I would love for a "green" incentive utility to offer a pump storage option; use wind power to pump water from low on my property (e.g. a pond or the river or underground water) to an area high on my property (e.g. another pond). Then when electric demand was high enough, the utility could trigger my litle water turbine and produce actual useful energy when they had the need!
The metering, breaker installation and setup on that would cost as much as a really nice house (or one of DW's fancy cars) since the utility is getting a "green" incentive (i.e. purchasing power from a Qualifying Facility within PURPA regs under Title 18 Code of Fed Regs, etc) they have to install 'revenue quality metering', MV90 etc.
Now, assuming your two huge ponds aren't huge (like the Duck Dynasty family lands), or you don't have like 1000 ft. of pump head between your two ponds and you aren't going to generate more than 1 MW peak at any time, you should be fine. Because.....if'n ya do ever hit the 1MW mark, it'll cost ya. Big time. You have to have on file, prior to hitting 1 MW, a Form 556 on file with FERC. The form is free, but getting the lawyers who file with FERC to prepare and send it for ya is about as much a nice truck fit for an SRO
p.s. By the way, on those rooftop solar setups what the utilities loooove to do, is have the inverter from your panels tie in
upstream of the 'smart' meter. That way, even during a bad summertime peak load event where the utility is reducing voltage system-wide (it helps reduce a smidgen of load), they can drop your house, but your solar power keeps flowing.....to the utility!! (Score!! Now y'all know why it's called a Smart Meter).
