Here in Australia we have one of the highest per capita uptakes of household solar panels in the world. At some point during the day, most of those households produce excess power and that power is sold back into the grid.

But because there is so much power being generated, the householder is only paid a fraction of the equivalent price of extracting an equivalent amount of electricity from the grid.

At present those householders have no choice but to put up with that dud deal, as they have no where else to put that excess power. But move on a few years when battery technology starts to take off and battery prices come down, that will change.

When that happens, total household electricity costs will be coming down and they will be one very big step closer to being off grid.