It seems to me that one of the obstacles to feed in tariffs in the US is probably concern that the grid cannot really accommodate very much in the way of renewables. Our interconnection between locations is pretty poor, and strained already, particularly in the Northeast and California. A major upgrade would have a lot of other impacts as well (make it easier to ship cheap electricity generated from coal in Wyoming elsewhere, for example). A major upgrade would be very difficult, because we have a huge number of players, and assigning costs and benefits is problematic. This analysis is looking at the tax issues with respect to encouraging grid upgrades, but there are a lot of other issues as well.

Does Germany have provisions for assisting low income households with the higher rates that would inevitably come from a Feed-in Tariff? With the very cold weather we have had in Iowa recently has led to greater use of electric heaters to supplement our propane use.

As I mentioned elsewhere, the mandatory renewable energy targets that are being devised/implemented in many US states will provide a decent incentive for more interconnected transmission grids, with the lower renewable resource states having to import renewable electricity from other states. Because the tax credits will pay for renewables in higher resource areas (in particular wind right now) this extra instrument will typically not incur much extra costs.