I have done a fair amount of noodling around with the numbers and have come to the conclusion that within a decade, maybe two, we'll start to see rural homes di

I have done a fair amount of noodling around with the numbers and have come to the conclusion that within a decade, maybe two, we'll start to see rural homes disconnecting from the grid in significant numbers. Or for new homes, not connecting to the grid in the first place. Around here, the cost of getting a new house on the grid is $50,000 - $100,000. This is often more than the cost of the land itself. That will buy a serious amount of panels and storage, AND you won't have to send a $100 - $200 check to the utility every month. (They will need replacing in a few decades, of course, but being energy-independent can still work out.) I live in Michigan which is one of the worst states for solar. Full sun only half the time and fairly brutal winters, depending on the year. Yet I know people who get almost all of their electricity from solar. They treat the grid as a big backup generator. Some are just getting into it now and others have been doing it for years as a hobby. Of course there's more to it than just switching power sources. You need to think about insulating your home better, alternative sources of heat, timing when you run certain appliances, running some stuff directly off DC to reduce conversion losses, etc. But it's eminently doable. Which means it's a complete no-brainer for the southwestern states with plenty of sun and very little demand for winter heat. My main concern at this point is that solar and batteries are cheap NOW, will they be in the future? It's hard to say. But my guess is that we might be at peak "cheapness" for solar, for a bunch of reasons. The federal subsidy is going away. Right now, solar panels and batteries come from almost exclusively from China, whose government has subsidized their low cost to prevent foreign competition. Even if they decide to keep producing them cheaply (they may not, their economy is not doing any better than ours lately), the new tariffs are designed explicitly to make them NOT cheap in order to favor US manufacturers (the few such that there are, one of which is Tesla) and indirectly, oil companies. In urban/suburban environments, solar can make sense to offset SOME electricity usage in order to lower the light bill, but that's about as far as you can get for most homes. What little land is available is shaded by trees or large buildings. Roof panels work, but are a huge pain for panel and roof maintenance, and the roof should face south, and only so many can fit on the roof, etc. A rack of lithium batteries bolted to the outside of a house looks like a liability to insurance companies and may lower resale value. I still think the best strategy for urban environments is to force utilities (via regulation) to build out more solar farms to move the risks out of the neighborhoods, let the utilities handle all the maintenance and pain points, and take advantage of the economies of scale.