- **Battery costs dropped <$100/kWh** - making residential storage economical without subsidies - **Wildfire blackouts** created backup power demand (California, Texas, Australia) - **Net metering changes** made batteries more valuable for solar owners (NEM 3.0 in CA) - **Regulatory enablers** - FERC Order 2222 (US), VPP mandates in Europe, grid modernization funds - **Software maturity** - cloud platforms, IoT integration, ML optimization algorithms now production-ready - **Financing evolution** - solar securitization model now applies to storage, institutional capital available - **Grid stress visible** - rolling blackouts, near-misses prove need for distributed capacity - **Renewable penetration** - high solar/wind creates arbitrage opportunities (negative pricing daytime, scarcity evening)