Australian Politics Forum - Future of rooftop solar power

St George of the Garden

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Future of rooftop solar power
Dec 18^th, 2014 at 8:41am

Solar panels are coming down in price while they are becoming ever more efficient. So much so that thought is turning to what will be an increasing number of houses going off grid.

That will depend to an extent on batteries coming down in price and improving in charging rate and the energy they can store. Driving it will be coal generators trying to charger ever more for their power, levying high fixed “service fees” to those with rooftop solar. Adding a small wind generator will generally mean batteries get recharged at least partially overnight.

Won’t be long before houses start going off grid. Huge economic advantage in so doing.

Now project that forward 20 years. New houses will be built from the ground up to be off grid. Is there any need to make the wiring 240V? Houses are wired with 240V because that is the best way to transmit electrical power, then we need power adapters to bring the voltage to 9 or 12 or whatever DC voltage needed.

The houses of the future might be wired for 20V DC! I hope there won’t be stupid VHS v betamax type wars between 20v and 24V standards OMG

No more deaths from accidental electrocution! Motors will need to be wired differently but there will be an improvement in efficiency since power no longer needs to be rectified and stepped down in voltage.

Robots will be more common—I would love to have one of those robot vacuum cleaners and these will be able to plug directly into any vacant power point. Robot lawn mowers are just an extension of this concept. Maybe robots with roughly human shape to wash dishes, sweep and mop kitchen floors? Cook and serve meals? In 20 years that may be possible.

Other things might get smarter—ovens and pans that sense when a sauce has reached the stage where it will burn and turn off the heat and send an alarm? Data wires everywhere in the house! (I don’t think wifi is indicated with babies and toddlers in the house, plus you don’t want interference from outside the property—just think the mischief a bored teenage hacker might do.)

Lights, appliances that turn themselves off after the last person has left the room.

Guess this is the time of year to ponder the future :bgrin but nothing I have said here is impossible.

More discussion here.

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Baronvonrort

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Re: Future of rooftop solar power
Reply #1 - Dec 18^th, 2014 at 10:29am

St George of the Garden wrote on Dec 18^th, 2014 at 8:41am:

Now project that forward 20 years. New houses will be built from the ground up to be off grid. Is there any need to make the wiring 240V? Houses are wired with 240V because that is the best way to transmit electrical power, then we need power adapters to bring the voltage to 9 or 12 or whatever DC voltage needed.

The houses of the future might be wired for 20V DC! I hope there won’t be stupid VHS v betamax type wars between 20v and 24V standards OMG

No more deaths from accidental electrocution! Motors will need to be wired differently but there will be an improvement in efficiency since power no longer needs to be rectified and stepped down in voltage.

There is a reason why we use 240v over 12 and 24v, when you drop the voltage you increase the current.

Lower voltage 12/24 will have higher amps, it's the current not the voltage that determines wire sizes,check out the battery leadson you car and tell us if you have any similar sized wires in your house with 240v.

The high voltage power lines are used because increasing the voltage reduces the amps,amps are the critical factor not voltage, the lines would be thicker and costly transmitting power on lower voltages.

The houses of the future will still be wired for 240v.

How are you going to rewire a 3 phase electrical motor running on 240v to perform the same as a lower voltage motor,would it be cheaper to just use an inverter?

Those without solar are subsidising those who have it, who is paying for the outrageous feed in tariffs some of these people are getting?

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John Smith

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Re: Future of rooftop solar power
Reply #2 - Dec 18^th, 2014 at 11:58am

i'm not very technologically savy on these things, but i was reading somehting a couple of weeks ago about a new AUSSIE invention that is capable of increasing the efficiency of domestic solar panels from the average 18% we currently have, to about 40%.

We should be able to halve the panel size and halve your cost.

And Abbott is cutting finding into renewables Cheesy

... the miserable sod

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St George of the Garden Gold Member Offline http://tinyurl.com/n 3o8m2x Posts: 9809 Gender:	Re: Future of rooftop solar power Reply #3 - Dec 18^th, 2014 at 3:11pm Abbott might have been an OK-ish sort of PM in 1950 (nah) but is poison now.
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AiA Gold Member Offline Posts: 18405 Gender:	Re: Future of rooftop solar power Reply #4 - Dec 18^th, 2014 at 11:49pm St George of the Garden wrote on Dec 18^th, 2014 at 3:11pm: Abbott might have been an OK-ish sort of PM in 1950 (nah) but is poison now. agreed. the man is a throw-back and needs to be thrown out.
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St George of the Garden

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Re: Future of rooftop solar power
Reply #5 - Dec 20^th, 2014 at 2:02pm

Baronvonrort wrote on Dec 18^th, 2014 at 10:29am:

St George of the Garden wrote on Dec 18^th, 2014 at 8:41am:

Now project that forward 20 years. New houses will be built from the ground up to be off grid. Is there any need to make the wiring 240V? Houses are wired with 240V because that is the best way to transmit electrical power, then we need power adapters to bring the voltage to 9 or 12 or whatever DC voltage needed.

The houses of the future might be wired for 20V DC! I hope there won’t be stupid VHS v betamax type wars between 20v and 24V standards OMG

No more deaths from accidental electrocution! Motors will need to be wired differently but there will be an improvement in efficiency since power no longer needs to be rectified and stepped down in voltage.

There is a reason why we use 240v over 12 and 24v, when you drop the voltage you increase the current.

Lower voltage 12/24 will have higher amps, it's the current not the voltage that determines wire sizes,check out the battery leadson you car and tell us if you have any similar sized wires in your house with 240v.

The high voltage power lines are used because increasing the voltage reduces the amps,amps are the critical factor not voltage, the lines would be thicker and costly transmitting power on lower voltages.

The houses of the future will still be wired for 240v.

How are you going to rewire a 3 phase electrical motor running on 240v to perform the same as a lower voltage motor,would it be cheaper to just use an inverter?

Those without solar are subsidising those who have it, who is paying for the outrageous feed in tariffs some of these people are getting?

Sorry, Baron, I completely missed your post!

The higher the voltage V the higher the current I over a resistor R
V = I x R or I = V/R so the higher the voltage or the lower the resistance the larger the current.

So for most things 20 or 24V is OK.

When it comes to driving heavier appliances you may have a point, we need to consider energy expressed as Watts;

DC watts to amps calculation
The current I in amps is equal to the power P in watts, divided by the voltage V:
I = P/V

(Had to look this up to verify, Physics 1 & II at Uni were a frighteningly long time ago.) So for high power appliances and low voltage currents would indeed be high! Hmmmmm!

Haven’t gone into AC v DC Cheesy

So maybe houses might be wired up for 110V.

Three phase is not used in houses and i was talking homes.

Feedback tariffs are now not much more than the normal cost of electricity, SA being an exception. If we had a carbon price home owners installing solar PV could sell their certificates rather than needing high tariffs. Then again, tariffs are increasing all the time.

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« Last Edit: Dec 20^th, 2014 at 2:08pm by St George of the Garden »

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