In fact it was the first idea out of 21 -- that personal turbines, solar panels and fuel cells will permit sales of excess energy back to the grid -- and it's right on, except for one important added detail... within 10 years, that grid will be a global one. In the same way that the world wide web functions like global sensory nervous system to distribute information, the global electrical grid that's now evolving will function as a global motor nervous system, providing the musculature to run motors, pump water, move mountains, light lamps.
What's more, it may not take 10 years. Full-scale utility deregulation is only 3-5 years away, speeding up long-distance energy trading. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announced support last August of a World Bank cross-border transmission project aimed at linking the grids of 10 South American countries as part of the Hemispheric Energy Initiative. A similar agreement was reached with African energy ministers last December and is on the agenda for a meeting of Asian Pacific energy ministers in San Diego on May 11-12.
Similar intercontinental links are currently under study or planning in various regions, including a Scandinavian power ring and one connecting Egypt to Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
The most intriguing connection is one between Alaska and Siberia across the 26-mile Bering Strait, essentially linking North America's 6 time zones with the former Soviet Union's 11 time zones. (Power usage goes up and down during the day, leading to the differentials that make power trading between time zones economically feasible; 40% of the world's population lives in the four time zones which are 12 hours ahead of the continental U.S.). Hitachi Research Institute also describes this Pacific Rim Intertie on its web page, showing a high voltage link that starts in New Zealand and moves in a crescent around the Pacific Ocean, finally winding its way down through Chile.
Siemens describes a similar global network at its corporate web site. This may be coming just in time: while U.S. manufacturers are facing over-capacity and a lack of world demand, there are over 2 billion people in the world who still have no access to electricity. Providing it through this Global Energy Grid would bootstrap the Third World, just as the Rural Electrification program did for rural America earlier this century, creating an entire new class of consumers outside the nation's major cities.
Imagine if a home improvement giant like The Home Depot were to start a joint venture with a manufacturer like Plug Power or Astropower? With customers able to sell back all the power they can't use (to a global market), it will be like selling printing presses to print money. And P.S., who cares how much oil costs per barrel when that happens?