I don’t like the looks of this:

Jim Rogers, CEO of Duke Energy (DUK), wants to own every piece of the smart grid, all the way down to the energy portals in customers’ homes and the solar panels on their roofs.

After all, the utility is developing the technology to make all those systems perform at optimal levels – and Duke Energy has access to more capital than a family trying to save for sending their kids to college, after all, Rogers said Wednesday at the GreenBeat conference in San Mateo, Calif.

So instead of relying on customers to buy their own home energy systems, “I’m going to own the batteries, I’m going to invest in the homes,” he said. “I’m going to redefine the boundaries of the business.”

That’s one of the ways that Duke, which plans to spend $1 billion over five years on smart grid projects, is bucking predominant trends among utilities in the United States.

While Duke is definitely one of the more environmentally friendly old-school energy companies, I’m still not comfortable with the approach they are taking. Part of the appeal of distributed power generation is the ability of consumers to own the means of generation themselves, in order to stop paying exorbitant rents to corporations.

With that being said, I’m glad Duke is making significant investments in smart grid technology and renewables.  I just hope they modify their approach a bit as these efforts scale up.

Update — A friend emails to point out that utility ownership of rooftop solar installations is the only realistic way these types of installations can scale in the near-term, given cost barriers. Point taken.