IMAGINE if all our energy was domestic. And cheap. Some days ago, I had written that even as our economy was growing, electricity demand from the grid was shrinking. Not only is this paradox real, there is an even more fundamental trend at work: solar energy is quietly replacing hydrocarbons as the world’s primary source of energy. A shift that has only just begun. This is a structural transition that will go all the way. Solar power will become the baseline and the cheapest source of energy. Period.

And this is only Act One. Soon this same structural transition will flow into transport as well. Electric vehicles will arrive slowly at first and then suddenly. This will double the demand for electricity and displace imported oil. Even more significantly, electric cars will become the largest distributed storage resource we have ever known. A parked car is a battery on wheels. It can soak up midday solar energy and discharge it during evening peaks. This is the shape of the energy future that is coming.

Solar as the primary energy, storage as an enabler and electrons flowing not just one way from distant plants, but sideways between neighbours, factories and feeders. The brave new world of distributed........

© Dawn