Ten years ago, I was building off-grid systems because there were places where the electric grid could not economically reach. The equipment was expensive, but the alternative was worse. Today, the equipment has become cheap enough to raise almost the opposite question: not whether we should get rid of the grid, but whether we need to keep building it around the assumption that every customer must be able to demand everything at once.
We still need large power plants. We still need transmission. We still need the grid.
What we may not need is quite so much expensive infrastructure built for the few hours when everybody wants everything at the same time.
Bibliography
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