North Carolina’s utility company, Duke Energy is one of the largest electric power holding companies in the U.S.  It serves about 4 million customers in five states in the Southeast and Midwest.  Duke Energy’s innovative solar program, A Solar Initiative, will be one of the first and largest demonstrations of distributed generation. Distributed generation is the process in which electricity is produced at numerous micro-generating sites rather than at one large centralized power plant.   Solar panels will be installed at homes, schools, office buildings, malls, warehouses and industrial plants.  Duke Energy will own the electricity generated at these sites and maintain the solar panels.  Duke will also pay a rental fee to property owners. Duke Energy announced that ten additional sites across the state were added to the program this week.

North Carolina’s renewable energy standard requires public electric utility to meet 12.5% of its customer’s electricity needs through new renewable energy sources or energy efficiency measures by 2021.