Future generations will probably look at our current housing and building design as barbaric and primitive. The fact that we build houses and skyscrapers covered in sunlight and place bricks instead of solar panels will dumbfound future generations. They will look at us and think "Man, these idiots really didn't understand free energy was all around them."
Well, you replace bricks every couple hundred years, but solar panels every 10–20, right? Also a 2000W solar panel is like $300 or something and it's half the size of a door.
Unless a building is crowd-funded by the future tenants with the promise of no electrical costs, and also the future tenants expect to live like 100 more years, I can't see how this could happen, short of the eradication of private property and the government constructing these things.
I get where you're coming from, but let me correct some of your numbers for other readers:
> you replace bricks every couple hundred years, but solar panels every 10–20, right?
Old panels perhaps, but modern solar panels come with performance warranties that guarantee they will be producing >85% of their initial output after 30 yrs.
> 2000W solar panel is like $300 or something and it's half the size of a door
2000W solar panels generally don't exist, so I assume that's a typo for 200W? Modern utility scale panels top out at ~700W with dimensions of 2.4 m x 1.3 m, however rooftop panels for commercial buildings are in the 500W range and ~ 2 x 1 m (so yeah about a door). International wholesale prices for these from Tier 1 manufacturers are now < $0.10 USD / W (although from what I understand more expensive in the USA).
Housing co-ops would be incentivized to implement those features. Our society should make it easier for co-op of all types to be created and thrive (such as through taxes), but especially worker owned and housing co-ops.
You can get 500W solar panels for less than 40€ these days, so 150€ or so for 2000W. At German electricity prices, they pay for themselves very quickly!
like it's cheap, easy and environmentally friendly to do such installations... just search for the end-of-life management and chemicals used at their production. we have thousands of ways of doing better urbanism or feeling less "barbaric and primitive" than making skyscrapers (which seriously, are built for who?) producing energy
Solar does not generate continuous supply. If you want to propose putting solar panels on everything you need a solid strategy for storing the energy. This is an unsolved problem in our time, and there is a lot of distraction in wishful thinking - talk of kinetic capture or hydrogen conversion that does not stack up.
> you need a solid strategy for storing the energy. This is an unsolved problem in our time
Earnest question - why isn't this solved by the fact that batteries exist? Are you saying that there is some technical/physical problem at-scale with storing _that much_ energy, or that there is some logistical problem with distributing and managing the batteries (ensuring the right ones are discharging at the right times), or that they are simply too expensive or specialist for us to build quickly enough right now, or...?
Batteries alone are too expensive to solve the problem well. The solution will be a complicated mix of solutions. Current batteries are excelent for short term variation (<1s). New Grid scale battery designs (e.g. flow batteries or molten salt batteries) are likely to make batteries pretty good for the <8 hour range. Hydro is unbeatable in the day to year range. That said, a lot of the solution will also likely come from demand shaping. Hot water tanks can be heated, and homes can be heated and cooled extra when there is excess power, charge EVs during work hours rather than overnight etc. There will be thousands of minor tweaks to take full advantage of solar. The power is cheap enough that it's worth reworking our entire economy around it.
> Would it be fair to describe it as a utopian claim?
In the case of water heating (and water based space heating also) it's already here in terms of technology and availability. Heat pump storage water heaters are now widely available. The problem is that they can only be phased in as fast as existing gas water heaters reach EOL.
Domestic water heating comprises almost 18% of household energy use in the United States.
If you can make 4 hours of power a day completely free, industry shifts massively. Rather than making a $1m, 90% efficient machine that operates 24/7, you can make a $50k, 20% efficient machine that you turn off when there isn't sun.
We are talking about a form of power that is not free. Solar panels and installation have initial costs and refresh costs. Your 90%/20% notes are a hypothetical, and may apply to some settings, but I expect they will be niche. People want to heat their homes, and boil kettles and run webservers.
I have no problem with aesthetics like *punk. But when these aesthetics influence public policy we end up with dysfunction, like countries that have lots of electric vehicles being powered by new coal power plants. The original post said our era will be looked down on for not covering buildings with solar panels. I don’t think that is correct.
solar isn't free but it is the cheapest form of electricity we have (LCOE), and it's cost fell by a factor of 4 in the past decade. people absolutely want to hear their homes and boil water, but both of those are energy demands that are easy to time shift. any reasonably built home in the past decade is insulated well enough that you can only heat it during the day and keep it at a comfortable temperature. similarly, hot water tanks can be heated hours in advance when there's plenty of spare electricity. this obviously doesn't apply to all forms of energy demand, but heating (air and water) is the majority of consumer demand and is easily shiftable.
Do you think that of past generations? I don’t. They were limited by what had been invented.
I mean they had things like slavery and gladiator fights, I’m really not very sympathetic to them in general, I think they were quite cruel. But dumb? Nah.
Solar panels are currently very expensive as building material. We could be exploiting passive solar more effectively I think, though.
