The sun. It just burns away up there, consuming millions of tons of gas every second.
Meanwhile, all too many of us down here are facing a winter of soaring bills, power shortages and – bigger picture – an uncertain environmental future.
And yet effectively harnessing the power of the sun seems as far away as ever, with only around 5% of global electricity coming from solar power in 2021.
But an achievable, affordable home solution is here. At the recent IFA 2022 tech conference in Berlin, Bluetti put solar energy firmly in the hands of the people.
The barriers to household solar power adoption have always been cost and complexity. With Bluetti's New EP600 power station and B500 battery combo, this renewable energy is now within the financial reach, and technical grasp, of us all.
First up, the Bluetti EP600. Essentially a very smart and sleek looking suitcase with a 6000W bio-directional inverter built-in. That's the important bit.
In layman's terms this means you can just plug in a solar panel (whether one of Bluetti's own or any other model) at one end and your appliance of choice at the other. And that's it. Setting up a solar powered home grid really is as simple as grizzled road warriors make it look on the telly.
But even if you're not preparing for a Walking Dead-style apocalyptic scenario, the applications are plentiful. With 99.9% MPPT for the highest charge efficiency, this independent solar grid provides protection against blackouts and brownouts, as well as reducing your energy bills and carbon footprint.
And while, at 40 kilos, you won't be putting the EP600 into a backpack anytime soon, all you campervan fans will find it more than happy to accompany you on extended trips.
Of course, solar power also needs to be stored.
Unless you happen to live in the Sahara Desert you're going to have some rainy days (and we hear it's been known to drizzle even there) so when the sun disappears you need to know your power isn't going to go with it.
That's where the second part of Bluetti's double act comes in. The B500 is every bit as simple as the EP600.
It's a battery. A really big battery. A really big, nice looking battery.
It's not just striking, it's powerful too, capable of containing almost 5kWh of energy. That's more than 1,000 iPhones. Or, to put it another way, enough power to take more than ten billion selfies.
There's more. Literally, lots, lots more. The final genius of Bluetti's household solar power system is its flexibility.
The EP600 power station has enough capacity to handle up to 16 of those B500 batteries, all of which will stack seamlessly on top of one another just as easily as they'll hook together to store and serve up to a mammoth 79.3kWh of power.
Depending on exactly what you've got going on that's enough juice to keep everything going for around 72 hours of non-stop cloudy skies.
And, naturally, you can control it all from your smartphone via Bluetti's bespoke app, available on Google Play and the App Store.
You don't have to be Elon Musk to afford it, either. The latest price for an EP600 power station and a pair of B500 stackable batteries is only £8,100, €8,999 or $8,650, available to pre-order from here soon (with a ten year warranty included).
Home energy independence doesn't just make economic and environmental sense, or take the stress out of blackouts. Now it looks exceptionally good doing it.
