Abstract Focusing on residential customers, the chapter examines how the electricity utility industry’s model as a monopoly provider of a “universal” essential public good is being challenged by changing customer options, including self-generation, energy efficiency, “enabled” appliances, local energy storage, and electric vehicles. Against a background of falling peak demand and energy usage, the chapter explores the electricity grid’s place in the hierarchy of needs, when faced with the coexistence, competition and coopetition of multiple energy sources and emerging technologies. It considers what electricity customers want, the choices they will face, and how these choices will shape the utility of the future.