Power and storage are the ideas that matter. They help each other, and need each other. They both need lots of labor, as well as lots of innovation, customized for local conditions, as well as benefiting from large-volume economies. And they make everything else, from health care to national security, easier to achieve.

I was doing some arithmetic and found that I consumed, in my high-demand months, about 20 Kwhr/day. If I have 4000 peak watts of solar and wind, and five hours of sun or equivalent wind, I'm there. That would cost about $20,000 for parts, plus a couple thousand more for batteries, not including labor, since I could in principle do my own work.

If we have a trillion bucks with which to stimulate our economy, that would provide $20,000 for every single-family home in the country. And the demand for solar panels would call for ramping up production hugely, which would invite lots of competitors into the market, so that the next generation of photovoltaics would be much less expensive.

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