There Is a Point At Which It Will Make Economical Sense To Defect From the Electrical Grid (qz.com)

Michael J. Coren reports via Quartz: More than 1 million U.S. homes have solar systems installed on their rooftops. Batteries are set to join many of them, giving homeowners the ability to not only generate but also store their electricity on-site. And once that happens, customers can drastically reduce their reliance on the grid. It's great news for those receiving utility bills. It's possible armageddon for utilities. A new study by the consulting firm McKinsey modeled two scenarios: one in which homeowners leave the electrical grid entirely, and one in which they obtain most of their power through solar and battery storage but keep a backup connection to the grid. Given the current costs of generating and storing power at home, even residents of sunny Arizona would not have much economic incentive to leave the electric-power system completely -- full grid-defection, as McKinsey refers to it -- until around 2028. But partial defection, where some homeowners generate and store 80% to 90% of their electricity on site and use the grid only as a backup, makes economic sense as early as 2020.

[A]s daily needs for many are supplied instead by solar and batteries, McKinsey predicts the electrical grid will be repurposed as an enormous, sophisticated backup. Utilities would step up and supply power during the few days or weeks per year when distributed systems run out of juice.

Comments

Re:Batteries and Control systems are expensive

[whoever57]

You can buy fuel cell systems that run off natural gas now.

Re:not so simple an equation

[gravewax]

the power plant is the small part of the cost, the cost is the millions of kilometres of power lines, poles, transition stations etc etc. the majority of which will need to still be maintained and operated.

Re:Inconvenient truth about solar

[whoever57]

2) Solar panels produce 300 times as much toxic waste per unit of energy output versus nuclear powerplants http://www.theenergycollective... Definitely *NOT* "green".

The simple fact that that study equates a pound of waste from solar panels to a pound of radioactive waste from a nuclear reactor shows that it is inherently biased and cannot be trusted.