Original 2021 statement: One of the biggest energy opportunities in the next decade is to be found in an integrated home-energy wind/solar/battery/thermostat/iOT integrated system.
What Jim has written about this
From “Daily Inspiration: “It’s time to move from triage to tomorrow!”” (January 2023)
Solar power generation is growing faster than any other form of energy
A ‘next billion-dollar industry’ will be fully integrated home microgrids - with renewable energy (solar/wind), batteries for storage, and tech to direct it directly into your car, all managed through a thermostat-like device
From “Daily Inspiration: Energy & Construction - “The future is all around you. It’s just waiting for someone to put it together!”” (August 2024)
Take the world of construction and energy. It’s a given that over the long term, most homes will be powered by solar power or wind power, with natural gas or other carbon energy sources merely acting as an ‘insurance policy;’ for times of variability. Battery storage technology will be at the heart of the technology setup that makes this crazy economical - storage costs have declined 97% in the last three decades, and continue to plummet. The home will contain some large massive energy storage battery - and your future car will also be a part of your home energy system. Pulling it all together will be the next evolution of your home thermostat such as your Nest or ecoBee - running some sophisticated software algorithm that will keep it all running, in sync, maximizing energy production.
The opportunity is huge - right now, there are almost seven billion square meters of glass surfaces to be found in windows. Imagine that the glass in most new commercial, industrial, and residential construction is made of transparent solar panels. Imagine a massive retrofit of such technology given the cost path they are likely to follow. Transparent solar panels look like clear glass and let light through like regular windows. One estimate suggests solar windows and related transparent solar technologies could provide around 40% of energy demand in the United States. That’s a pretty big number.
grid-connected energy storage . Essentially, great big batteries store energy generated by the distributed energy resources in the system. Solar is only generated while the sun is up, and wind energy only happens on a windy day - but grid-connected energy storage solves this problem. There is a huge amount of investment, innovation, initiative, and idea generation going into this - as I explained many years ago, ” The Future of Just About Everything is all About Batteries .”
From “Daily Inspiration: “Ignore those people who say that the future is too hard, that it can’t be done, and that it is too expensive. (Because they don’t know how the future works!)”” (July 2022)
Right now, the vast majority of new energy projects in North America involve renewables - solar, wind - and battery technologies. Bloomberg has stated that of $11.5 trillion going into energy investment by 2050, 85% will be into wind, solar, renewables, grid, and smart energy tech. Oil is over - we all know that.
Architecture! Soon, it will be economically feasible to generate solar power through see-through windows that are essentially solar-generating glass. So, buildings become their own power sources, simply by standing. Buildings, particularly homes, are not yet really energy smart, but they will be! Small in-home microgrid technology that connects your thermostats, computers, solar and wind generation tech, your car, and batteries to maximize your energy potential and reduce your energy use are the next multi-billion market opportunity - and there is probably someone in a garage right now developing something that will blow your mind in less than a decade - and who will be wildly rich. Local area neighborhood energy microgrids - remember that phrase.
Want to blow your mind? EXISTING renewable technology could theoretically capture 6,700 Petwatt hours of energy (PWh). In 2019, the total global energy demand was 65PWh! What’s that mean? Wind, solar and battery science AS IT EXISTS TODAY if deployed, is more than up to doing the job. 100 times more!
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Daily Inspiration: “It’s time to move from triage to tomorrow!”
Daily Inspiration: Energy & Construction - “The future is all around you. It’s just waiting for someone to put it together!”
Daily Inspiration: “Ignore those people who say that the future is too hard, that it can’t be done, and that it is too expensive. (Because they don’t know how the future works!)”