The price of home solar and batteries is dropping to the point that $0.30/kWh is becoming untenable in any home that has a decent amount of roof space. You’re better off financing a rooftop solar plant and buying 3-4 days of storage, even if you remain tied to the grid. Insofar as those costs are being driven by generation, the declining price of solar should eventually place an upper bound on what people will pay for electricity. Even if you don’t live in a sunny place and even if net metering pays $0, with a few days of storage you can reduce your grid consumption to the point where your actual need to consume expensive electricity becomes a tiny fraction of your overall usage. I think this will tend to push costs downwards.
Even for people who don’t have the space or capital to install their own solar, this will happen writ large as the US builds out utility scale solar, wind and storage.
Unfortunately, we have a 100 year old slate roof, which makes solar some mix of difficult, expensive, or not advised. At the exact moment of maximum heat demand (both seasonally and time of day), solar generation is at its lowest.
I do hope that slate lookalike solar tiles become advisable and cost-effective as I’d be happy to pay a small premium to generate and store locally.
I sympathize. We can't install solar either because of roof pitch and trees. I think my overall point is that if many customers can install solar and bypass expensive generation, this will tend to put a downwards pressure on generation prices in the long term.
Solar aside, I am thinking about installing a battery system that time-shifts from low-rate times to high-rate times. It's almost cost effective now.
Even for people who don’t have the space or capital to install their own solar, this will happen writ large as the US builds out utility scale solar, wind and storage.