The safety of our electrical grid against natural or intentional distruption is a growing concern. Centralized infrastructure has served us well for many years but natural disasters and potential destructive actions by terrorist elements point out the need to diversify the electrical grid to increase resilience. Residential solar, among other environmentally responsible approaches, is an effective way to diversify.

Generating electricity locally helps to reduce the impact of grid disruptions. Regulations should encourage residents to install solar energy equipment and eliminate impediments for sharing their capacity when grid issues arise. Residents should be fairly compensated for the electricity they provide back to the grid. Rules and procedures that maintain the status quo and discourage residential energy production should be abolished. Roadblocks to diversification should be stopped whatever their source.

Virginians want to be good stewards of the earth. Please carefully consider arguments by all sides, especially consult experts from alternative forms of energy in addition to those from traditional sources, and choose to create policies that encourage development of environmentally responsible generating capacity. It is no longer acceptable to bolster dependence on out-moded and environmentally destructive forms of energy generation. We must choose to create policies that diversify our energy portfolio and enable Virginians to move towards energy self-determinism and self-reliance. Policies should allow communities to decide to "go green" and install solar and other forms of environmently friendly energy generation.  Policies should encourage residents to seek to increase energy security. Overall, policies that encourage moving towards energy self sufficiency should be adopted and policies that inhibit competition by favoring one energy source over another should be abolished.