Does anyone really like our local utility company? No, no one does. PG&E blows things up, deprives us of our pastimes and attempts to scramble our brainwaves on a regular basis. So how much longer do we have to put up with this garbage? Well, if we factor in things like the declining cost of solar power and the ever-increasing cost of wattage from the power company, as the folks at Energy Self-Reliant States did, we learn that it will be cheaper to ditch PG&E and go solar as early as five years from now.

San Diego, as climate & energy blog Grist points out, is the lucky winner here — their bountiful sunshine and already-expensive electricity bills mean California's margarita and fish taco mecca will hit solar grid parity (the point where electricity from solar power becomes less costly than power from the current grid) by 2013. San Francisco will likely hit that point around 2017, even if the federal government were to immediately cut subsidies for solar power. By the year 2020 every major metropolitan area in California will have hit a point where it is no longer economical to continue buying power from the local power companies.

Pop over to Energy Self-Reliant States for the full details of the study and a fun animated map of solar energy democratizing the power grid across the country.

[Grist]