Its about sidestepping regulatory capture. If you can drive battery costs down far enough, you don't need net metering subsidies than can be taken away on a whim.

This is an underrated observation.

Converting to metered grids (on which consumers can sell) costs a small fortune, often for very little benefit. Even environmentalists have been weighing in against it as wasteful.

Tesla's home battery solution offers an obvious response to this situation - you can minimize or avoid grid sell-off by doing in-home storage to smooth demand. That has the potential to make SolarCity an incomparable player in non-metered markets, keeping with Musk's general "no viable competitors" ethos.

Also, Tesla automobiles are giant batteries themselves. If you're looking at demand shifting, it's rarely a bad thing to have two days of storage capacity plugged in all night. I think that is where the true magic happens, converting non net metering markets to profitability.

>The utilities will fight (lobby) to give themselves the upper hand when it comes to buying solar power from consumers.

You aren't just whistling Dixie... http://www.solarcity.com/newsroom/press/following-nevada-puc...

I doubt losing Nevada as a market did anything to help SolarCity's bottom line.