>>13729327There's a 139 million homes in the US, in 2019. Its safe to reason that the number is likely around 140 million by the end of this year. Let's say you took 30% of that and added solar panels to the roof of these homes. On average, you'd be able to yield 31kW of energy from a roof of a home if you could cover every square inch of it. So if we take 30% of 140 million that's 42 million homes. Multiply that by 31kW and you get: 1,302,000,000 kW of generated energy. Divide that by 1000 and you get: 1,302,000 MW of energy. Divide that by 1000 and you get: 1,302 GW of energy. Divide THAT by 1000 and you get: 1.302 TW of energy generated PER day.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/201794/us-electricity-consumption-since-1975/In 2020, the US consumed 3,802 TW of energy. That's a fuckload of energy. 30% of housing produces only 0.034% of 1% of the total energy that's generated. If you took that number to 60% of all homes, that's still only 0.068% of 1%. Not even a rounding error. But this doesn't factor in any efforts made to store that energy. It also ignores inefficiency and waste. Its reasonable to say that around 25% of all energy produced is lost to just bleed off and general inefficiencies in the system. So in the US, though 3,802TW of energy is produced: 950TW is bled off into the atmosphere. That's a lot of LOST energy for just poor designs, cheap designs, and cost cutting designs.
Building codes are designed to build houses as cheaply and safely as possible, and give little consideration to efficiency, energy production, and storage. As much as there should be a support for sustainable means of energy generation, we need to first really overhaul our entire energy economy from the ground up starting with homes, then transport, and then commercial/industry that relies on energy to operate. Housing/construction hasn't (at scale) seen innovation in 30-50 years. Can't solve the energy crisis without addressing the root problem.
