PITY THE POOR LUDDITES:

[T]hree and a half years ago, something happened that changed my entire psychology around electricity: I installed solar panels on my house.

I quickly found myself awash in more energy than I could use. The installers had predicted the panels would produce 100 percent of what my household needed. (Since battery systems aren't yet legal in Brooklyn, New York, where I live, any surplus I generated during sunlight hours would get sold to the grid, and I buy energy back at night.)

But the installers underestimated: It turns out I generate a lot of net surplus. According to the "smart meter" that my utility installed, in a 24-hour period my house frequently generates 25 percent more juice than I need, even on a hot summer day. On sunny spring and fall days, it'll crank out 50 percent more than I use. I'm saving about $2,000 a year, so I'll amortize the cost of the array in seven years; then the electricity is damn-near free.

It's had a fascinating effect on me: I've stopped worrying about electricity use, both economically and ethically. [...]

"It's the abundance agenda," Griffith says. In Electrify, he argues that a massive build-out of solar, wind, and storage mechanisms (including millions of electric cars, doubling as batteries) would make renewables reliable while also being much cheaper than what we now pay for fossil-fuel-produced electricity.

He has already seen a glimpse of it in his homeland of Australia, where 30 percent of houses have solar, and the arrays cost barely a quarter of what I paid for mine. Things could be as cheap here in the US, Griffith notes, if towns reduced red tape (zoning laws and building codes, mostly) and states reformed their rules on liability and connecting to the grid. The price barriers in the US aren't labor or materials: "It's all about regulations," he says. "It could change quickly if people wanted it to."

We should. Because take it from me: It's fun.

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