmakers let the bill die without a vote.
Virginia is on track to become the second US state to pass a plug-in solar law, with both legislative chambers having approved a bill that Gov. Abigail Spanberger is expected to sign.
Roughly 30 similar bills have been introduced in state legislatures nationwide. Cora Stryker, co-founder of the California nonprofit Bright Saver, said that mass adoption will follow once at least five states act.
“People need a way to reduce their electricity consumption — to lower their bills,” she emphasized.
Utilities, which operate as regulated monopolies in most states, retain significant influence over the legislators who set their rate structures. Every kilowatt-hour a plug-in panel generates is one kilowatt-hour the utility does not sell.
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