The energy system’s going to get much, much more localised. Maybe you don’t think that’s big news? With photovoltaics appearing on more and more rooftops, and storage in homes, isn’t this obvious? In my opinion what you see today is just the very tip of the iceberg.
In the past, economies of scale, dependence on bulk extraction of fossil fuel for generation, and inflexible demand dictated a paradigm of bigger is better, and optimisation of energy systems at the largest possible scale. The rationale for this paradigm no longer holds. Non-fossil fuel forms of generation and storage are deployable cost-effectively at small scale; demand is increasingly flexible; and data, software and analytics can be used for sophisticated optimisation of generation, network assets, storage and demand.