1/ This is a very interesting post from Tesla's Director of Engineering and Construction for Energy. Microgrids are small isolated areas of the grid usually in very rural areas for which it is not economical to connect with the rest of the electric grid. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-microgrids-michael-snyder/

2/ Typically this has been a very niche application, suitable for applications like tropical islands. The "problem" with microgrids is usually resilience - meaning that there are fewer redundant generators than the main grid, so if you lose one asset it could bring down...

3/ the whole system. Or, if you can imagine such a system that relies on interruptible assets like wind and solar, a lack of adequate resource could result in electricity users needing to drastically cut back their consumption in order to balance the microgrid.

4/ This is highly undesirable in most situations, so instead we pay for the transmission / distribution systems to create scale to help balance our grids. As Michael rightly points out when discussing microgrids however, "the variety and flexibility in application is staggering."

5/ The main components in Tesla's microgrids are solar generation and battery storage. These also happen to be the assets with the most rapidly-declining cost curves. As these costs continue to decline in the coming years, I expect we will see microgrids becoming more...

6/ economical over time. Eventually, I believe this trend will make its way into traditional grids as well, as consumers who pay roughly half their bill for grid charges will in some cases find it more economical to pay for their own solar & storage applications.

7/ This will occur in sunny areas first, and necessitates the need for much longer duration storage than is currently practicable, but I do believe this change will come. When that happens, utilities are likely to see load decline, which in the current regulatory structure...

8/ means that the remaining customers will likely be charged a higher rate. This will then make it more economical for other consumers to defect from the grid, which will of course require higher charges to the remaining customers, and thus the "utility death spiral" is born.

9/ This is not a foregone conclusion, but I do think utilities which fight these economics and ignore distributed generation will likely be the first to be disrupted.

Will be interesting to watch how this plays out.