"Right now, a construction site just outside Reno, Nevada, is humming with activity as Tesla Motors works to complete its first lithium-ion battery cell "Gigafactory." It's supposed to decrease the cost of electric cars by introducing unprecedented economies of scale to their most expensive component: batteries.

However, a new report from Bloomberg claims that influx of batteries might not just impact the electric-car business, but electrical utilities as well. It claims the Gigafactory will "scare the hell" out of utility companies because Tesla will also use it to make stationary batteries - which could be paired with solar panels to take homes off the grid.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk also owns home-solar company SolarCity, after all, and SolarCity is already packaging solar panels and batteries to power residential and commercial buildings in California - including some WalMart stores.

However, Tesla says it hopes to work with utility companies, not against them, and that opinion appears to be shared by some of the utility officials quoted in the report. This isn't the first time proliferation of electric cars and alternative energy have been linked to the inevitable decline of the existing grid, but how everything will play out is still largely unknown.

The lynchpin here is battery technology. Better batteries can not only power electric cars, but also partially negate the inconsistency of wind, solar, and other alternative-energy sources by storing power for later use. That could theoretically help individual homes go off the grid, by allowing for the storage of power for when the sun isn't available.

Steadily-decreasing solar-panel prices and the Gigafactory are expected to make that more viable for more people in the future, and that's why utility companies are supposed to be sweating bullets over Tesla."
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"The truth is incontrovertible.
malice may attack it,
ignorance may deride it,
but in the end,
there it is." -Sir Winston Churchill