That article is outdated. Its basing figures on an older technology in lead-acid versus Lithium and battery manufacturing has started exploding since then.
He also assumes the same level of inefficiency. With the technologies and policies in my plan, the U.S. can easily be 8 times more efficient.
We do not have the battery technology to make micro-grids feasible for the USA at large (much less the world). In fact, we don't even have enough known lead and/or lithium to build batteries to do this with today's technology.
Here's a good read on the challenges: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/nation-sized-bat...