Replacing wires

With copper selling at >$3.50 a pound and energy costs skyrocketing it might be time to rethink the way buildings are wired. Last time this happened they decided to Aluminum wires, however this proved to be a poor idea. Aluminum is not as good a conductor as Copper, so thicker wires were needed, plus the expansion coefficients of Aluminum are so different from Copper and Brass that reliability issues quickly cropped up as connections worked loose and in extreme cases there were electrical fires. I am proposing something completely different; I propose we make the logic part of the system separate from the power supply. For example currently light switches are wired with 14 or 16 gauge wire in a complex web that makes it possible to control a single light with multiple switches. So the switches and wires provide both the power and the logic. Fiber optical lines and a small microprocessor could take the place of the logic and control a relay that connected to a "home” run line that lead directly from the circuit panel to light. The home run minimizes the amount wire used, and by putting the logic in the socket or in a box next to the socket even the fiber optic runs would be minimized. The logic of the system could be as simple as whether or not the light from a tiny LED in the control box was returned from the switch or not. If the light was LED based the power wire could be cheaper low voltage lines perhaps even Cat 5. By replacing 50% of the wiring in a house with fiber, plus the shorter distance of the home runs the cost savings could be thousands of dollars in materials and labor. Plus by having shorter runs, the voltage drop could be reduced so the system would be safer and save electricity, allowing the savings to compound over time.

What I think is stopping people is there is this mystic around fiber optics, and people assume they are expensive and fragile. But if you think about it fiber optics are embedded in kid’s toys and Christmas trees. These low cost plastic fibers may not be able to transmit Gbs per second, but they can transmit the on/off signal to control a light bulb, and they are very cheap and durable. Even higher quality fiber optics is very affordable. Right now bulk fiber is cheaper or the same per 1000 feet with Romex 14 gauge wire. The cost difference is in the connections, since fiber cannot simply be crimpled.
Wireless also has great potential but the issue with a wireless light switch is how do you power it? Most people don't want to have to have to remember to recharge the light switches or change a bunch of batteries every year. If you have to run even low voltage wiring then what's the point of wireless, so how do you power them? The answer to the problem is wireless power. As anyone who even built a crystal radio when they were a kid knows there is actually a great deal of power to be had from seemingly thin air. So it is possible to build small power supplies that charge on 2.4 GHz and then can intermittently run a device like a light switch transceiver. For devices that need to run more often or require larger amounts of power it is possible to capture the extremely powerful RF from radio and TV broadcasts and use that power for something as large as an LED night light. I am sure the radio and TV stations would not be happy about it but they are transmitting a couple watts into you house, why not use it? With self powering wireless it would be possible to have a normal looking light switch on the wall but no wires running to it. You turn it on or off it sends a signal, the receiver in the bulb or socket picks up the signal turns the light on or off, and replies to all the switches it has synced with that the light's state has changed and makes the switch stop sending.

The biggest issue with wireless is you are counting on a transmitted signal to carry your information, so it can be intercepted, spoofed or jammed. This loss of control over basics functions like lighting, security or HVAC will be unacceptable to many. So the compromise could be wireless power supplies to run LEDs in the control units that interact with people, transmitting the information via fiber optic lines to the units being controlled. In the section above I made it sound like a simple task to bounce a light beam back up a fiber to the control unit however it is not. Making a system to accomplish this task and be robust enough to with stand years of abuse both from people and the environment is actually monumental. However, having one way communication paths with the light source directly connected to the fiber, and the switch or button being separate, makes it far easier to engineer a robust system. If fluid lens technology was commercially viable, then the high cost of connections would come down and fiber could compete head to head with copper for information and control infrastructure. Another possibility is using conductive polymers to transmit ultra-low power signals. Imagine jacketed conductive polymer threads that carry infrequent packets of information or bursts of power over short distances. I am not sure that this would be allowed in the current version of the NEC but considering that any over voltage would cause the fiber to fail it would not represent a shock or fire hazard.
I am imagining a fiber optic line that could transmit small amounts of power, or even better a conductive paint that could be put underneath regular paint on the walls. The issue with this is usable life span. Can conductive polymers or paints last 20 years? I don't know, but then again considering the quality of modern construction I am not sure some of the houses being built today will last 20 years without significant maintenance.
Overall, I think it is time we begin considering other means of transmitting information inside buildings besides copper wires. An investment in fiber now can also help future proof a home, since after 1800P TV there is 4K TV which to my understanding requires a minimum sustained speed of 500Mb/s/feed. However, a good first step would be to replace the line voltage logic of the light switches with line voltage home runs and Cat 5 based switch logic.