Barclays recently downgraded the entire U.S. electric utilities sector to "underweight" on the threat posed by widespread adoption of solar-storage. These systems allow homeowners to use rooftop solar panels and a battery to cut all but the figurative emergency backup cord to their local electric grid, putting a severe strain on an industry that has been a defacto monopoly.

The firm's sweeping case focused in large part on debt markets' apparent ignorance to challenge utilities are facing. We wanted to zero in on the astonishingly simple steps that makes Barclays lays out to make shaking up utilities quite possible.

1) Solar prices come down

For the past few years, we have been quietly living through a stunning drop in prices thanks to an unintended loop of massive European subsidies and capacity overexpansion in China. As a result, from 2006 to 2013, photovoltaic panel prices dropped nearly 70%.

The next step is for storage prices to fall too. Cheap storage is key so that people can have power at night, when the sun is down.

Right now, the cost of such systems — about $0.22/kWh is only competitive with retail electricity in Hawaii — the cost of vanilla electricity in California is $0.15/kWh. Barclays says Tesla has single-handedly brought down the cost of batteries over the past few years, from about $1,000/kWh in 2009 to $300/kWh in early 2014. If the company's gigafactory successfully ramps up, costs could plummet.

2) The defection spiral commences