The last device invented which is used by almost any household and consumes non-negligible amount of electricity is home PC. Which will turn 40 years soon.
In the meantime, even older devices, invented earlier, such as fridges, washing machines, etc. became much more efficient.
Naturally, the average amount of consumed electricity goes down.
If someone invents a a robot which will clean my apartment, do dishes and iron my shirts, and double my electricity bill, I will buy this device tomorrow.
Unforunately, for the last 30 years we made no progress in inventing something that can consume non-trivial amount of electricty and bring non-trivial value to an average household.
There are however a number of innovations that are poised, or could potentially be poised, to increase electrical demand, from electric vehicles to interstellar laser propulsion. But in every case I can think of -- with one exception -- the cost of electricity isn't a significant barrier to their mass adoption. Which is why in addition to falling electricity prices not stimulating the consumption of existing goods, they also aren't stimulating the production of new goods.
The one exceptional use-case is crypto mining, which obviously does elastically respond to falling energy prices. But it's an unusual kind of demand in that in places where the electricity is higher than some threshold value, demand for this will be zero. Also, fucking hell, what a stupid use-case. Can we think of nothing better to do with our resources than come up with new ways to put a price on scarcity?
I think cloud computing deserves a mention. An increasingly large part of each person's demand for computation is satisfied by servers in AWS, Azure, Google, etc. due to the increase in popularity and complexity of online services. Depending on whether the technology sticks, Blockchain (PoW) could also drive a significant increase in energy.
Good point. For a number of years every few years there have been something that requires a lot more power. Offhand I can think of e.g. heating, fridges, televisions, microwaves, cooling, PC desktops and consoles (over many generations).
If you could drive the unit costs of electricity low enough for it to be cheaper than natural gas for heating, you could see major growth from that.
Obviously, not likely to happen anytime soon, but if the cost-reduction progression of renewables continues, it could become viable in the medium-term.
Currently it's far more expensive to heat with electric than natural gas, so most people with access to it don't use electric.
The last device invented which is used by almost any household and consumes non-negligible amount of electricity is home PC. Which will turn 40 years soon.
In the meantime, even older devices, invented earlier, such as fridges, washing machines, etc. became much more efficient.
Naturally, the average amount of consumed electricity goes down.
If someone invents a a robot which will clean my apartment, do dishes and iron my shirts, and double my electricity bill, I will buy this device tomorrow.
Unforunately, for the last 30 years we made no progress in inventing something that can consume non-trivial amount of electricty and bring non-trivial value to an average household.