Photovoltaic (PV) energy generation has negative affects for end users, due to the fact that the main problem is not the consumption but the demand. Peak demand is usually early in the morning and late afternoon this is when, factories start up or shut down, hot water for showering and cooking occurs. In most cases the sun is not up or strong enough to have a impacting affect at these times. Once the photovoltaic (PV) do kick in they bring users savings in consumption, but because power generation companies loose out on the lower consumption in the daytime, they have to increase to cost of Kwh units. Their problem is that they still have to provide the peak demand at any time.

The solution is to manage the peak demand commercially as well as domestically. On three phase industrial users there are solutions such as power factor correction, harmonics, soft/sequance starting of machinery. Wireless switching (zigbee devices) can manage commercial as well as domestic users to manage the timing that their equipment switches on in peak times (mainly hotwater). Most people would not even know that their water is being managed. There are systems available that can measure a houshold's usage patterns and manage accordingly.

Led lighting can decrease consumption drastically for example: gu10 lights can go from 50w to 3w and flourecent tubes can go from average 58w + 5-10w for the ballast to 18w to 28w depending on size. Imagine the impact in cities with buildings with 1000-10000 tubes per building. These tubes also require 20x less replacing or maintainance. and if they do is usually just the small driver. they claim 10000 hours per light.

These types of complete systems can pay for itself within 1-2 years. and will save between 40% and 60% of peak demand. Then we can close many power stations around the world. Once energy users become much more efficient then wind power, tide power, and various hydro and other solutions can take the bulk of the energy usage.

A friend of mine has all this technology (not that its secret but has to be managed well) and also the database to manage wireless meters with switches. He had to close the business as the decision makers both political and energy companies either could not understand this concept or it did not suit them to actually use less energy.

basically, there is more energy produced than can be used. coal-fired power plants for example cannot be run below 50%, so it's the wind mills that get shut down first. Ironically, the operators of the wind-mill plants get a refund for each wind mill they have to shut down due to energy overload. So the end user is paying for energy that doesn't even exist.

Extension of grids is primary goal but it's going too slow.