Screw "The Grid"

With all this talk about how our electrical grid needs updating, I can't help but think that we don't really need to. If we reduced the load and got more people off the grid, why waste all that money?

I was reading Mother Earth News and there are many families who use solar panels (often integrated into the roof), solar hot water heaters, geothermal heat systems, rain water cachement systems, etc. and use a tiny fraction of the energy they once did (some even PRODUCE) extra energy which they sell back to the dirty energy companies.

These people are not all radical hippies cut off from society in odd houses. The houses are nice, the people are nice, and what they're doing is nice.

If we all did this, the grid would serve as a little-used backup that we could generally live without.

Imagine if part of the Clinton surplus that Bush squandered had been used to put solar panels on everyones roofs connected to a reverse meter? This way the sun provides your household with electricity. What you don't use you sell to the electric company. Simple no?

Try powering your 4000 square foot McMansion, populated with maybe 4 people, that way.

The 4 of us live quite comfortably in 1200 sq ft, but the average new house in our town is almost 3 times that. The building inspector and I were talking the other day and he said that it was getting just plan stupid.

Solar energy is very costly nowadays. It won't be if enough research is done to make it more efficient, but that will only happen when Halliburton starts investing in the solar energy market.

On site generation of energy is the answer to our problems. And it is not due to a lack of technology that prevents it from happening. The hydrogen fuel cell was developed in the 60s for the space program and it is the ideal way to store energy from solar panels.
The answer is political leadership. It will happen only when a president does a Kennedy like challenge to use Nasa to develop a in home power source within 10 years.
My hope is that one of the Demos will do this, but it must be acknowledged that he would be stepping on the toes of powerful people who want to protect their profits.