

When I read news like this one, my usual cynism fades out and my optimism kicks in.

Tesla has signed a deal to install solar panels and Powerall on 50,000 houses, for a total capacity of 250MW and 650 MWh. The idea is to create a “virtual, distributed, decentralized power plant”, that will create electricity from the sun, store it in the batteries, and give it back to the grid when needed.

This is the evolution of a more canonical, centralized approach (but beautiful nonetheless): a giant battery to store energy from wind and solar panels, which is already making a ton of money selling the electricity when there is peak of demand, or the opposite: charging itself when there is peak offer, stabilizing the grid. Rates are up to 1000$ per MWh, so we’re talking millions in days.

When Tesla bought Solarcity, this kind of projects were what they were thinking about. This is the revolution they wanted.

Do a mental experiment: picture a a world with very, very cheap electricity. With practically infinite offer of clean energy, thanks to solar and wind systems, + batteries. What would happen to the society we know?

First of all, we’d find a lot of new ways to use that energy: we basically electrify everything. We’d have electric cars, quite all of them: electric trucks, pickups. We’d have electric heating at home, and stoves. We’d have electric boats, and planes.

We’ll also be finally ready to have crypto at a decent environmental cost, without burning coal in China. proof of work wouldn't be a problem.

We will have disrupted the geopolitical importance of Middle East and Russia. Africa could leapfrog oil and become what they want to become.

This dream is really not that far from where we are now: we “just” need more companies working towards this same goal, and we need politics to understand that this really doable, and there are policies to be implemented, as South Australia and Norway and Costa Rica are doing.

Maybe there’s still a chance for our sick world, after all.