Thursday, March 05, 2020



Google's robot learns to walk in real world
by Jelani Harper , Tech Xplore

[Jelani-new author] Google’s robot learns to walk in real world
Credit: arXiv:2002.08550 [cs.RO]
The field of robotics took one step forward—followed by another, then several more—when a robot called Rainbow Dash recently taught itself to walk. The four-legged machine only required a few hours to learn to walk backward and forward, and turn right and left while doing so.\
Researchers from Google, UC Berkeley and the Georgia Institute of Technology published a paper on the ArXiv preprint server describing a statistical AI technique known as  learning they used to produce this accomplishment, which is significant for several reasons.
Most reinforcement learning deployments take place in computer-simulated environments. Rainbow Dash, however, used this technology to learn to walk in an actual physical environment.
Moreover, it was able to do so without a dedicated teaching mechanism, such as human instructors or labeled training data. Finally, Rainbow Dash succeeded in walking on multiple surfaces, including a soft foam mattress and a doormat with fairly notable recesses.
The deep reinforcement learning techniques the  used comprise a type of machine learning in which an agent interacts with an environment to learn by trial and error. Most reinforcement learning use cases involve computerized games in which digital agents learn how to play to win.
This form of machine learning is markedly different from traditional supervised or unsupervised learning, in which machine learning models require labeled training data to learn. Deep reinforcement learning combines reinforcement learning approaches with , in which the scale of traditional machine learning is greatly expanded with massive computational power.


Although the research team credited Rainbow Dash with learning to walk itself, human intervention still played a substantial role in achieving that goal. Researchers had to create boundaries within which the robot learned to walk in order to keep it from leaving the area.
They also had to devise specific algorithms to prevent the robot from falling down, some of which focused on constraining the robot's movement. To prevent accidents such as falling damage, robotics reinforcement learning usually takes place in a digital environment before algorithms are transferred to a physical robot in order to preserve its safety.
Rainbow Dash's triumph takes place approximately a year after researchers initially figured out how to get robots to learn in physical, as opposed to virtual, surroundings.
Chelsea Finn, a Stanford assistant professor associated with Google who didn't participate in the research, says, "Removing the person from the [learning] process is really hard. By allowing robots to learn more autonomously, robots are closer to being able to learn in the real world that we live."
Meet Jaco and Baxter, machine learning robots who cook perfect hot dogs
More information: Learning to Walk in the Real World with Minimal Human Effort, arXiv:2002.08550 [cs.RO] arxiv.org/abs/2002.08550
© 2020 Science X Network

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Chaotic climate, chaotic cities fuel Brazil flood toll

by Paula Ramon
Rescuers search for victims at the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in the coastal city of Guaruja, Sao Paulo, after it was struck by torrential rains

Violent rain has killed scores of people and forced thousands from their homes this year in Brazil's most populous states, a disaster experts blame on climate upheaval but also rampant urbanization.


Flash floods, landslides and other havoc wrought by torrential rain have killed at least 29 people in recent days in the states of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Another 25 are missing.

That comes after more than 50 people were killed by heavy rain that devastated the state of Minas Gerais in January.

The same scenes of destruction have played out in all three southeastern states, together home to more than 83 million people: poor neighborhoods wiped out by tidal waves of brown mud; houses and cars swept away by flash floods; residents evacuated by boat and helicopter as their streets turn to gushing rivers.

More than three million people live in high-risk zones in Brazil's southeast, which has been hit by record rain this year—in some places, a month's worth in a matter of hours.

As dozens of rescue workers dug through the debris of wrecked houses for his missing mother, stepfather and sister-in-law, one of those affected, 24-year-old Yago de Sousa Nunes, voiced frustration that the authorities did not do more to protect the at-risk population.

"The city government knew this was a high-risk zone, they knew how much rain was going to fall this week, but they didn't do anything to evacuate people," he said alongside the ruins of the Barreira de Joao Guarda neighborhood, in the coastal city of Guaruja, Sao Paulo.
A cat rescued from a landslide in the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in the coastal city of Guaruja, Sao Paulo

Extreme weather

Is climate change to blame?

Experts say more studies are needed to be sure.

But there is no doubt the region is experiencing "an increase in extreme weather events," said Andrea Ramos of the National Meteorological Institute.

This year, the rainy season in southeastern Brazil has been marked by extremes, said Marcelo Seluchi of the Natural Disaster Monitoring and Alert Center (Cemaden): very dry in the first half of the summer, then very wet from mid-January on.

"The planet is heating up, that's beyond doubt. It's more humid than 50 or 100 years ago, which means the same weather systems have more potential to create rain," he said.


That has combined with the rampant expansion of urban areas to increase people's vulnerability to floods.

Brazil's biggest cities have seen decades of nearly unchecked growth, as poor migrants arrive and settle wherever they can, often building unstable shantytowns on hillsides or the extreme city outskirts.
A flooded street in the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in Guaruja, in Brazil's Sao Paulo state

"Population growth and the growth of cities means we're replacing vegetation with cement, and that's where a long-standing problem in Brazil comes into play: lots of building on high-risk areas," Seluchi told AFP.

More than half the population of the southeast region's state capitals—Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Belo Horizonte and Vitoria—lives in at-risk zones. And 80 percent of those people are "highly vulnerable: they live in very precarious houses, with high population density and a high percentage of children and the elderly," he said.

Housing problem

Rio de Janeiro's Mayor Marcelo Crivella, a far-right evangelical Christian bishop, caused outrage amid the floods when he blamed residents for the destruction.

"People like to live close (to flood-prone rivers and gulleys) because they spend less on sewage pipes for their pee and poop," he said.

Unaffordable housing costs have forced the urban poor into areas unfit for settlements, said Henrique Evers, an urban development expert at the World Resources Institute.
Destruction caused by a landslide in the Morro do Macaco Molhado favela in Guaruja, in Brazil's Sao Paulo state

"Planning housing for vulnerable populations near urban services is one of the best ways to deal with this challenge," he said.

"Brazil still has a long way to go."


Explore further 21 dead as torrential rain hits Brazil

© 2020 AFP
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Los Angeles port, country's biggest, hit hard by coronavirus

by Jocelyne Zablit
Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles on September 14, 2019
Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles on September 14, 2019
The Port of Los Angeles, the biggest in the United States, has been significantly impacted by the new coronavirus outbreak and is forecasting a 15 to 17 percent drop in activity in the first quarter of the year, officials said Wednesday.
Eugene Seroka, the executive director of the  which mainly handles  to and from China, told the Los Angeles City Council that the facility experienced 20 to 25 percent less business in February compared to the same period last year.
He said some 40 vessels that had been scheduled to arrive at the port through April had been cancelled due to the outbreak of the virus.
"We have advised the marketplace that we expect quarter one container volume to be down 15 to 17 percent," he added.
Seroka warned that the drop in business would impact workers and the wider community.
"In summation, for our port community, less cargo means fewer jobs," Seroka said, adding that some dock workers had been asked to stay home because there is not enough work.
"It is our estimation that the effects of the coronavirus and the downturn in trade will cost us tens of billions of dollars in the industry when all is said and done," he warned. "The issue today is that empty containers, perishable commodities and  are stacking up at our ports because of those vessel sailing cancellations.
"That will cause the American farmer further harm on top of the trade tariffs," he said, referring to the US-China trade war.
Phillip Sanfield, a spokesperson for the port, told AFP that the drop in activity was similar to the decline experienced during the 2009 recession.
Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach, California on Se
Shipping containers from China and other Asian countries are unloaded at the Port of Los Angeles in Long Beach, California on September 14, 2019
'Things will rebound'
He said more than half of the port's business is with China which mainly exports furniture, auto parts, apparel, footwear and electronic to the US.
Among the goods the US sends to China are recycled products,  such as cotton, scrap metal and some agricultural goods including soybeans and beef.
The American Association of Port Authorities said in a statement last week that cargo volume at many US ports during the first quarter of 2020 may be down by 20 percent or more compared to 2019 because of the spreading virus.
"Things will rebound eventually, and indeed we're hearing news about factories that are coming back on-line in China, and ports there ramping back up to move the cargo," Chris Connor, president and CEO of the Association said.
"At the same time, supply chain managers around the world are working tirelessly to keep cargo moving to ensure that the goods we need are available when and where we need them."
The outbreak of the new coronavirus, or COVID-19, and the mounting number of people infected has sent shockwaves through world markets.
More than 90,000 people have been infected and around 3,200 have died worldwide from the virus, which has now reached some 80 countries and territories.
Drugmaker AstraZeneca warns on coronavirus impact

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Cathay Pacific fined by UK watchdog over massive data breach

Cathay Pacific admitted the huge data breach in October 2018
Cathay Pacific admitted the huge data breach in October 2018
Hong Kong carrier Cathay Pacific has been fined HK$5 million by Britain's privacy watchdog over a huge data leak of more than nine million customers including passport numbers and credit card details.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said in a statement on Wednesday it has ordered the airline to pay 500,000 pounds (US$644,000) for "failing to protect the security of its customers' ".
Between October 2014 and May 2018, a lack of security measures on the carrier's computer systems led to a data breach involving more than 9.4 million customers around the world, according to the ICO.
"People rightly expect when they provide their  to a company, that those details will be kept secure to ensure they are protected from any potential harm or fraud," Steve Eckersley, ICO Director of Investigations said. "That simply was not the case here."
He added that multiple serious deficiencies they found "fell well below" standard and the airline failed to satisfy four out of five of the National Cyber Security Centre's basic guidance points.
The Hong Kong-based airline in October 2018 admitted that about 860,000 passport numbers, 245,000 Hong Kong identity card numbers, 403 expired credit card numbers and 27 credit card numbers with no card verification value (CVV) were accessed.
Other compromised passenger data included nationalities, dates of birth, phone numbers, emails, and physical addresses.
Cathay said in a statement it wanted to "express its regret, and to sincerely apologise" for the breach, adding it had taken measures to enhance its IT security and spent "substantial amounts" on computing infrastructure.
The airline's share price was up more than two percent on Thursday afternoon.
Cathay says 'most intense' period of data breach lasted months

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'Written in blood': bereaved engineer calls for reform after MAX deaths

by Luc Olinga
Javier de Luis has pressured the FAA to change the way they certify airplanes after his sister died in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX

After his sister died in the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX one year ago, Javier de Luis, an engineer who once designed software for space stations, became a crusader.

Though his expertise is not in airplanes, 57-year-old de Luis has a simple goal: convince the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to change the way it certifies aircraft so the 737 MAX crashes that killed hundreds and led to the plane's worldwide grounding won't happen again.

Aviation regulations "are written in blood," de Luis, 57, told AFP in an interview. "They usually are written because somebody died, something went wrong."

"It's important as we go forward here that we really understand what went wrong, so the rules can be changed or modified or enforced, so that never happens again."

Working from his apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, de Luis has written several letters to the FAA as part of his campaign, and was invited to speak to employees at their headquarters in Washington following his sister's death.

Known to friends and family as Gachi, Graziella de Luis y Ponce was a 64-year-old freelance interpreter for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Vatican.

She was among 157 people killed when their flight to Nairobi crashed southeast of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.

Months prior, another 737 MAX crashed in Indonesia, killing 189, and the model was grounded worldwide days after the Ethiopian crash.
Graziella de Luis y Ponce was a freelance interpreter for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization and the Vatican

Answer every question

With gray hair and rectangular glasses, de Luis grows animated when discussing why the plane crashed, how the FAA failed and what could be done to stop it.

Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 took off at 8:30 am local time on March 10. Just 90 seconds later, the aircraft's nose began to pitch down, as a sensor sent incorrect information to the MCAS, the automatic anti-stall flight system.

The pilots tried to counter the downward movement, but the MCAS overrode them. Six minutes after take-off, it crashed.

"An airplane shouldn't fall out of the sky if one single sensor fails," de Luis said.

"They should have grounded the airplanes" after the first crash on October 29, 2018, de Luis said. "If they had done that, then my sister and... the 156 other people would be alive."

He compares the failure of the 737 MAX to his experience working on software deployed on the Mir and International Space Station.

Holder of a doctorate in aerospace engineering from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he also teaches, de Luis was chief executive of Payload Systems, which worked on nearly 30 space flights before being bought by Aurora Flight Sciences, now owned by Boeing.

"I would have to go down to NASA, and I would have to present our design and tell them why it was safe," he said. "I got up in front of the table, and there were experts in the room, and they would start asking me questions, and I had to be able to keep answering until they got tired."

"That's how it should work for... aerospace when it comes to design reviews," he said.
The holder of a doctorate from Massachusetts Institue of Technology, de Luis owned a company that worked on nearly 30 space flights

'It just doesn't go away'

Since the MAX's grounding, de Luis has watched as more and more details have emerged about malfunctions in the plane's development.

Boeing engineers were the ones who inspected the MCAS under a procedure adopted by US regulators in 2005 under pressure from the aeronautics lobby.

The FAA, which only partially understood how the software worked, merely validated their conclusions.

De Luis fears the agency relies "very much on what Boeing tells them" and questions whether safety is really its top priority.

De Luis's parents left Cuba after the revolution, and he recalls how he saw his 94 year-old father cry publicly for the first time when he learned of Graziella's death.

The steady stream of information about the 737 MAX hasn't made it easy to get grieve. Most recently, it was news that debris had been found in the jets' fuel tanks.

"I opened up my iPad every morning, and there's always a story or two about something," he said.

"This way of dying... is just a nightmare because it doesn't go away."


Explore furtherUnited Airlines pushes 737 MAX flights to September

© 2020 AFP
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GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla

by Tom Krisher 

GM shows 13 electric vehicles as it tries to run with Tesla
This photo provided by General Motors shows GM's all-new modular platform and battery system, Ultium, at the Design Dome on the GM Tech Center campus in Warren, Mich., on Wednesday, March 4, 2020. GM rolled out plans for 13 new electric vehicles during the next five years as it trying to refashion itself as a futuristic company with technology to compete against Tesla. The company on Wednesday touted an exclusive new battery technology that could propel some of the vehicles as far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) on a single charge. (Steve Fecht/General Motors via AP)
General Motors, trying to refashion itself as a futuristic company with technology to compete against Tesla, rolled out plans Wednesday for 13 new electric vehicles during the next five years.
The company touted an exclusive new battery technology that could propel some of the vehicles as far as 400 miles (644 kilometers) on a single charge as it tries to capture electric vehicle enthusiasm that has brought wild growth to rival Tesla's share price.
At an event for investors, dealers and analysts at its sprawling technical center in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Michigan, GM executives said the new vehicles would be built using modular chassis and drive systems for manufacturing simplicity.
GM will be able to build trucks, cars, SUVs and even an autonomous shuttle based on the new systems, the company said. The global vehicles will include affordable transportation, work trucks, luxury SUVs and performance vehicles. CEO Mary Barra said GM will be able to build at a large scale, similar to its profitable full-size truck business.
"We want to put everyone in an EV, and we have what it takes to do it," she said at a presentation for investors.
Some of the new vehicles will be able to go from zero to 60 mph (97 kilometers per hour) in as little as three seconds—performance that rivals electric vehicle sales leader Tesla Inc.
New all-electric models will come from the Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick brands starting this year, beginning with the Cadillac Lyriq luxury SUV to be unveiled in April.
A new Chevrolet Bolt small SUV comes in the summer of 2021. There's also the GMC Hummer EV pickup coming to dealers in the fall of 2021.
GM also has plans for three more Cadillac SUVs, a midsize Chevrolet SUV, two Buick SUVs, a GMC Hummer SUV, a Chevrolet full-size pickup with 400 miles of range, a luxury Cadillac car and the Cruise Origin, an autonomous electric shuttle.
With fewer parts than petroleum-powered vehicles, electric vehicles will be much cheaper and simpler to build, reducing manufacturing costs, GM said. The company plans 19 different battery and electric motor and transmission combinations, compared with 550 internal combustion powertrain combinations available today.
The company said a joint venture with Korean battery maker LG Chem will use a low-cobalt chemistry to drive down battery costs to below $100 per kilowatt hour.
Executives told the group that the next generation of GM's electric vehicles will be profitable.
Barra said the new vehicles can increase sales and market share, and the batteries and drive units could be licensed to other companies to bring in more revenue.
She said the company plans to sell more than 1 million electric vehicles in North America and China by the middle of the decade. To get there, GM will spend more than $20 billion developing the vehicles through 2025, she said.
Electric vehicle sales will have to grow substantially both worldwide and in the U.S. for GM to meet its targets. Last year manufacturers sold just over 236,000 fully electric vehicles in the U.S., about 1.4% of total new vehicle sales, according to Autodata Corp.
GM is making a huge investment ahead of consumer demand, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president of the consulting firm LMC Automotive.
"They're going to need to weather that, not only with investors, but just from an overall financial standpoint," he said.
The announcement also comes at a time when the global economy is slowing, in part due to the coronavirus outbreak. LMC on Wednesday reduced its 2020 U.S. new vehicle sales forecast from 16.8 million to 16.5 million, according to Schuster.
LMC expects automakers to sell 17 million fully electric vehicles by 2030, or about 16% of worldwide demand. It will be 25% to 30% of the market in Europe, 20% in China and 8% in the U.S., LMC estimated. Those numbers are smaller than what GM is predicting, but Schuster said sales could rise because GM has such a wide range of vehicles to offer.
"In order to have breakthroughs, you have to have investments," he said. "It's going to bear fruit. It's just a question of how long it's going to take. That's unknown at this stage."

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Tunnel fire safety: With only minutes to respond, fire education really counts

by University of South Australia
Tunnel fire safety: with only minutes to respond, fire education really counts
Credit: Shutterstock
Global risk management experts are calling for fire education initiatives to be included in driver safety programs so that drivers are better prepared for an emergency if faced with it on the roads.
The call follows a new research study where researchers from University of South Australia and the National Technical University of Athens assessed fire  mechanisms of  tunnels, finding that risks to human life could be reduced through greater awareness and education.
Using a newly developed evacuation model, researchers were able to simulate the behaviors of trapped-commuters and their movement to estimate potential outcomes and fatalities following a fire in a .
UniSA Adjunct Associate Professor Konstantinos Kirytopoulos says being able to forecast human behavior in a fire-risk scenario provides critical information for safety analysts and tunnel managers.
"To mitigate potential fire accidents and  in road tunnels, safety analysts not only have to fulfill standard regulatory requirements, but also need to conduct a complex risk assessment which includes defining the issues, identifying hazards, calculating and prioritizing risks, and doing so for different environments," Assoc Prof Kirytopoulos says.
"An evacuation simulation model such as ours is particularly valuable because it lets analysts thoroughly inspect all parameters within an emergency.
"Uniquely, it also simulates human behavior and movement in conjunction with the use of safety mechanisms, letting us project the likelihood of successful evacuations under different combinations of human behavior, safety procedures implementation and safety infrastructure employed, which provide an extremely useful tool for tunnel safety analysts.
"Safety levels are dictated by the operation of the whole system—organization, technical and human elements—so anything we can do to increase the success rates of these individual factors can have a massive impact on the whole.
"Having a familiarity with emergency protocols in a confined or enclosed space such as a road tunnel can help trapped-commuters to appropriately respond, and this, we believe will improve successful evacuations."
Road tunnels are fundamental elements of road transport systems contributing to profitable economies and societies. Given the sheer number of vehicles on the road—about 262 million passenger cars in the European Union; more than 272 million vehicles in the United States; and an estimated 19 million vehicles in Australia—safety is paramount.
Fire accidents in tunnels can have disastrous consequences in terms of human loses and structural damage. Although tunnel safety has increased significantly since previous fire tunnel tragedies such as the Mont Blanc Tunnel fire (France,1999 with 39 fatalities), Fréjus tunnel fire (France, 2005 with 2 fatalities and 21 injuries) and Yanhou Tunnel fire (China, 2014 with 40 fatalities), these incidences highlight the severity of potential impacts and provide insights for mitigating future risks.
Assoc Prof Kirytopoulos says commuters are the most variable factor in the event of a tunnel fire because they're the first to confront the consequences of the  and in most cases are inadequately trained for such circumstances.
"When the tunnel operator calls for an emergency evacuation through public address systems, radio rebroadcast or electronic tunnel message signs, people should respond immediately and evacuate, without any delay," Assoc Prof Kirytopoulos says.
"Fires are very complex phenomena, and when in an enclosed tunnel environment, they're characterized by turbulence, combustion irregularity and high radiation. Tunnels fires are also known to have an incredibly intense heat release rate—even four times the intensity of fires in an open environment—as well as large amounts of toxic fumes and smoke.
"In an emergency, time is crucial. The evacuation of the tunnel should be as quick and efficient as the evacuation of an airplane after crash landing. Educating drivers on what they should do as well as making them aware of the evacuation systems which are in place are the best means for mitigating risk and ensuring a safe outcome."
Top 10 longest tunnels around the world:
In Australia, the longest road tunnels reach no more than 7 kilometers in distance, with Australia's longest  being the 6.7 km Airport Link Tunnel in Brisbane.
Meet TIM, the LHC tunnel's robot
More information: Panagiotis Ntzeremes et al. Quantitative Risk Assessment of Road Tunnel Fire Safety: Improved Evacuation Simulation Model, ASCE-ASME Journal of Risk and Uncertainty in Engineering Systems, Part A: Civil Engineering (2019). DOI: 10.1061/AJRUA6.0001029
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US, China clash over head of UN intellectual property agency

by Jamey Keaten
Dozens of countries are voting Wednesday in a pivotal phase of an election to choose the next head of the U.N.'s intellectual property agency, a contest for a key post in the Digital Age that has pit the United States against China's candidate.\The results of the closed-door voting by 83 states on a key committee of the World Intellectual Property Organization to choose its next director-general could come later Wednesday. WIPO's general assembly has final say in May, but it has never rejected a committee nominee since the agency was created in 1967.
After the year began with 10 candidates in the race, only five—from China, Colombia, Ghana, Peru and Singapore—remained as voting got under way on Wednesday. A sixth candidate from Kazakhstan dropped out just as the election was set to begin.
Top U.S. officials including White House trade adviser Peter Navarro and others have spoken out against China's candidate, veteran WIPO official Weng Binyang, from becoming head of the money-making agency that counts 192 member states.
China's ambassador in Geneva and other officials have fired back against a U.S. "attack" on a Chinese candidate who would become WIPO's first woman director-general—and the pullout of Kazakhstan's Saule Tlevlessova means Weng is the only woman left in the running.
The showdown marks a new face-off between the United States—the world's biggest economic and military power—and China, the fast-growing Asian behemoth vying to become the world's No. 1 economy. Both countries have been lobbying publicly and privately in Geneva as part of the standoff.
The United States and other Western allies have long expressed concerns about China's approach to , with Trump administration officials accusing Beijing of outright theft of Western know-how through its requirements of companies that want to operate in China's explosive market.
The standoff to replace Director-General Francis Gurry of Australia, who is not standing for re-election, comes as China has been flexing its intellectual muscle in recent years. By WIPO's own count late last year, China alone accounted for nearly half of all patent filings worldwide.China dominates top Western economies in patent applications
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Households in Switzerland could feasibly be energy self-sufficient by 2050

by Public Library of Science
switzerland
Credit: CC0 Public Domain
By 2050, photovoltaic technologies that convert sunlight into electricity could enable many single- and multi-family buildings in Switzerland to produce enough energy to meet their own consumption needs, including the charging of electric vehicles. Ursin Gstöhl and Stefan Pfenninger of ETH Zürich report these findings in the open-access journal PLOS ONE on March 4, 2020.
Reducing reliance on fossil fuels is a major focus of efforts to mitigate climate change. Photovoltaics offer a promising alternative that could also increase energy  at the level of individual households. While previous studies have explored various aspects of households that produce their own energy, none have taken a big-picture view of their feasibility in a temperate country like Switzerland.
To address this gap, Gstöhl and Pfenninger evaluated the technical and financial feasibility of energy self-sufficiency for households that switch to electric vehicles and turn to photovoltaic electricity to power all their needs, including heating. Using already-available data, the researchers explored a range of different building types and energy demands.
The analysis suggests that total self-sufficiency is technically feasible by 2050 for single- and multi-family buildings in Switzerland across a range of scenarios. Self-sufficiency is easily attainable for single-family households with behavioral change to lower  and with urban vehicle use patterns. In contrast, a multi-family  with conventional energy demand and rural vehicle use patterns would require advancements in the efficiency of photovoltaic technology.
The predicted financial feasibility of self-sufficiency depends on several factors, including government incentives and the cost of  storage technologies. Fully self-sufficient buildings are more expensive than buildings that are fully electrified but still connected to the grid, but so are households that still use  for heating and vehicles. In other words, electrification is definitely economically beneficial for households, with self-sufficiency coming at an additional cost premium.
Still, the combination of falling storage costs, rising fossil fuel prices, and political measures could result in increased prevalence of fully self-sufficient households in Switzerland. These findings could also apply to other highly industrialized countries with temperate climates.
Solar panels plus lead-acid batteries to increase electricity self-sufficiency
More information: Gstöhl U, Pfenninger S (2020) Energy self-sufficient households with photovoltaics and electric vehicles are feasible in temperate climate. PLoS ONE 15(3): e0227368. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227368

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