07 November 2022, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Stralsund: Solar modules for a so-called balcony power plant hang on a balcony. As of Tuesday, citizens in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania can apply for funding for so-called plug-in balcony photovoltaic systems. Photo: Stefan Sauer/dpa (Photo by Stefan Sauer/picture alliance via Getty Images)

dpa/picture alliance via Getty Images

In business, the present is a lousy predictor of the future. Entrepreneurs vivify the previous truth.

Their healthy disdain for “know your customer” means they see the present as wholly inadequate for consumers who haven’t a faint clue about what they really want. Only for entrepreneurs to proceed to rewrite the future given their belief that what consumers will accept has nothing to do with what they should.

See the rise of solar panels that consumers can set up outside their houses, and literally plug into wall outlets inside those same houses. The panels represent a simple way for homeowners to reduce their electricity bills.

An editorial at the Washington Post indicated that critics of solar plug-ins say they’ll lead to attached-to-the-grid electricity users not paying their so-called “fair share” for the grid, but it’s not the job of consumers to prop up their service providers. Furthermore, it’s increasingly not necessary.

As is well known now, the growing question as you’re reading this has to do with how capably electricity grids will be able to meet consumer needs during summer months while demand for electricity produced on the grids grows. Assuming what’s true about the expected electricity needs of data centers, not to mention the myriad energy-consuming businesses that emerge because of data centers, fears (whether reasonable or not) about unused energy produced on the grid and “fair share” are increasingly a problem of the past.

Which further explains why the past is a lousy predictor of the future. Exactly because demand for energy is growing so fast, so will the range of ways that we attain it. This is worth keeping in mind as critics of newer, presently less used energy forms dismiss their entrance into the marketplace. Solar energy perhaps looms large here, along with the solar plug-ins referenced above.

With a growing number of states allowing what the Post describes as “plug-in-solar” for houses, and as a way of shrinking monthly electricity bills, it’s no reach to suggest that homeowners themselves will morph into providers of crucial, low-cost power for other commercial entities in need of enhanced energy production themselves. Will precisely this happen? It’s impossible to know exactly because a commercial future that never resembles the present is opaque by the previous description.

Just the same, it’s notable that these solar plug-ins are low cost (as low as $400) presently, and their low costs mean installation doesn’t require substantial, politically toxic government subsidy. Better yet, and assuming growing usage of plug-ins that will lower electricity bills, is that the cost of them is poised to shrink alongside what one guesses will be increased energy production from them.

It’s a long way of suggesting that in addition to shelter, it’s not unreasonable to speculate that houses of the future will exist as a capital to their owners in addition to shelter. Particularly as the need for energy grows, the different ways it’s produced for a growing market will change before our eyes.

While “plug-in-solar” perhaps gives off the impression of primitive today, the future aggregation of this power source has the potential to profoundly alter how we use and perceive energy, along with where it’s produced. Growing energy consumption ensures just this.