Article Summary:  Your home might be turned into a power plant - Inside the garage of Duke Energy's chief technology officer, a refrigerator-sized battery-and-computer station processes electricity from rooftop solar panels. The electricity powers his home directly. But the battery also stores some of it to be tapped later, if needed.

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I'm not sure why more utilities are not doing this very thing.  Subsidies and incentives may be required.  But it seems to me, there is a lot of energy hitting rooftops that is being wasted.  Especially in warmer states, where the solar energy becomes heat in the house - which then needs to be removed with expensive air conditioning systems.

I'd be very interested in the $/KW of capital required for this type of distributed generation versus the new nuclear plants that are being developed.  And, this type of generation is available now... with minimal permitting required. If you figure in the time value of the generated power, is that enough to tip the scales?

Seems like a win-win proposition to me.