Comment by ben_w

Even starting from scratch with the software, I'd make the opposite bet. Imported energy on the scale of nations a lot of expensive physical hardware. Given the numbers people throw around when talking about upgrading the electrical grid, think trillions*.

Software also has the potential to be made by forking open source projects. That Canonical Ltd. (London) has Ubuntu is already a decent foundation, a wheel that probably doesn't need to be fully re-invented.

* ironically, one of my hobby-hills on green energy is that I have noticed that a genuinely global electrical grid fat enough to get resistance down to 1 Ω the long way around, would only cost a few hundred billion in aluminium. Currently only China makes enough to consider it, but still, the BOM for such a project is much less than the price of all the manpower needed for the last 100 miles.