alt Hacker NewsDidn't know that's "a topic", although funnily enough, it has been on my mind lately. The impetus being households increasingly adopting solar, and batteries improving at a better pace finally.
I wondered if there might come a time in the somewhat near future, where people would decide to disconnect from the grid for good, eventually resulting in large parts of the electrical grid becoming unnecessary (possibly alongside related jobs) and being removed.
I then ran a calculation on our own electricity use vs. production, and came to my senses. Still, personally, I think it would be great if it became possible one day. Just really unsure how it would, based on our own data.
Utility electricity is pretty handy. Even if you have sufficient local generation and storage (assuming intermittent generation), a utility connection gives you flexibility to do maintenance and repairs without losing power.
But some people probably won't want to pay for that flexibility. If utility costs keep going up and local generation and storage costs keep going down, there's likely a point where utility power becomes undesirable for many. Unfortunately this probably increases costs for those still using utility power.