NRG Energy sees shining future for solar
David Crane likes to compete with himself.
For Crane, the CEO of NRG Energy (NRG), the biggest independent producer of electricity in the U.S., conventional coal, natural gas and nuclear plants provide the bulk of his company’s $3.8 billion in revenue.
But Crane foresees a day not so far off when new technologies like rooftop solar and batteries will turn the electric power industry upside down, and NRG is moving in that direction.
“I think electricity today is where the telecom industry was about 1990,” Crane said in an interview with USA TODAY. “The fixed line is still out there, right? But I can’t tell you the last time I made a long-distance call from my home phone.”
What’s coming, he said, is a transition “over the next generation” from a system nearly totally reliant on a network of coal, natural gas and nuclear plants to one where homes and businesses can increasingly meet their own electricity needs with rooftop solar panels and batteries, and even go off the grid.
