Something I've been missing in this discussion is a notion of scale.
This is a statistic from 10 years ago from the US:
- the average citizen uses 10 times more energy when going from and to work each day (the use of their car) than all their energy use of the rest of the day combined.
If I'm not mistake, this includes natural gas.
Now this number has shifted in the past 10 years.
But let's say a batterypack for the average home is about quarter the size of what goes into a car.
Also what would happen at homes when electrical cars are driving down the price of batteries ?
What if you life in a country where power from the grid has a different price for night than day ?
Well, that system isn't going to last is it ?
Will it smooth out demand on the grid during the day ?
Lots of changes coming in the future, they could be bad, they could be good. They will be bad for some people, good for others.
I do know one thing Elon Musk will probably make some more money if he can deliver on some of his goals.
Rooftop solar and battery storage cannot even begin to compete with efficient central generation and distribution.
I would think utilities think 10, 20 maybe 30 years ahead. Because they have to invest in building things. Large things.
In Germany they had a public opinion that renewable energy would be a good thing, so politics created a fund which put money behind it, lots of money.
The result:
http://www.greentechmedia.com/...
Investments by electrical companies have become really hard to do, because they are making less and less money on their investments:
"Wholesale electricity prices in Germany have dropped 60 percent since 2008 as renewable energy, which is heavily subsidized and has priority access to the grid, gets dispatched first due to its much lower short-term marginal production costs than traditional plants, displacing natural gas, coal and nuclear power."
http://instituteforenergyresea...
Their next goal ? Funding energy storage technologies:
http://www.energystorageforum....
So what did the largest utility company do ?:
http://www.theguardian.com/env...
Machines have less problems. I'd like to be a machine. -- Andy Warhol