“A passionate, valuable, and detailed blueprint for remaking the shape of everyday energy production… The author is passionate in advocating for change, but he’s also unfailingly realistic. Skeptics wary of overly idealistic daydreaming on the subject of clean energy will find Nussey a doggedly clear-eyed guide to what he rightly calls “the treacherous divide between wild-goose-chases and billion-dollar opportunities.” He tackles the implementation of these alternatives on every level of manufacture and production, and his emphasis on individual options will deeply engage readers who feel trapped on the treadmill of big energy.” (full review)

Former deputy editor, Wired; current editorial director Godfrey Dadich Partners

What Bill has done is really extraordinary. He has taken a topic that could be dry and riddled with jargon, and he has brought it to life in a book that is as informative and readable as it is enlightening and inspiring. In making his case that local-scale solar and batteries can literally change the world, Bill takes the reader from Puerto Rico to Tennessee; from a modern-day meeting in Rwanda featuring an energy minister frustrated that the price of solar is falling too fast to a 19th century materials innovation that enabled the Wright brothers’ first flight. 

Every chapter is equal parts scene, character, technical explanation, and big-picture thinking about how the plummeting cost of solar technology, and the breakneck innovation in battery storage capacity, has the potential to lift millions of people out of poverty, disrupt the dirty, inefficient legacy grid systems, and power an entire new industry.

The writing is fresh and approachable, from smile-provoking phrases like “Batteries are like bacon. They make everything better,” to pithy insights (“Solar is a technology, not a fuel.”) Also, prepare to clench your fists and grit your teeth when you read about how legacy energy interests resist these technological and systemic changes. The book is for potential investors, entrepreneurs, students and rising engineers, regulators … and you, a concerned citizen eager to see how actual attainable technology can help the world reach an actual attainable goal. 

Jeff St. John, Director of News and Special Projects

Nussey makes the case for a radical redistribution of electricity generation and consumption from the centralized power grid of the 20th century to a distributed and localized system, a multitrillion-dollar economic opportunity that’s also, he argues, the surest way to raise people out of energy poverty and put them in control of their own energy futures. Nussey’s casual and sometimes cursory treatment of complex concepts is counterbalanced by the accessibility of his approach and his focus on the people solving the problems of an increasingly costly, inflexible and fragile centralized electricity system. (read full review)

Dr. Janis Petzel, reviewer

"After my disappointment with Bill Gates’ book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, I was prepared for yet another rich white guy trying to show us all how smart he is. But this book is nothing like Gates’ book. Nussey is like your favorite teacher--passionate and knowledgeable about his subject, with contagious enthusiasm and injections of humor to make a point... He explains his material in a way that we can all get without dumbing it down." (read full review on page 23)