they will not. quantum computers as understood today will never run an LLM. read = destroy. and no cloning. wanna reload the entire model for each token? preparing quantum states is slow by any standard.
there is not yet a single approach to quantum computing that is provably scalable. so called experts may quibble, the uninformed (or financially aligned) will bloviate, bluster, and talking point us to death. but it's sadly just true. we're closer to useful fusion power than useful QC.
So random consumer who just bought a ton of batteries here:
i don't follow the hype closely, nor am i a crazy battery dude, but i have tracked over the years the cost of doing battery backup vs generator, etc.
It's definitely the case for me (and friends of mine), that between reasonably priced batteries, inverters,etc, doing good battery backup for the house (and peak demand shaving/etc, i use a lot of power and take advantage of time of use tariffs) is now less than half the price of a generator.
Most of my friends spent 35-45k on a generator.
I will have spent <20k on batteries + inverters. It would actually be even less, but i have 600amps of split phase for the house, and 150 amps of 480v 3 phase for the shop, so i need two different kinds of inverters.
It is all literally being installed right now.
I would actually go completely off grid, but i live in a historic area and have slate roofs so can't really do solar easily ;)
As for what changed - 12 months ago this setup would have been almost double the price, just because of the availability (or lack thereof) of the right kinds of products necessary to achieve it. I know because i priced it :)
Availability here isn't in terms of stock, but literally in terms of "variety and choice of product".
For example - the availability of UL certified low cost 48v batteries in various sizes has skyrocketed in the past year. Lots of states require UL certification, assuming you are doing this in a permitted/etc way)
Additionally, a lot more outdoor batteries are now available (my setup is outdoors but mostly protected).
The availability of choices in higher kVA but still residential grade inverters has also skyrocketed, etc.
As for why the price was doubled - before i would have needed 2x the number of inverters, and you really couldn't get a good 480v inverter except with high volt batteries that are wildly less available and wildly more expensive.
On top of that, the batteries you could use that were UL certified and outdoor rated or could easily be done in outdoor enclosures was much lower than it is now.
Honestly curious: why do you need a generator ? And more to the point, why do "most of you friends" need one (35-45k seems like a huge investment, so it would not be some vanity purchase, right ?)
Is that customary where you live, because the grid is unreliable ?
It's fairly customary for folks who can afford it.
So, there are two issues:
1. The grid is now pretty unreliable. Georgia Power overall is a great company to work with (compared to say PG&E), but power quality has dropped out the past few years in some areas.
I've had plenty of equipment destroyed due to grid spikes and other weirdness that just didn't occur a few years ago. To give a concrete example: About 3 weeks ago, there were 4 days where literally every arc fault breaker in the house would trip randomly. Why? Because the incoming waveform became super noisy[1], and arc fault breakers are tricky beasts :).
They do notice and fix these things eventually, but the practical time to resolution is days, not hours.
2. We live in an area where the power lines are above ground and trees are aging out. They were planted over 150 years ago, and for a lot of these trees, the lifespan is 125-150 years. So we don't just get taken out by storms, but just nature :)
Georgia power puts new lines underground exclusively, and has moved a lot underground even around us, but our street is the last on the line of service that is both above ground and quite long. As a result, literally any issue/disconnect over about a 2 mile length with tons and tons of old trees, takes us out. This is also partially the reason our power quality sucks so much - any issue is more likely to affect us more than others.
Again - when it comes to outages they are quite fast at repair, having dismantled and removed insanely huge trees, and then repaired the line, almost always within 24 hours.
But it's still annoying. Combined with #1, it's just easier to be semi-off grid (IE monitor grid and swap over when grid is gone or sucking) with a generator or equivalent. Note that because we all own historic homes built in the early 1900's, our electricity usage is is significantly higher than normal just due to lack of insulation, etc. Retrofits only help so much for various practical reasons.
In a newly built home, the generator cost would probably be closer to 15-20k. Battery cost would be similarly half.
Nothing to sneeze at, of course, but still.
[1]. I have a very high end fluke power analyzer (a fluke 1775) that i've had for years to debug power quality issues. These are power quality analyzers meant to be used to test service issues like this. I actually bought it when i got tired of having PG&E lie to me in California.
I would love to see one I can actually buy! Let me know once there's one I can actually buy.
I've been having this issue for years of everyone being so excited about things that I can't actually buy. I don't care! I would love to be excited too, but it's just tiring now.
I wish there were some kind of aggregator for exciting achievements that you can actually buy. I'm tired of all this premature hype!
Bambu has proven time and again that they don't understand security. Unless, of course, it's theater and by design because real security would be inconvenient to state actors. Regardless, they gaslight and bludgeon those who wish to use the hardware they purchased in peace offline and away from prying eyes.
Having said all that, the hardware is very good. Software, not so much.
why not a proper Progress Web App so it can run on any device independent of app stores? it's not as though a social app needs deep OS integration. I'm sure Claude or Codex could vibe code that in an afternoon.
I managed to make an ESP32-controlled RC car move by sending it commands from a webapp running on my Android phone last year. I don't believe I have telekinesis magic power, so I'd rather believe that this is not in-fact iOS only.
Frigate NVR + Amcrest cameras. 100% local, private, on-device AI object recognition and classification. Can use a Google Coral USB TPU to speed that up. Runs on hardware as modest as a Raspberry Pi.
Empire Tech cameras are a bit better bang for your buck. The 4k models are great--be sure to read each model's strengths (low light, backlight, IR, near, far)
Frigate no longer recommends the Coral accelerator. I think Hailo is recommended now
Otherwise Frigate is great and integrates well with Home Assistant. I have a light on my office desk that comes on when a person is detected near the house, for instance
Without it, if you want to know when something is happening on camera, you have to use motion detection. Motion detection sucks. Everything sets it off. Shadows moving, insects... anything moving.
Object detection, and then human detection, is extremely useful. Thankfully thats become nearly trivia enough to happen on device, but even with just "dumb" cameras the open source, on network solutions are very good.
I would suggest Annke - They appear to be rebranded Ubiquiti/Amcrest cameras with modified Hikvision FW, with fully local capability and great quality (The $30 2k camera sells for $130 from Ubiquiti)
The other half, at least for Ring doorbells, is making it easy to get push notifications when button pressed, with instant two-way connection for chatting through the camera.
It's already hard enough as a "certified homelabber" to get these things set up and running.
I've found Reolink to be pretty much plug and play. Totally local. The NVR itself has PoE ports so all you have to be able to do is run a long ethernet cable.
I like Tp-Link Tapo for plug and play. They have some battery/wifi models that last quite a long time you mount with a magnet which is great for a temporary setup.
Security systems used to be 100x the cost (parts+install) before the cloud because you essentially needed a local NAS and to run a bunch of PoE enabled ethernet to each corner of your house.
