Introducing concepts

The current paradigm of electricity in norway imitates a cornucopia. The only variable to energy supply (in form of electricity) is the price. As a consequence the only concern i might have regarding the electricity, is the bill. What if we flipped the coin? What if the price was fixed, but supply was limited? Arguably global energy supply is not unlimited, although growing, so is demand.

At a local scale i will explore how a limited resource can be shared in a P2P fashion by augmenting it with local production of energy. The goal is to uncover useful concepts that will challenge existing paradigms in energy supply. 1. The green appartment are producing more energy than needed, while the red appartment has a deficit.2. The green appartment shares its surplus with the red appartment.3. At any given moment there are appartments producing, recieving and some that are neutral in this system. How does this impact the daily life of the families living in this appartment block? How can this be done in such a manner that it feels just?

Bits of the internet

While sifting through the net some items was caught:

Robots living in Urban Trash (Art)


ppndr-s (pepenadores) from Scott Burnham on Vimeo.


Tracking powerplant emissions in realtime. With a laser. (Augmented Reality)


Nuage Vert, cloud only from HeHe on Vimeo.

Just some beautiful inaugural balls. Imagine an interface made like this. (Animation)


Nokia E71 launch / 6 Billion People, 6 Billion Colours from Universal Everything on Vimeo.


This video (explanation) confirms my suspisions; that the Japanese are not of this world and would rather not step (full story)on it. More sexy projects on this translated page from Robot watch. My robotic nerves was stimulated and further enticing would give me an appetite for a workshop in robotic senses - taste at Miraikan.

These french guys seems to augment reality in a clever way.



Their showreel here, beware of the kitch .. more nice reflections here and here.

Observations through "green" keywords

Working on my project "Untapped Energy" i try to observe projects and concepts related to Renewable Energy @ home from my perspective as a designer.

Initial searches
A search for "Renewable energy" @ flickr @ google images @ youtube @ vimeo returns a visual overview of the more popular aspects of renewable energy. Wind and solar power references are abundant. Some ideologists presents their home systems, but they seem bulky and expensive, usually installed at homes or cabins with generous resources. Some goverment and commercial interest are also represented.

Keywords
There is a lot of projects that are tagged with various "green" keywords. "Echotech" "Greentech" "Green design" "Eco design" "Sustainable Design" "Green gadgets". These words generate a lot of noise and double hits. And they seem to often describe something made of wood or some technology wrapped in wood or veneer. It is hard to find the good projects just based on a keyword search, but you do get some pointers to blogs that can be used. I found that adding some more keywords generate more precise results: "Green Design Gadget", "Solar Design Lamp", "Solar design device", "Hydrogen design concept", "Energy design concept". But the results need evaluation. I'll get bak to that in a later post. Is seems to be better to use edited sites like Technololgy Review that has a great overview of the current state of energy technology.

Observations
First of all i find that it is perfectly doable to enable a solar or windpower augmented home, i'll even encourage people to do that. It comes at a cost, but so does a cool sofa too. Secondly there is a "design gap" between the current available renewable energy scheemes and the futuristic gadgets and gizmos that get a lot of publicity. But there are some exeptions, especially for small scale gadget solar (review) and fuel cell (review) chargers. The fuel cell looks like a late 80's gadget, like the early cell phones, but this seems to be the case for many first to market products.

I'm not so sure theese inital searches point to the direction i want to pursue with my "Untapped Energy" project.

Going off-grid?

Just before christmas i read an interesting article in NewScientist, by Gaia Vince on people going off the grid. Off-grid is in this context disconnecting from the various public supplies people depend on for their daily life at home: Electricity, gas, sewage and water. In the US there are 200000 off the grid, in the UK there are 40000 living mostly self-sufficient.

Even though the climate issue is a driving force for people going off the grid there is also the satisfaction of being self-sufficient, reducing the cost and the security in being independent. And in Tony Marmont's (UK) case, who has invested £2 million in being self-sufficient, price is no object when becoming one of the first to own his own hydrogen production facilities to store renewable enrgy for future use.

At this point in time the marmont case is a good example of why not all of us is becoming our own energy producers; it's expensive and requiers a lot of equipment.

Gaia presents the reader with a list of steps to take to go off-grid.

1. Calculate energy consumption
2. Reduce energy waste
   • Home insulation
3. Replace energy
   • Solar thermal
   • Photovoltaic
   • Sustainable grid energy
   • Windtubines
   • Mini Hydroelectricplants
   • Heat pumps
4. Energy storage
   • Hydrogen
   • Batteries
   • Back-to-grid

The above list is quite interesting and until step four they are within reach for many homes. The last step, storing ecsess energy for night, winter and other times when generators does not deliver, is still out of reach for most homes as the technologies are big, bulky and expensive.

Hydrogen is touted by various sources to be the future solution to distributed energy production and the medum of choice to store ecsess renewable energy. Hydrogen can be used directly as fuel in fuelcells for chemical conversion into electricity. I'll get back to that in a future post. Sadly, converting homemade electricity into hydrogen and back to electricity is quite costly at the moment for the regular citizen.

Consumption
The article also presented an chart of what we use electricity for in homes. I found it intriguing that the most visible use of energy, lights (Orange), only accounts for roughly 10% of total use.
I added the norwegian consumption for comaparison. There is quite a big rally for replacing the normal incandescent bulb with the more energy efficient CFL, but that would only dent total energy consumption. More interesting is the big chunk going into kitchen appliances (Red), that the use in the kitchen compares to general heating/cooling (Blue) was a suprise for me. A thought i got was what if you reduce total consumption, excluding lighting, by 10% and then double the amount of lights, you would have perceptually increased energy use by 100% but still be at status quo in total energy use.

2009 - Zen

2008
The semester was concluded with and exhibition and presentation the week before christmas.I finished on time, even with some minutes to spare.
The semester became really busy after my son was born in october and a side project became the main project up to the last two remaining weeks of the semester.

2009
The final semester at AHO is in progress and my studies will be terminated this spring. All other projects will be kept on hold during the diploma process and i will use this blog to infrom my tutors and anyone interested in the development of the research.

All my focus will be on two things; working seriously with the diploma and taking care of the kid. By the 14th of may i will have completed the diploma and can start working after the summer, in one way or another.

Note to self; Godspeed!