<story><title>Ask HN: What&apos;s the next big thing that few people are talking about?</title><text>Blockchain &amp;amp; AI don&amp;#x27;t count, because they&amp;#x27;re being talked about plenty!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>abetusk</author><text>Energy? I feel like it&amp;#x27;s been talked about a lot but maybe not?&lt;p&gt;Solar panels are dropping in cost at an exponential rate [0]. As of this writing, consumer &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; panels are $0.75&amp;#x2F;W and used are at around $0.30&amp;#x2F;W right now (I won&amp;#x27;t give a link as a Google search will do).&lt;p&gt;Battery technology is also dropping at an exponential rate. I believe, with a little effort, one can purchase batteries at about $0.08&amp;#x2F;Wh.&lt;p&gt;Taken together, one can purchase a 30KWh (daily) solar panel and battery storage system for about $4,200 (not including labor and extra hardware&amp;#x2F;electronics), which puts the return on investment (ROI) at about 3.5 years if we consider the average house spends around $1200 (in the USA).&lt;p&gt;Dropping costs will quickly put that in the 2 year ROI range which, in my opinion, is the inflection point where it effectively becomes too good to pass up for the average consumer.&lt;p&gt;The dropping price of energy comes with all sorts of side effects, like a potentially decentralized energy grid, use cases for excess energy (eg bitcoin mining, carbon capture, hydrogen production, etc.), novel power storage systems etc., which is maybe the &amp;quot;novel&amp;quot; part that I haven&amp;#x27;t heard too much talk about.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Swanson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Swanson%27s_law&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>gregwebs</author><text>This is actually talked about on every HN energy thread and it’s now incorrect, particularly about batteries.&lt;p&gt;Solar has supply bottlenecks at the moment that are stopping further price declines- hopefully they will get solved.&lt;p&gt;But there’s a lithium shortage that is already showing up in the price of lithium going up 5x. Analysts predict that by around 2025 lithium will limit the battery market that is trying to grow 40x to meet electrification demands [1]. Note that opening a new lithium mine takes a minimum of 7 years. sodium based batteries are coming to help this situation, but they are a new technology that will take time to productionize and ramp up.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;5v-DTS-ibow&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;youtu.be&amp;#x2F;5v-DTS-ibow&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: What&apos;s the next big thing that few people are talking about?</title><text>Blockchain &amp;amp; AI don&amp;#x27;t count, because they&amp;#x27;re being talked about plenty!</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>abetusk</author><text>Energy? I feel like it&amp;#x27;s been talked about a lot but maybe not?&lt;p&gt;Solar panels are dropping in cost at an exponential rate [0]. As of this writing, consumer &amp;quot;new&amp;quot; panels are $0.75&amp;#x2F;W and used are at around $0.30&amp;#x2F;W right now (I won&amp;#x27;t give a link as a Google search will do).&lt;p&gt;Battery technology is also dropping at an exponential rate. I believe, with a little effort, one can purchase batteries at about $0.08&amp;#x2F;Wh.&lt;p&gt;Taken together, one can purchase a 30KWh (daily) solar panel and battery storage system for about $4,200 (not including labor and extra hardware&amp;#x2F;electronics), which puts the return on investment (ROI) at about 3.5 years if we consider the average house spends around $1200 (in the USA).&lt;p&gt;Dropping costs will quickly put that in the 2 year ROI range which, in my opinion, is the inflection point where it effectively becomes too good to pass up for the average consumer.&lt;p&gt;The dropping price of energy comes with all sorts of side effects, like a potentially decentralized energy grid, use cases for excess energy (eg bitcoin mining, carbon capture, hydrogen production, etc.), novel power storage systems etc., which is maybe the &amp;quot;novel&amp;quot; part that I haven&amp;#x27;t heard too much talk about.&lt;p&gt;[0] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Swanson%27s_law&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Swanson%27s_law&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>aaronax</author><text>Hopefully the other pieces get cheap enough to enable some revolution in the wiring side of it.  Falling costs enable some acceptable loss of efficiency, so you can blow 100W on unnecessary power conversion and another 100W or whatever on losses due to smaller cabling.&lt;p&gt;It badly needs to be standardized in a consumer-friendly way...like power-over-ethernet in reverse.  Field-installable, hot-pluggable, fool proof connectors.  You can get 90W over some variations of network cabling...bump that up a couple sizes so you can handle 400W.&lt;p&gt;So you buy a bunch of solar panels and some patch cables, and plug those in to a one or more &amp;quot;power switches&amp;quot; on the roof top.  Then run a QSFP+ equivalent &amp;quot;power backhaul&amp;quot; down into utility room where you have your &amp;quot;power aggregation switch&amp;quot; which has a bunch of (power)QSFP+ ports and plug batteries in to a few of those.  And of course a couple big QSFP28 ports to an inverter to power legacy 120V loads, which maybe someday you don&amp;#x27;t need any more as household things move to using PoLE (power over large ethernet).</text></comment>