I&#x27;ve thought for a long time that a neighborhood 48V DC exchange might be viable.  You&#x27;ll have to pull thick copper of course, but $1&#x2F;foot for wires is pretty cheap compared to battery prices.<p>Here in the US the NEC says that anything under 50V isn&#x27;t really regulated because they don&#x27;t want to get involved in people&#x27;s path lighting, phone, ethernet, doorbells, thermostats, garage door opener signaling, etc.<p>The other thing that will help enable going completely off grid are things like inverter AC units (which draw a continuously small amount of power instead of 5 minutes at 3kw and 10-30 minutes at 0kw) and ice &quot;batteries&quot; to store power instead of lead acid or lithium.  Ice batteries never really go bad either, at least not the way chemical batteries do.