denverpilot
Tied Down
Considering that I used a TRS-80 from 1982 until the early 90's, ummmm. Nope. Great machines. Especially once Microware released OS-9 Level II for them. Still today a popular real-time OS in numerous defense and other applications. One of the most timeless pieces of software work ever created, perhaps second only to Unix and Unix-like systems.
Considering that Moore's law is about the number of components on an integrated circuit, probably not. Moore's Law technically has also now failed at this point, and for a while now... the only way to accomplish it is multi-core design, and the complexity curve for the correct use of those is much higher than during the initial period.
There's nothing that particularly extrapolates directly from Moore's Law into solar cells. They're pretty basic devices. MPPT charge controllers were a significant breakthrough, but they're hideously noisy at RF frequencies and great care must be given when designing a large solar array with MPPT, considering our reliance on RF devices today. You really do NOT want neighborhoods full of rooftops with cheap-assed charge controllers making massive amounts of RF noise. I promise.
And that's the real response to the Moore's Law commentary: Hasn't happened yet.
A large solar system, bought in cash, and engineered properly, is roughly an additional cost of 30% or more on top of the price of the housing it's sitting on top of. It's very rare to see a system installed that the homeowner paid for completely, that isn't leased to a strange little holding company who keeps a large share of the power (e.g money) produced in return for installing it.
As far as housing with massive lithium battery banks goes, creation of that many batteries is a complete ecological disaster. Both in the amount of energy utilized to make all of them, the massive mining necessary, and the disposal or recycling stream for that many batteries. And again, you definitely don't want cheap-assed solutions for that -- a lithium battery bank that big with a single cell in thermal runaway is pretty likely to burn the structure to the ground while simultaneously being extremely hard to extinguish.
And the energy density is still quite poor. To put it in simple terms -- you need as much battery as is crammed in each car (assuming a two car household) to hold enough energy for a full charge on each, PLUS all losses and inefficiencies in the charging system, and that's before you've even stored any energy for the house.
Methinks you're sucking the Elon Musk marketing crack pipe a little too hard there, and not realizing his stuff is Marketing, not engineering reality. Having actually engineered data centers with battery systems and densities much larger in scale, I'm pretty sure of it.
Granted most of those systems are lead-acid, but that was because lithium batteries of that scale (similar to but bigger than household scale) would be an immense ticking time bomb, and would be considered a very large threat to the occupants and things inside the data center. The fire protection system would be based upon keeping the fire from spreading to occupied spaces, there would be no reasonable way to put it out.
Your enthusiasm for electrics is very high. Your knowledge of the engineering of same is incredibly weak.
My statement that the electrics only move the tailpipe to the electric plant, doesn't even include the energy involved in the manufacture of the batteries, solar cells, shipping them halfway across the planet in bulk cargo containers via incredible amounts of bunker oil, mining the raw materials, or assembling any of it into a finished product. Nor does it cover the energy expenditures for a recycling system for all the heavy metals involved, waste disposal from the manufacturing facilities, etc.
Engineering wise, it's an extremely "un-green" product. That we hide most of the worst part of that in countries that ship the stuff here who don't care in the slightest about pollution, just makes it look nice when it hits our shores. Labor costs are not the only reason you don't see companies ramping up to make mass quantities of solar panels here. Or batteries.
Even Elon says he'll assemble his battery arrays in the middle of nowhere in Nevada, but he'll be using cells produced "elsewhere". EPA would never allow him to build those here, right or wrong, it'd be too expensive to even try.
To make a house that consumes 500 KWh of power a month completely off-grid with solar, requires roughly 24 typical wattage panels. Each 100 KWh above that, add five more panels. That's before you charge the car(s). The average US home uses 900 KWh of power per month.
They're roughly 60" x 26". Call it ten square feet per panel and you're low by a considerable margin, but that makes the estimate math easy. 30+ panels is 3000 square feet of space.
To get the maximum out of them, they're extremely sensitive to solar angle, so your house roof or mounted system on a rack in your yard needs that unobstructed southern view of the sky and a nice tilt, for most of us. Otherwise you need a LOT more panels and panel space.
So... by the numbers you can clearly see that if you're counting on "Moore's Law" or an other law to do this, you're going to need a LOT more space than just the open rooftops of existing dwellings. Especially urban multi-tenant housing.
For even more (Moore?) reality check, human population worldwide is probably growing at a rate where one could never possibly catch up in solar cell production to make any significant difference.
Solar cells will remain the playthings of rich societies that need an excuse to run the air conditioner all summer until long after you or I are dead. Not that they aren't cool and have nifty applications, but the math shows they aren't going to make up the bulk of society's energy needs.
People don't quite "get it" when it comes to just how energy dense hydrocarbons are. The only thing that seriously competes is nukes.
