Leave the Lights On

The other day I had a posting about kids become fanatics about saving energy. On the extreme opposite end of things, I got an email from my friend telling me that he had installed solar panel and that meant no more worrying about leaving the lights on.

It's not really true that installing solar panels means that you can leave the lights on. If you are like most people and you install solar panels, during the day, you feed energy into the grid which the power company has to pay you for and at night, you draw from the grid (think non-solar panel energy) and you have to pay for it. Because the sun is such a GIGANTIC form of energy for a lot of people installing solar panels means their power bills virtually disappear.

But let's look at a future where we draw from multiple forms of natural energy, tidal energy, wind energy, solar energy. If we had enough to go around, would it mean that we would no longer have to be energy conscious? If we had solar cars would it mean that we would no longer have to worry about wasting energy by driving? What changes would this mean to our day to day lives? Or would it simply mean that we could make the changes that are so desperately needed at the present time?