Home Solar Plus Batteries May Be the Final Nail in Utilities’ Coffins

There seems to be a lot of drumbeating for adding storage to solar systems. Storage is definitely is the direction solar needs to go but I don't see that we are there by a long shot. The futurists at RMI always seem to be on the impractical side. I've installed a few systems lately for people that hate the utility and want to be off-grid with their typical on-grid homes. It costs twice as much as our normal on-grid solar system and still does not have the full capability to be totally divorced of the grid. Its pretty hard to take a 200A service off the grid without some serious sacrifice as well as deep pockets. Maybe we'll see new batteries that will be game-changers, but I've been waiting over 30 years for better/cheaper batteries and am not holding my breath. I can see adding some storage to a new generation of on-grid inverters that help to stabilize the grid and maybe even shift the solar generation to later in the day both of which will make solar much more palatable to the utilities, but to threaten the utilities with loss of customers by converting them to off-grid is not reasonable and counterproductive in achieving a cleaner, more renewable grid.