Law360, New York ( February 25, 2016, 11:55 AM EST) -- Authors have pondered the question of whether, given the declining costs of batteries, solar plus battery systems could eventually replace the electric utility. For example, the Rocky Mountain Institute found that some customers in Hawaii may already be better off disconnecting from the grid and relying on solar plus battery systems.[1] Moreover, California consumers will be at that point within 5 to 15 years.[2] Analysts have written about a looming "utility death spiral," in which improved solar technologies, combined with declining solar prices and subsidies, could cause some consumers to abandon the grid.[3] This would shift the cost of grid maintenance to a smaller group of customers, causing prices to rise for those customers, which could prompt some of them to switch to solar, thereby concentrating the cost of grid maintenance onto still fewer customers, and so on.[4] In contrast, Forbes' analysts have taken the position that the utility death spiral is far-fetched, conceptually, and that the outlook for utilities has been improving.[5]...