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Freeing Energy: How Innovators Are Using Local-scale Solar and Batteries to Disrupt the Global Energy Industry from the Outside In
The transition to clean energy is moving far too slowly. Trapped by a century of fossil fuel investments and politicians that struggle to plan beyond the next election, the “Big Grid” that powers our modern world is outdated and in dire need of an upgrade. Freeing Energy offers a new and faster path towards a clean energy future—one that is more reliable, more equitable, and cheaper. Just like personal computers eclipsed mainframes, millions of solar rooftops and small battery systems are challenging every assumption about our century-old, centralized electric grid. These small-scale “local energy” systems are deeply disruptive because they are based on fast-moving technologies, not fuels. Driven by a new generation of innovators and genuinely competitive markets, smaller systems are faster to build, easier to finance, cleaner to operate, and they create far more jobs than large-scale projects.
Bill Nussey takes readers to mud huts in Africa, an off-grid farm in California, and a rural school in the mountains of Puerto Rico to uncover the underlying patterns of technology and the business model innovations of the local energy revolution. He shares stories and insights from some of the industry’s brightest visionaries and from leaders of the most cutting-edge startups, bringing it all together into an actionable framework to help accelerate this transition.
Freeing Energy is a deeply researched, actionable guide for anyone that cares about the future of energy—from startups, policymakers, investors, and utility leaders to the families and communities that want cleaner, cheaper energy today.
Bill Nussey takes readers to mud huts in Africa, an off-grid farm in California, and a rural school in the mountains of Puerto Rico to uncover the underlying patterns of technology and the business model innovations of the local energy revolution. He shares stories and insights from some of the industry’s brightest visionaries and from leaders of the most cutting-edge startups, bringing it all together into an actionable framework to help accelerate this transition.
Freeing Energy is a deeply researched, actionable guide for anyone that cares about the future of energy—from startups, policymakers, investors, and utility leaders to the families and communities that want cleaner, cheaper energy today.
434 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 7, 2021
35 people are currently reading
136 people want to read
About the author
Bill Nussey
6 books5 followersBill Nussey is a career tech CEO with three successful exits, including an IPO. He has also been an Investor with venture capital firm, Greylock. After IBM acquired his company, he became IBM’s VP Corporate Strategy, helping lead the company’s overall strategy. As a CEO, his companies have raised more than $400 million, created thousands of jobs and billions in shareholder value.
In Bill’s groundbreaking 2004 book, The Quiet Revolution, he was one of the first authors to reveal the underlying trends and predict the roadmap that ultimately led to the revolution in digital marketing. In his latest work, Freeing Energy, he explores the much larger shift as the world transitions to clean energy as well as the opportunities and obstacles associated with it.
The journey to write his newest book began with his 2017 TED Talk, which grew into 100+ articles and, most recently, the popular Feeing Energy Podcast. He received a degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Bill is an avid reader, an avowed nerd, and he loves movies. He and his wife, Melinda, live in Atlanta, Georgia. They are both involved with several local energy projects serving disadvantaged communities in Africa and the US.
In Bill’s groundbreaking 2004 book, The Quiet Revolution, he was one of the first authors to reveal the underlying trends and predict the roadmap that ultimately led to the revolution in digital marketing. In his latest work, Freeing Energy, he explores the much larger shift as the world transitions to clean energy as well as the opportunities and obstacles associated with it.
The journey to write his newest book began with his 2017 TED Talk, which grew into 100+ articles and, most recently, the popular Feeing Energy Podcast. He received a degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Bill is an avid reader, an avowed nerd, and he loves movies. He and his wife, Melinda, live in Atlanta, Georgia. They are both involved with several local energy projects serving disadvantaged communities in Africa and the US.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 16, 2024
4.5 stars.
Good balance of the role of innovation, policy, and technology needed for transition to local energy systems. Breaking down local energy systems and their hurdles into digestible terms, which is not an easy feat. Nussey's tech background + tech metaphors were also a nice touch.
Hooray local energy!
Good balance of the role of innovation, policy, and technology needed for transition to local energy systems. Breaking down local energy systems and their hurdles into digestible terms, which is not an easy feat. Nussey's tech background + tech metaphors were also a nice touch.
Hooray local energy!
September 10, 2022
Author Bill Nussey provides a uniquely refreshing assessment of where energy has been, where it’s at right now (published 2021), and where it will be in ten years, and a generation or more out. He has an extensive background as a tech CEO, and has also worked in venture capital. Like some innovators before him, he started his first business in high school (and a second in college). One company he led, Silverpop, was bought by IBM which soon hired and promoted him to VP of Corporate Strategy. With a degree in electrical engineering and an MBA from Harvard, and his considerable personal experience and curiosity, Nussey writes from the perspectives of business, engineering, and economic history.
The energy focus is primarily electricity, because that’s the future. It is an increasingly clean form of energy (powered by solar and wind), can be stored and transported, but will increasingly be produced and stored locally. And therein lies the story of disruption and transformation: locally produced and stored renewable electricity that will disrupt the electrical industry — utilities and fossil fuel companies in particular — beyond the wildest dreams of starry-eyed environmentalists and energy wonks. In the near future, solar cells (not necessarily “panels”) will become so inexpensive that no other method of generating power will be able to compete. (That’s already true today, by the way, even without including fossil fuel subsidies; existential carbon costs; air, water and soil pollution; and health impacts. Include all these “externalities”, and it was less “expensive” a long time ago.)
As readers, you’re no doubt aware that there’s a lot of noise — corporate propaganda, myths, conspiracy theories and other nonsense — out there. Nussey dissects and refutes a lot of that with facts (imagine that!) and especially a different paradigm for electricity production, delivery, utilities, and the grid itself. This is what makes Freeing Energy so interesting. Our century-old dependence on the centralized production and primarily one-way distribution of electricity is about to end — forever. As more and more local residential, business, and municipal solar installations power up, the need for the centralized power from utilities and other large-scale, distant generators decreases. Combine that local, but obviously intermittent power (the sun doesn’t shine at night) with increasingly inexpensive battery storage in the form of stationery batteries (think Tesla Powerwalls) and mobile batteries (think electric vehicles), and the usefulness of utilities becomes questionable. But that’s not all.
Imagine for a minute that in the same way many Americans are now controlling their lights, thermostats, and appliances through “Smart Home” devices from Google and Apple, we begin to control our solar panels, “two-way” EV charging (think Ford F-150 Lightning or Hyundai Ioniq 5), and other battery storage. What if the utility monopoly over the sale of electricity was eliminated, and we could sell excess power not only with the utility (called “net metering,” the practice already established in most U.S. states for residential solar installations), but to our neighbors within a local microgrid. Just this week, the New York Times ran a story about a company that has proposed just that in California. Having just finished reading Freeing Energy, I can honestly say that I saw it coming.
Or consider the peak demand issue. Most people come home from work every evening, turn up their AC, put the laundry on, and start cooking dinner. That peak demand can’t be met by the 24/7 power plants, so utilities or other producers fire up peaker plants that are otherwise idle, burning natural gas, diesel, or even coal, and charge an exorbitant rate to match. What if instead, we could sell back to the grid some of the solar electricity stored in our EVs or Powerwalls, charged up from the day’s solar gain? Then we’d pull that power back in during off-peak hours? And get paid for that power. Think of it as a loan you’ll get paid for with interest. That’s already being piloted in some European countries. That’s the kind of dramatic disruption Nussey foresees in the electrical industry.
Will utilities take this disruption lying down? No, Nussey says, they’ll lobby and propagandize until the sun sets on their current business model. But the grassroots pressure from homeowners who realize that there is a cheaper alternative will be overwhelming. Utilities could read the tea leaves and develop a new business model to salvage their profit margins, but Nussey isn’t convinced that they will act quickly enough. Why? Because they have already proven themselves inept at adaptation. Their 100 year old government-sanctioned monopoly created corporate institutions that lack much capacity for research and development. And that monopoly is already being chipped away by state laws eliminating their power-generating monopoly by way of ESCOs (Electricity Supply Companies) and net metering.
As with Moore’s Law of computer chips, the rapidly declining prices for solar cells and Lithium-ion batteries we’ve seen over the last decade will continue, bringing the cost of household solar and battery storage within reach of more and more Americans. As it becomes as widespread as personal computers, Nussey argues a convincing case for a game-changing disruption of the electric supply and distribution industries. Utility-owned centralized power plants and the grids they maintain and operate will be diminished in their roles and importance, as electric power production and consumption is “freed”.
There’s lots more to unpack here, of course. For example, will this disruption distribute its benefits across our society more broadly than the current arrangement? Will low and moderate income Americans will benefit equally, if at all? From my perspective, that’s most concerning issue. Still, it’s a pleasant change of pace to read about the promise of a more sustainable future from an entrepreneurial perspective. A worthy read.
The energy focus is primarily electricity, because that’s the future. It is an increasingly clean form of energy (powered by solar and wind), can be stored and transported, but will increasingly be produced and stored locally. And therein lies the story of disruption and transformation: locally produced and stored renewable electricity that will disrupt the electrical industry — utilities and fossil fuel companies in particular — beyond the wildest dreams of starry-eyed environmentalists and energy wonks. In the near future, solar cells (not necessarily “panels”) will become so inexpensive that no other method of generating power will be able to compete. (That’s already true today, by the way, even without including fossil fuel subsidies; existential carbon costs; air, water and soil pollution; and health impacts. Include all these “externalities”, and it was less “expensive” a long time ago.)
As readers, you’re no doubt aware that there’s a lot of noise — corporate propaganda, myths, conspiracy theories and other nonsense — out there. Nussey dissects and refutes a lot of that with facts (imagine that!) and especially a different paradigm for electricity production, delivery, utilities, and the grid itself. This is what makes Freeing Energy so interesting. Our century-old dependence on the centralized production and primarily one-way distribution of electricity is about to end — forever. As more and more local residential, business, and municipal solar installations power up, the need for the centralized power from utilities and other large-scale, distant generators decreases. Combine that local, but obviously intermittent power (the sun doesn’t shine at night) with increasingly inexpensive battery storage in the form of stationery batteries (think Tesla Powerwalls) and mobile batteries (think electric vehicles), and the usefulness of utilities becomes questionable. But that’s not all.
Imagine for a minute that in the same way many Americans are now controlling their lights, thermostats, and appliances through “Smart Home” devices from Google and Apple, we begin to control our solar panels, “two-way” EV charging (think Ford F-150 Lightning or Hyundai Ioniq 5), and other battery storage. What if the utility monopoly over the sale of electricity was eliminated, and we could sell excess power not only with the utility (called “net metering,” the practice already established in most U.S. states for residential solar installations), but to our neighbors within a local microgrid. Just this week, the New York Times ran a story about a company that has proposed just that in California. Having just finished reading Freeing Energy, I can honestly say that I saw it coming.
Or consider the peak demand issue. Most people come home from work every evening, turn up their AC, put the laundry on, and start cooking dinner. That peak demand can’t be met by the 24/7 power plants, so utilities or other producers fire up peaker plants that are otherwise idle, burning natural gas, diesel, or even coal, and charge an exorbitant rate to match. What if instead, we could sell back to the grid some of the solar electricity stored in our EVs or Powerwalls, charged up from the day’s solar gain? Then we’d pull that power back in during off-peak hours? And get paid for that power. Think of it as a loan you’ll get paid for with interest. That’s already being piloted in some European countries. That’s the kind of dramatic disruption Nussey foresees in the electrical industry.
Will utilities take this disruption lying down? No, Nussey says, they’ll lobby and propagandize until the sun sets on their current business model. But the grassroots pressure from homeowners who realize that there is a cheaper alternative will be overwhelming. Utilities could read the tea leaves and develop a new business model to salvage their profit margins, but Nussey isn’t convinced that they will act quickly enough. Why? Because they have already proven themselves inept at adaptation. Their 100 year old government-sanctioned monopoly created corporate institutions that lack much capacity for research and development. And that monopoly is already being chipped away by state laws eliminating their power-generating monopoly by way of ESCOs (Electricity Supply Companies) and net metering.
As with Moore’s Law of computer chips, the rapidly declining prices for solar cells and Lithium-ion batteries we’ve seen over the last decade will continue, bringing the cost of household solar and battery storage within reach of more and more Americans. As it becomes as widespread as personal computers, Nussey argues a convincing case for a game-changing disruption of the electric supply and distribution industries. Utility-owned centralized power plants and the grids they maintain and operate will be diminished in their roles and importance, as electric power production and consumption is “freed”.
There’s lots more to unpack here, of course. For example, will this disruption distribute its benefits across our society more broadly than the current arrangement? Will low and moderate income Americans will benefit equally, if at all? From my perspective, that’s most concerning issue. Still, it’s a pleasant change of pace to read about the promise of a more sustainable future from an entrepreneurial perspective. A worthy read.
May 13, 2022
The best book to learn and understand Solar, local energy, and renewables
If you want to learn about solar energy, this is the book you should read in your top 3 picks. All concepts and technical material are explained in a way that even a 10 year old can understand. It provides immense depth into solar and renewable energies. It also provides a massive amount of resources to continue your own research and provides fact base insights. The most valuable peace for me was his vision of where solar energy is going based on his experience as an executive in the tech industry.
This book has rounded my understanding and the massive potential local energy is bringing in the near future.
If you want to learn about solar energy, this is the book you should read in your top 3 picks. All concepts and technical material are explained in a way that even a 10 year old can understand. It provides immense depth into solar and renewable energies. It also provides a massive amount of resources to continue your own research and provides fact base insights. The most valuable peace for me was his vision of where solar energy is going based on his experience as an executive in the tech industry.
This book has rounded my understanding and the massive potential local energy is bringing in the near future.
December 19, 2024
I really enjoyed Freeing Energy by Bill Nussey. It offers a fascinating look into the solar industry, its challenges, and the innovators driving change. The book provides insightful answers on how to enhance our overworked grid and highlights the opportunities for decentralizing energy. For anyone interested in starting a business in solar, like myself, this is an inspiring and informative read. I learned so much, and it’s a must-read for anyone passionate about clean energy and entrepreneurship.
July 22, 2025
This is a great book that conveys the importance of local, customer-owned energy resources and is understandable for a general audience. Energy, specifically electricity, is an extremely complicated topic in both technical terms and in the policy landscape. Bill Nussey gets to the heart of the matter by explaining how we all benefit from local energy, even those of us who don't install it ourselves. He does this with stories about real people and clean tech entrepreneurs and how they are revolutionizing local, clean energy. As an added bonus, he busts many of the myths about clean energy.
December 19, 2021
Insightful Book on Clean Energy
Freeing Energy is not just a book - it is a journey! Bill Nussey accomplishes a very
unique combination of providing the context for why clean energy is the next revolution as well as the what and how each one of us can help move the progress forward! Insightful, inspiring and actionable - this book should be on your must read list!
Freeing Energy is not just a book - it is a journey! Bill Nussey accomplishes a very
unique combination of providing the context for why clean energy is the next revolution as well as the what and how each one of us can help move the progress forward! Insightful, inspiring and actionable - this book should be on your must read list!
April 14, 2023
An inspiring introduction to the space of climate tech and local energy. The book is organized, easy to understand, concise, and full of useful references to more reading and exciting businesses. But most of all the book ends with a motivating call to action - let’s get to it!
March 9, 2025
Inspiring energy
Interesting, inspiring, clear view on the future of energy and the economic attractiveness of these technologies. Best intro to understanding renewables I have found
Interesting, inspiring, clear view on the future of energy and the economic attractiveness of these technologies. Best intro to understanding renewables I have found
January 20, 2023
🏆 2022 BIBA® Non-Fiction Winner!
April 24, 2024
Great introduction to learn more about the energy industry, the issues plaguing it, and solutions we can look towards for the future. Really interesting read, I'd recommend to all!
December 9, 2025
wow, great book for anyone who is interested in sustainability and wants to learn more about the practical steps needed for a clean energy transition
December 9, 2021
Freeing Energy offers a glance of the tremendous disruption facing our global energy system and the trillion-dollar-a-year opportunity that it presents. Focusing on local energy, Bill Nussey masterfully weaves together stories of the people in the trenches of this transition, from Silicon Valley to rural Africa.
For anyone interested in abundant, clean, and local energy, pick up this book and be ready to take action!
For anyone interested in abundant, clean, and local energy, pick up this book and be ready to take action!
April 15, 2022
Freeing Energy is by now one of my favourite books ever. The cuality and level of research of the information of the book is fantastic. Some complex concepts are explained in a very simple and understandable way.
For those, like my self that are trying to achieve any kind of impact on climate change figth this book is a source of inspiration and hope. Being aware of all the innovation people around the world is putting in climate tech is inspiring.
For those, like my self that are trying to achieve any kind of impact on climate change figth this book is a source of inspiration and hope. Being aware of all the innovation people around the world is putting in climate tech is inspiring.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews