[backwoods-engineer]

But that's just the point: batteries and capacitors store DC energy. There still has to be an inversion back to AC. The combination makes electricity a non-storable commodity at grid power levels.

People can pie-in-the-sky about what should be all they want. There's no good way to store billions of kilowatt-hours of electrical energy. You can store water, and run it over a dam, but once converted to electricity, you can't store a billion kilowatt-hours. Just can't be done.

[palmer]

But that's just the point: batteries and capacitors store DC energy. There still has to be an inversion back to AC. The combination makes electricity a non-storable commodity at grid power levels

The problem is that Edison lost (or won I forgot which) so we use AC instead of DC. But in fact I am switching to DC lighting, ceiling fans, etc. At some point I will get DC air conditioning and a DC fridge, but I'm not at that point yet.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Two different points here. I am just focused on home energy use. I agree that putting energy back into a grid is stupid. But that being said, if a home becomes entirely energy self sufficient, it doesn’t need to be connected to the grid at all. So why pay for it?