Begin forwarded message:
From: "Andrew W. Donoho" <awd@DDG.com>
Date: April 23, 2009 6:59:30 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] Feasibility of wiring a house for distributed low voltage?
For IP:
On Apr 21, 2009, at 8:47 AM, John Bosley <jandpbosley@verizon.net> wrote:
My friend wriites:"Moving right along- here is a fantasy I have had. Many of our little toys and some useful devices run on low voltage, provided by myriad transformers, which are always on, always drawing power, if my high school physics is correct. A house of the future could be wired for a single standardized (by decree) low voltage power circuitry, plugs in every room. supplied from a single transformer.All toys would plug into it. Probably these little corkscrew lights could be made to work just as well on low voltage. There could still be some 120 or 220 outlets for motors and heaters, I guess .Do you know of a flagpole to run that up?"
Due to the costs of transitioning, the goal of wiring houses for low voltage is unachievable.
Let me show why.
These costs are similar to any wide scale distributed reengineering. These activities have to be paid for by someone. Here in Austin, where I was a former Resource Management Commissioner, we have been trying to find ways to mandate more energy conservation investments in both new and existing houses. (We've had conservation programs for over 25 years. Most of the low hanging fruit has been picked.) I have two example situations - one for new construction and another for existing construction.
We are trying to get to net-zero energy capable home construction codes by 2015. In our most recent code effort, we were unable to overcome objections to requiring 2 and 4 pin CFL sockets for built-in fixtures. There were two battling estimates: one was that it would only take an extra $40 and the other said the requirement cost an extra $250. (I'm happy to have the debate about whether this was a good idea but that point is not relevant to the question above.) Let's put this in perspective, we are talking about a modest change on a product that has a construction cost well in excess of $100,000. Nonetheless, this was defeated by a rather potent combination of political forces. With respect to our questioner, it shows the challenges his low-voltage wiring change will face. (Low voltage wiring is even more expensive. It is a duplicate of an existing wire network.) The price combined by the need to also bring all of the gadget vendors along makes this a non-starter.
Requiring something like this for a renovation is even harder. Our idea was to put a point of sale conservation upgrade requirement on house sales. This, of course, was made possible because the mortgage money is generally available to fund the new rework. (We're talking things like insulation, solar screens, etc.) This was defeated by a similar coalition of realtors, builders and home owners. I conclude from my experience that there is no public will to make the investment.
Anon,
Andrew
P.S. I'm sure someone on IP will want to claim that our proposed funding mechanisms were wrong. I contend, with a great deal of experience informing my opinion, that any proposal is going to meet rather vigorous opposition. It isn't a matter of mechanism but of societal will.
____________________________________
Andrew W. Donoho
Donoho Design Group
awd@DDG.com, PGP Key ID: 0x81D0F250
+1 (512) 750-7596 (m)
"When you can't imagine how things are going to change,
that doesn't mean that nothing will change.
It means that things will change in ways that are unimaginable."
Bruce Sterling, January 02, 2009