Comment by ipdashc
7 hours ago
> we'll all be around to see solar panels that cost 1/10th of what they do now
I get the impression they're already really damn cheap, to the point that the issues are more so with grid interconnections, land use, and storage
Installation labour cost and inverter cost are now the largest expenses.
I wonder if as panel costs goes down, will people start to wire their homes again for 48V DC? You could conceivably run your HVAC and fridges at least off of it, this would negate the need for a larger (more costly) inverter.
Unless you build from scratch, and white box stores suddenly start selling a 48v version of every standard household appliance (with industrial supply chain to support that market), inverters are not going anywhere.
The only place it makes sense is personal tech and computing, where USB chargers are cheap and ubiquitous, with technology replacement in 2-5 years instead of 5-10 for standard appliances.
it would probably slowly start coming out as dual ac and dc connections and start with "garage appliances" like your laundry, central ac / vac and car charger since the garage is the cheapest place to wire something into.
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Fridges is doubtful. But HVAC... yeah i'd put that at increased possibility because you probably won't have to rewire your house to do it.
> Installation labour cost and inverter cost are now the largest expenses.
That's true for the solar development project, but such a project typically ignores grid costs.
so Edison's dream will finally come to be
Why not 120V DC?
Mainly thinking 48V as that is already a standard in the marine and automotive world. AFAIK 120V DC is not a commonly used standard ? (Maybe in aviation?)
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50V is the limit for "safe extra low voltage" rules. Considered to be touch safe.
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1. It is not considered safe voltage, so you have all the downsides of the current AC grid with the downsides of high DC voltages
2. Nearly no equipment uses 120VDC by itself, so you would need specialized DC-DC converters that can deal with the 120VDC input to go down to usual voltages like 48VD, 24VDC or 12VDC
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Hopefully we can move to a micro solar system where everyone is responsible for a fraction of the generation and storage
Probably won't happen. Federating the responsibility for overall energy capacity, government ain't gonna do that. You'll be responsible for your own generation / storage.
Tho' something interesting. Those with large enough arrays can use their excess to produce nitrogen fertilizer via cold plasma.
This would either allow them to store value in that (for sale to farmers / national stockpile) which may give better yields then storing via batteries and selling back to the grid. Or they could use it to grow their own produce making them self reliant and less dependent on supermarket chains and by extension their dependency on fossil fuel use in their distribution networks.
Brackets cost more than the panels here.
I've been rednecking up some panels and storage and I'm buying second-hand 250Wish panels about 10p/watt.
It's already getting close to "not really economic" to buy second-hand panels, because people have slightly inflated prices for them, but the way I look at it I get a nice run out to somewhere, have a nice lunch in a cafe, and come back with a couple of kW of panels for about as much as a tank of fuel.
New panels just get cheaper and cheaper and better and better, and you can often find clearance deals on 400W-ish panels for ridiculously low prices.