Rooftop solar and home batteries make a clean grid vastly more affordable

In order to build efficient, combustion-based generators, we needed to build them at economies of scale and extensive transmission and distribution networks to transport power along with them. Those wires are vulnerable to being knocked out by storms (or even squirrels), leading to blackouts, or supply shortages leading to cascading failure. That w... See more

Rooftop solar, battery storage, electric vehicles, and energy management devices are all examples of DERs – numerous pockets of energy spread throughout the grid rather than concentrated in a single spot. Unlike centralized sources of power, DERs can make the grid flexible and enable control of both electricity supply and demand in real-time. Howev... See more

That would require building new transmission lines, a costly and time-consuming task—especially if it involves crossing national borders—and the more power lines we install, the more the price of power goes up. In fact, transmission and distribution are responsible for more than a third of the final cost of electricity.fn3 And many countries don’t

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Though energy may never be “too cheap to meter,” Vernon and Dourado explain that higher energy consumption directly increases economic growth. Achieving energy superabundance would radically improve the US economy as well as the quality of life for all Americans. They show us a vision of the future that includes flying cars, hyperloop, sub-orbital ... See more