The shift
Some regions experience periods of extremely low marginal electricity costs as renewable generation and storage scale.
This is a LATER horizon because the underlying technologies or behaviors are visible now, while the full structural consequences depend on several enabling conditions maturing together.
Why it matters
The strategic significance is not the technology by itself. It is the possibility that today’s operating assumptions become less useful: who performs work, where decisions happen, what counts as infrastructure, how value is priced, and how organizations govern increasingly autonomous systems.
What has to happen first
- Capability: the enabling technology must become reliable outside controlled demonstrations.
- Economics: total cost has to compete with established alternatives.
- Infrastructure: standards, energy, connectivity, data and integration have to exist at useful scale.
- Trust and governance: organizations need liability, security, identity and control models.
- Adoption: customers and institutions have to change behavior, not merely express interest.
NOW / NEXT / LATER
NOW: enabling technologies, pilots and investment establish feasibility.
NEXT: repeatable deployments identify where economics and organizational value are real.
LATER (5–15 years): the shift becomes structural if adoption crosses from isolated use cases into infrastructure, operating models or everyday behavior.
What could accelerate it
Falling cost, better reliability, interoperable standards, labor or resource constraints, regulatory clarity and a successful high-volume use case.
What could slow it
Poor economics, infrastructure bottlenecks, safety failures, regulatory friction, public resistance, cybersecurity incidents or a better competing architecture.
Second-order effects
The most important consequences may appear outside the originating technology: new insurance models, skills, audit requirements, infrastructure demand, business models and power relationships.
What to watch
Track deployment rather than announcements; unit economics rather than demos; standards rather than prototypes; repeat customers rather than pilots; and evidence that adjacent industries are changing behavior.
Jim’s foresight lens
The useful question is not “Will grid abundance pockets happen?” It is: “Which assumptions become obsolete if it does, and how early would we know?”
Confidence
Medium confidence. This is a directional foresight assessment, not a point forecast.