The halting national trend towards electricity market deregulation has encouraged consumers to search for alternatives to traditional tariffed utility power. Key considerations include price, price stability, reliability, power quality, and emissions. Recent improvements in small-scale on-site electricity generation technologies mean that many of these considerations are favorably addressed by the use of distributed energy resources (DER). However, the dramatic shift in paradigm from monopolistic supplier to decision enabled consumer will require considerable research and confirmation before widespread customer adoption.