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It’s 2020. Now, imagine a 90 square mile patch of solar panels in the desert of the SouthWest powering all of America via a super grid. Now imagine plug-in vehicles throughout America powering up via clean, green solar power. No oil. No dirty coal. Just clean, green solar energy.

Sounds great, right?

Right up until some cyberterrorist shuts the grid down for a couple of weeks and you can’t power your home or your electric car. Good thing I’ll be driving a plug-in hybrid, and living in a home with solar panels (hopefully)!

All kidding aside, the recent cyberterrorist scouting of the current electric grid is a reminder that the plug-in revolution isn’t without obstacles, perhaps massive obstacles which might significantly increase the costs of electric power.

Certainly, we should continue to move forward with national smart grid plans and solar farms, but more effort in the short-to-midterm, in my opinion, should also be focused on small battery plug-in hybrids – versus large battery vehicles – and more distributed energy, especially regarding home solar and wind solutions.