When you think about your perfect dream house, what do you envision it to look like, or things to have? Well, I envision the perfect house to have and integrate different blocks of a self-sustainable product, meaning that it should have solar panels, batteries, solar collector, biogas, and a electric car. You can choose to have a grid connected system if you live in the city or near one, or completely go off grid if you want to be self sustainable. 
As technology evolves, the demand of electricity from the power companies keeps increasing dramatically, which can result in many problems such as difficulty to generate, manage and distribute power especially during peak hours. As a result of this, the chances of having blackouts keeps increasing as well.
The best way to help energy companies is to decrease the energy demands, and we can do that by adapting current or future houses with renewable sources. A good example of a house that contains most of those features, belongs to a couple that decided to completely go off grid, and live their life in a quite, relaxed atmosphere.  They call this experience living tiny and green. Their house have solar panels, batteries, solar collector and biogas.  
Regardless if you want to live grid connected or not, you can always help the planet become greener. If you have a large solar system that generates more than what you need during sun hours, and your system is connected to the grid, you can send that extra power to the system. If you have batteries, you can opt to use them during peak hours and charge with solar at another time, or from the grid when the peak rate is much lower.