Excerpts from two solar-centric stories by Todd Woody at Quartz. The first, “Why SolarCity and Tesla Are Going to Replace Your Utility,” looks at how some great inventions beget others. My biggest prediction early on in this blog is that we would see the development of batteries in a way that would change our lives. There have been a lot of naysayers on the topic, but it seems to be coming true in part because of the repurposing of Tesla Motors batteries. The second piece reports that the U.S. has 43 nuclear power plants worth of solar energy in development. That’s not the same thing as a done deal, but it’s impressive.

1.

“Millions of California homeowners and businesses have installed solar panels on their roofs to generate their own electricity. Now a small but growing number of them want to pull the plug on their utilities by storing that energy in batteries and tap that power when the sun isn’t shining. And that has set off a fight over who will ultimately control the state’s power grid—California’s three big monopoly utilities or their customers empowered by companies like SolarCity and Tesla Motors. 

SolarCity, the Silicon Valley solar installer, has quietly begun to offer some homeowners a lithium-ion battery pack made by electric carmaker Tesla to store electricity generated by their rooftop photovoltaic arrays.”

2.

“The boom in solar energy in the US  in recent years? You haven’t seen anything yet. The pipeline of photovoltaic projects has grown 7% over the past 12 months and now stands at 2,400 solar installations that would generate 43,000 megawatts(MW), according to a report released today by market research firm NPD Solarbuzz. If all these projects are built, their peak electricity output would be equivalent to that of 43 big nuclear power plants, and enough to keep the lights on in six million American homes.