Why You Won't Need The Grid

David Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy, the largest provider of energy to US utilities,
. . . with investments in gas, coal, nuclear, biomass and renewables,
. . . . says the industry is being turned on its head
. . . . by the declining costs of distributed generation, and
. . . . believes there is not a lot that utilities can do about it.

At the MIT Energy Conference in Massachusetts earlier this month,
. . . Crane suggested that the falls in the cost of technologies
. . . such as rooftop solar and other micro generation
. . . meant that consumers could bypass the electricity grid and
. . . were perfectly entitled to tell their energy provider to “disconnect that line.”
“Consumers are realising they don’t need the power industry at all,”
. . . Crane, said in an interview reported by Bloomberg.
. . . “That is ultimately where big parts of the country will go.”

“They can’t cut costs, so they will try to distribute costs
. . . over fewer and fewer customers,” he said in separate comments reported by
. . . the Wall Street Journal – an issue highlighted in our report
. . . on the pricing forecasts by the Australian Energy Market Commission.
This, Crane said, will have a snowball effect
. . . because it will increase costs for customers, and
. . . will drive more of them toward distributed solar.

“If the cost of solar panels keeps coming down,
. . . installation costs come down,
. . . if they combine solar with battery technology and
. . . a power management system,
. . . then we have someone just using us for backup,” he said, adding that other independent power producers may be evaluating the merits of
. . . distributed generation, building many small systems at customer sites
. . . instead of a few large ones.

Source:  cleantechnica  WSJ