This quasi public-private partnership only makes customers foot the bill. If utilities aren't willing to innovate, what can we do? We can add more distributed energy and go off-grid, but it creates this "death spiral" all the utilities talk about.

How about compensating homes for their generation when needed. Distributed energy that is co-located to demand, thus reducing T&D costs. This is the idea of VPPs and DERs. Obviously goes against what monopolistic IOUs want.