Wow that is actually a really interesting idea! The problem with that approach would be trust: to trust that both parties hold their part of the bargain. There's likely to be a cryptographic solution to ensure that though, right?

Why do we need any of this? Physics takes care of it if we just hook everyone up to a grid. Electricity pretty much finds the sources and sinks by itself if you provide capacity (it’s more complicated that that, but simpler than what you are proposing). It’s kind of like saying why don’t we pump and sell well water to one another instead of using a common water supply where the runoff from all our land goes to the same pipes.

> Why do we need any of this? Physics takes care of it if we just hook everyone up to a grid.

That's exactly what is the bottleneck: the grid. Operating a grid, eating transmission losses etc. cost a lot of capital and labor. Not to mention: its also a single point of failure. Whereas communication (through cellphone towers) is cheap(er).

> It’s kind of like saying why don’t we pump and sell well water to one another instead of using a common water supply where the runoff from all our land goes to the same pipes.

Its not the same, and I don't think its a good comparison. Solar energy is much more plentiful than groundwater, and does not require any "processing".

Grid storage is the bottleneck today. You make the problem worse by splitting things up.

Maybe this is one example of a use case for blockchain technology.

With hawala the trust depends purely on a money brokers reputation.