jackbeagle wrote: ↑Tue Jun 15, 2021 7:36 pm
Nothing will be replaced. Not in our lifetimes. There will be new ideas that are used on new builds, but that's about it. For the most part, suburbia and rural American homes, on the exterior, are a time capsule of the era. Save for less invasive touches like painting brick, solar panels, or landscaping... homes without garages largely are still without them, homes with carports still have them open, just as they did 30, 50 years ago. I see no reason that status quo would change unless there are some arbitrary and wild changes made on what is taxed and how. Maybe in the future, we are taxed per square foot of yard that is not occupied by the dwelling, prompting a mass selloff of back yards to be built upon.
As below. See also changes in zoning.
Regarding EV charging, I foresee a second "peak" electricity rate period where everyone comes home and plugs in their EV. Existing infrastructure does not support Level 3 charging in each home. It would require the service drop to be replaced in every residence, and distribution to be redone as well. Now, a good idea would be a Tesla Powerwall slow-charging to full, then a DC-to-DC link from that Powerwall to the vehicle could just dump all the charge into the car in 30 minutes without imposing that load on the grid.
1. Agree. In the sense that the "streetcar suburbs" of Brooklyn and Shaker Heights in Cleveland and Brookline in Boston are still there. When almost every major American city had streetcars, these suburbs were the commuter suburbs of the day. Most of them are still there in the same form, long after the streetcars have departed.
The postwar suburbs, starting with Levittown in Long Island (?) was predicated on family car ownership. One car, with wife & children at home during the day. Then 2 cars as that became affordable, women went out to work, 3 and 4 cars (one per licensed driver) later still ...
The urban form is durable. It will change if zoning laws are relaxed - see the explosion of condo towers at major surburban locations in Toronto, say. I believe this is also true of places like Tyson's Corner VA in suburban Washington DC.
What tends to happen with older single family homes in these suburbs, on relatively large lots, is they become "teardowns" ie the 1400 square foot home becomes a 3000 square foot home.
2. Therefore the inhabitants will still need personal vehicles. I don't see AV-cars as a big feature in the next 10 years, say. Too many intractable problems. We will accept errors in driving (leading to death and injury) from drivers, but not from a computer.
Uber & Lyft are business models that have not yet shown their long term durability & profitability.
3. On charging there is already peak rate electricity (typically 4-8pm M to F?) in many parts of the USA (& other countries). The cost to the local Low Voltage grid of trying to handle big additional loads of EV charging would just be unaffordable. So if you want to charge your car before 8pm (or 9 pm in summer in much of USA) then it will be a very expensive task.
People will charge their cars overnight (I think the charging protocol is called "Level 2"?) with a similar circuit to the 240v AC (?) that many US homes use for water heaters, washing machines etc. 4-8 hours for a full charge (?).
You are absolutely right that home solar + home energy storage go very well with this. Generate in the day, use at peak hours.
As "behind the meter" generation grows, the big challenge will be to figure out how to remunerate the electricity Low Voltage and High Voltage (transmission) system when many customers don't actually consume much electricity. But they will still need grid connectivity. There are strong analogies to broadband (you pay by the size of your "pipe" ie connectivity, not by how much data you use).