I worked for a utility for 39 years. Never did I say utility companies were going out of business. In the south peek demand for electricity is in the summer, in the afternoons. If you charge your house battery or car at night during off peek, then use your car during the day to work, shop, etc, even a plug in hybrid, you might never use gasoline except on road trips. As far as your house goes, if you can install a demand meter and use, say your charged battery, as Tesla house battery envisions, you can get lower rates for power by not using it during peek demands. That is one solution getting off fossil fuels, not for green sake, but if you use nuclear power, or hydro, then one wouldn't have to use other fuels.
I think a combination of nuclear, solar in the southwest, wind in the plains states, and large scale battery storage could cut coal and fossil fuel expense. So will small scale firewood use.
Tesla is building a very large battery factory in Nevada that Elon Musk says will lower the large car/house size battery prices by half, he hopes. This alone will revolutionize things. He said about 2/3's of the price of his Tesla cars is battery, cutting a vehicle from $90k to $60k is a major cut. It puts it in the luxury car price range. Also, if the battery costs come down, he could increase the battery size in his cars and get 500 mile range. He has already cut the charging times way down by using 240v chargers. I think he is going 440 at his quick charging stations. He is also considering battery change outs at special service stations, but I think he prefers not to do that.
Let me know when he has charging stations at the boat ramp, off Forest Service road 112, in RURAL counties and gives me a truck I can pull a 2 ton boat 700 miles to the coast to go fishing.
