This whole article can be summed up with the one sentence: >The big change next year will be a new USB PD (Power Delivery) standard, which brings much more flexibility and ten times as much oomph: up to 100 watts.
The remainder of the article seems to epicly overstate the benefits. I found the reaches out to multi-building solar panel connections especially "out there" and that's coming from someone who _loves_ solar panels. It's just that solar panels and the talk about "poor neighborhoods with no access to AC mains" are veerings straight off the deep end.
The reason data centers use DC is to keep the space-consuming transformers that go from AC to DC away from the dense, expensive racks of equipment. Most homes don't have that constraint. Yes, it's possible we'll have DC jacks alongside AC jacks in our homes, but will that really change our lives significantly?
There were posts about switching power supplies (and Apple's dubious claims to have invented them) on HN a few days ago. The consensus is they save space, but was that really worthy of being called a revolution? Only in the strictest most limited definition of the word.
Finally, w/r/t to the Internet of Things. This is where the writer's glib worship of updated standards is the most violent. _USB is not an internet network_. It requires a host. USB is not suited for it. Ethernet will win. Ethernet always wins.