“Technologies That Could Change Everything”

July 21st, 2013 by Zachary Shahan

Edit (July 22, 2013): A reader notes that 100% electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles should also be included here as revolutionary technologies. I fully agree.

Awhile back, on sister site Red, Green, and Blue, an article by David Brin was published with the title “Technologies that could change everything.” At first, I was afraid it was going to be about technologies far on the horizon that could change everything if they ever came about as market competitive, but which would probably never hit the market.

I was happily surprised. The first technology mentioned was LEDs. “Take this year’s arrival of reasonably priced and stunningly efficient LED light bulbs, for example. Businesses are already doing whole-building replacements and you should start now in your heavily-lit areas. They pay for themselves so quickly that fluorescents are hogs, by comparison. Within two years, incandescents and pigtails will be considered bizarre or quaint. That’s one game-changer.” Excellent.

The second was solar PV. Just following, “That’s one game-changer,” Brin writes, “Another is the rapid fall in prices for solar energy. Photovoltaics can’t yet compete with the plummeting (in the US) price of natural gas, but their economics are surprising cynics and could accelerate soon.” (Link added.)

Brin then wanders into mention of some other more questionable tech solutions, which can be fun but isn’t as relevant to the here and now or nearly as certain as the first two examples.

So, I have to say, I was very happily surprised to see an article about “technologies that could change everything” that was actually focused on cleantech that is just starting to have such an effect. This is the important story in the tech world, yet it is still highly unrecognized.

Yes, the university and research institute stories about fun new technologies that break boundaries but may never make any noticeable impact on the world are fun. And yes, some of these “breakthroughs” or incremental improvements may end up having a lasting effect. We cover these because we know that many of our readers (and writers) are interested in news on the cutting edge, are interested in seeing what might be the next big thing.

However, I think the most important thing today is hastening the revolution of clean technologies that are already here and poised to disrupt energy and technologies industries in a critically needed way. I’m happy to see others beginning to focus more and more on these technologies, bringing greater awareness about them to the general public, helping in this cause. And, naturally, I’m super happy when you readers help spread the word through various social media channels — that touches more and more of the “normal” people and more quickly brings the future to now. We don’t want everyone to think that solar power, LEDs, and other important cleantech are solutions that will break out in 10 years. We want them to realize that they are already breaking out, and that switching to these cleaner technologies can improve their lives and the lives of people and animals around the world.

In other words, let’s keep broadcasting the technologies we have today that really can change everything*!

*”Everything” is being used in a somewhat limited sense here as a former of literary exaggeration.

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About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

xclvet

I don’t often post, but when I do, I post about the article. Stay topical my friends. LEDs are great. Their cost is now affordable – particularly when their lifespan is factored in.
- RobS
  
  The topic was “technologies that could change the world” and LEDs were just one of about 10 things mentioned in the referred article.
JamesWimberley

Absolutely. Innovations alone do not rule the world: they do so when leveraged by economies of scale, through learning in production and networking externalities in demand. That’s why incentives for deployment are even more important than those for research. Most countries can comfortably free-ride on German, Japanese and American research. But everybody has to support deployment, as Mexico, India, Chile and Brazil and others are already doing.
Others

Electric & Plugin vehicles are also revolutionary since they consume only 1/3 of the energy as regular gasmobile.
- Omega Centauri
  
  EV & PHEV are still a long way from reaching even one percent of vehicle sales. It will be several more years before they can reach ten percent of new sales. They are promising, but not yet a factor. Wheras, LEDs are now a decent fraction of new bulb sales, and PV is rapidly becoming a significant fraction of newly built power generation.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    There’s a pattern that repeats itself over and over when it comes to new technology taking over from old.
    
    PV only became “affordable” a couple of years ago. LEDs are just now reaching that point.
    
    EVs probably need to break the 100 mile range barrier and come down a bit in price before they break out. I suspect there’s a significant psychological difference between an 80 mile range and an 100 mile range that exceeds the actual 20 mile difference.
    
    A couple more years. People are starting to understand that ‘range anxiety’ is not well founded. They’re starting to see other people driving EVs and they must be starting to understand how much cheaper per mile EVs are to drive.
  - JamesWimberley
    
    You fail to consider the power of compound growth, shown in the Persian fable of the king an the chessboard:
    
    A courtier presented the Persian king with a beautiful, hand-made chessboard. The king asked what he would like in return for his gift and the courtier surprised the king by asking for one grain of rice on the first square, two grains on the second, four grains on the third etc. The king readily agreed and asked for the rice to be brought. All went well at first, but the requirement for 2n – 1 grains on the nth square demanded over a million grains on the 21st square, and there simply was not enough rice in the whole world for the final squares.
    
    The 64th square actually calls for an impossible 230 billion tonnes of rice. In other words, so long as current double-digit growth rates for renewable technologies hold up, we are on track to a carbon-neutral future. Our policy problem is to see that these rates are sustained, and not killed stone dead as in Spain.
    - Omega Centauri
      
      I said EVs have promise, but that it will take years. Of course there is no guarantee exponential growth can continue long enough.
      
      The last time I heard the chess-board rice grain story, it ended very badly for the inventor: Once the King figured out the cost, he had him executed!
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Exponential growth only in the early years.
        
        There’s a topside boundary on the number of cars sold per year. I think the fleet turnover is around 15 years which would mean that about 7% of all cars are replaced each year.
        
        If we get range and low purchase price we might see a more rapid fleet turnover for the first round of EVs.
- http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  updated the post to briefly add them in. see top of the page.
Matt

Warning broken record time. What would help both of these jump in a lot faster not to mention a big push in efficiency . Put a price on carbon!
- Others
  
  Sorry Matt
  
  We cannot put a price on carbon since we are controlled by Big Oil and King Coal.
  - xclvet
    
    You cannot make up rules with no authority.
- photosymbiont
  
  How about recognizing the difference between fossil carbon and atmospheric carbon, for starters? Physically, fossil carbon has no 14C, while atmospheric carbon does – but the point is, if you pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, convert it to methane or gasoline with the aid of hydrogen from water, then burn it for energy – voila, no change in atmospheric CO2. Which points us to the other breakthrough technology (a bit short of market access, yet, but so was solar in 1965) – artificial photosynthesis of hydrocarbon fuels from CO2 and water.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    If liquid fuel can be made from atmospheric carbon. So far it seems that all the synthetic fuels need a source of concentrated CO2. I.e., they need to suck their feedstock from smokestacks.
    
    Biofuels seem more likely to be where we will get the liquid fuel we need for the portion of machinery that cannot run on electricity.
    - JamesWimberley
      
      Not quite. It’s cheaper to use concentrated sources of CO2 as long as you have them, but Fraunhofer have shown that it’s perfectly feasible to run the Sabatier reaction with atmospheric CO2. See this Dutch report for a power-to-gas consortium, page 27.
  - xclvet
    
    How about not trying to BS others.
Omega Centauri

LEDs and PV compliment each other. PV reduces the need for oldtech daytime power. LEDs reduce the need for nighttime power.
- dynamo.joe
  
  Really, they compliment each other better than that. LED’s run on DC PV produces DC. Currently, we run everything thru inverters multiple times, taking a 5-10% hit each time in efficiency. And more and more things are running on DC/batteries (laptop/tablet, phone, lights, cars, etc.)
  
  Maybe one day we will have parallel electrical systems in our houses to avoid those DC-AC-DC losses
  - Matt
    
    Yes, yes, yes; why aren’t new building build with Low voltage DC current. As well as DC, then let me by LEDs that plug into the DC.
    - Bob_Wallace
      
      Which of the several DC voltages now in use would you chose?
      
      Ever look at all the different DC voltages in your life?
    - JamesWimberley
      
      It will come first in big commercial projects like shopping malls and office blocks, ,which have complex electric setups and multiple voltages anyway. The trade is already thinking of this.
    - Omega Centauri
      
      Where it makes sense today is large computer server rooms. Better to have one large DC power supply that supplies all the servers, than a zillion small (and less efficient) power supplies on each server.
  - RobS
    
    LED’s also cut A/C load by almost as much as they cut the lighting bill, almost all the wasted energy from non-LED lighting is waste heat, incandescent lights can add as much 2kw of waste heat to a home which the A/C must combat in full before any actual cooling is achieved. This means when you swap out for LED’s your lighting load drops substantially bust so does your AC load almost doubling the anticipated savings in many cases. This is most noticeable in commercial settings where the lighting runs permanently during business hours when the heat load is highest.
    - Omega Centauri
      
      Those making data center computations use the figure of 30% additional power for AC for power dissipated in the computer room. Quite a bit lower than your two times. Also, the thirty percent only applies if its actually warm enough that AC comes into play. For a computer server room, this is virtually all the time.
      - RobS
        
        You’re talking about a very different number, your number is how much additional cooling capacity is needed ie if the size of the facility would otherwise require 10kw of cooling capacity then with heat generation from incandescent lighting you need an additional 30% or 3kw of additional cooling simply to fight the effect of the hundreds of little heaters in the ceiling. That number matches very closely with what I was saying. Data centres of course are another facility like offices and towel lobbies where lights run nearly 24 hours a day and stable internal temperature conditions are very important.
  - Bob_Wallace
    
    Inverters are more like 98% efficient and the power from panels take only one trip through.
    - dynamo.joe
      
      Then why does my computer have a “power supply” to change to DC? Why did my phone/laptop/e-reader all come with “AC adapters”. You can call it what you want, but it’s an inverter.
      
      And your new light bulb obviously contains one in the base. That’s 2 trips thru inverters. Even if they are 98% efficient. Though most desktop power supplies were 80% last time I built a machine though ‘silver’ 85% PS and ‘gold’ 90% PS were readily available for some extra dough. That’s just off the top of my head, it might have been 85%, 90%, 95%.
      
      Still, the point is if you have PV you are converting to AC and then converting back to DC for many of your end uses.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        Power supplies are not inverters.
        
        Inverters are about 98% efficient. Power supplies, the ones now used for most low voltage DC devices are 80% to 90% efficient.
        
        You are correct that by the time power gets from your solar panels to your laptop there has been as much as a 20% loss. One trip through an inverter, one through a power supply.
        
        Now, what would it take to change augment our grid to provide a parallel DC line in order to avoid the small amount of electricity lost. Remember, your laptop is not an energy hog. Most of the electricity you use runs the big stuff like your refer, washer/dryer, electric range, microwave, water heater, dishwasher, …..
        
        We’d have to string a new set of wires on the grid.
        
        We’d have to install a new set of wires and outlets in each building.
        
        We’d have to standardize DC voltage for all the stuff we now run on DC.
        
        We’d have to take grid AC and convert it to low voltage DC. Otherwise we’d have to establish as separate free-standing DC grid with its own generation and storage. If we were to convert grid AC to DC then all the savings disappear.
        
        What would that save? Say 20% for a 9 watt LED. 1.8 watts. Same for a 35 watt laptop, 7 watts. It would take quite a bit to get up to 1 kW of savings and at $0.11/kWh payback for the infrastructure would take a long time.
        
        Probably better to spend the money at the supply end and install more solar panels and wind turbines.
        
        The exception is server rooms. Some are starting to wire all DC and use one big power supply to convert for all. Not sure that saves any power, just cuts down on the wiring.
      - dynamo.joe
        
        None of that is what I suggested. I said, perhaps not clearly, if you have PV you ought to use the DC power it is supplying to satisfy your DC needs, then convert any excess to AC.
        
        Requires 0 changes to the grid or to generation plants.
        
        DC voltages are mostly standardized already. That’s why you can charge everything from a USB port.
        
        Even in an existing structure (house) changing the wiring to provide DC would be fairly trivial. Run a line from PV to breaker box. Hook it up to whichever circuit you choose. Change the standard outlet box to a USB outlet box.
        
        Several rooms in my house have 2 separate AC circuits. Change 1 to DC, leave the other standard AC.
        
        That should be a miniscule additional charge to the installation costs of your PV system. An extra hour, maybe, to the time an electrician spends there? So, $50? $100?
        
        Lighting is more problematic. Maybe you would have to add an AC to DC converter and 3 way switches, so you could choose PV/off/grid or something.
      - Bob_Wallace
        
        My previous PV array was wired at 12 vdc. My present one is 24 vdc. I have a friend who wired 48 vdc. Rooftop in Australia can be wired at 600 vdc or 1,000 vdc.
        
        I have devices that run on 6 vdc, 12 vdc, 15 vdc, 18.5 vdc and a few other voltages. I use 1.5 vdc and 9 vdc batteries.
        
        I own nothing that charges from a USB port.
        
        I see no trivial solution.
      - Omega Centauri
        
        DC has its own problems. One is the voltage is probably not correct for the end use, so you got to use some sort of voltage converter. Then if you try to supply DC at low voltage resistive loses in the copper wires will be very large unless the wires are very thick. There was a reason AC won the current wars.
      - dynamo.joe
        
        My history maybe wrong but I thought AC won the transmission wars. I’m not advocating DC transmission. just using it where it is produced.
Bob_Wallace

Bought my first LED light bulb a couple days ago. Cree 9 watt, 60 watt replacement. $12 bucks at Home Depot.

I’m impressed.
- Russell
  
  If I had some spare cash, I’d be interested in this https://www.meethue.com/en-US
  
  If it really does make you sleep better, and you price time=money that would really make it a good investment!
  - RobS
    
    This would be a perfect example of good debt, debt which in the long runs improves your financial position. Would be well worth going into credit card debt or redrawing a bit from your mortgage in order to fun an upgrade to LED lighting in any area of your house where the lights spend more then 2-3 hours a day in use. Ironically the less spare cash you have the more helpful such a move would be for you.
    - Matt
      
      I don’t think you want to use credit card debt, the interest is much too high. Unless you get a deal where they charge 4% upfront, 1-2 years 0%, then back to 15%-25%. But then only do enough that you can pay off during the 0%.
      - RobS
        
        They pay for themselves in running cost savings in about 9 months and save hundreds per lamp over their lifespan, well worth going into credit card debt to pay for.
      - dynamo.joe
        
        That’s really only true if you are jumping from incandescent to LED. If you already have CFL then they save around $17 over the life of the bulb. Still there are bulbs less than $17 now, so go buy them.
      - xclvet
        
        The article about credit card debt or LEDs?
    - xclvet
      
      Yes, people often steer conversations to what they’re familiar with. I’m using an LED bulb to illuminate my keyboard right this minute.