Getting your electrical power from a source other than a huge, impersonal power company is a dream for many.

With advances in technology as well as streamlined production processes, that dream may be an affordable reality in the not to distant future; here are a few reasons why.

Battery revolution

While improvements in distributed generation will make it easier for people to leverage microgrids in the near-term, advancements in solar and battery technologies will help drive the power shift even further, said Jamais Cascio, a futurist and senior fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

“The improvement of batteries will be fundamental to a revolution that will make any kind of living off the grid not just possible, but easy,” Cascio said.

In fact, they are key to the transition.

“Batteries, really energy storage, is fundamentally necessary. It would be like the Internet without servers. It's fine to generate power, but inherently to live off a micro grid or to be off the grid you have to find a way to store power in the equation,” Wrathall said.

Industry players realize this and are betting there will be storage solutions that will boost their business, he said.

This sort of system is not meant to take users completely off the grid; it would keep its customer's power working in the case of an emergency.

Solar energy everywhere

As people have been saying for decades, much of the future of energy is solar, though perhaps not in the form people currently imagine it.

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts that in less than 20 years solar power will be so inexpensive and widespread that it will meet all of our energy needs. In the U.S. alone, solar capacity has quadrupled since 2010, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

But over the next two decades, how it is captured will look a lot different, Cascio said.

“If you think about a world where everything produces energy, everything that touches light produces energy, again you have the idea of a transformation on your hands,” Cascio said. “The idea of energy off the grid really comes down to be able to generate it easily and be able to store it in volume.”

Advancements in photovoltaic materials, such as photovoltaic paint or glass, will help power homes alongside panels. It's about “building a world where everything that is touched by the sun would create power,” Cascio said.

And it won't be long before we begin to see these kinds of materials in our homes, Cascio said.

Advancements in micro-grids, batteries and solar panels are propelling us towards a more sustainable and independent energy future.

We still have a long ways to go and these solutions will not ensure everyone will be able to become energy independent, but many will, especially if battery storage capacity and longevity continues to improve.

To read more on this topic, please visit CNBC.