Notes from Holland/London trip
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Ed Borden
Jul 2, 2012, 2:04:19 PM7/2/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
These notes were written by Dan Selden (@dss49), Hirumi Nanayakkara
(@hirumianajones), and Estefanie Duque (@stefyduq) during a trip to
Europe early June 2012:
Hack Day:
The Sensemakers team splintered into 3 groups, but we all focused on
the overarching theme we dubbed “The Digital Metabolism of The Urban
Nomad.” We basically were looking at microenergy harvestation
opportunities in the daily life of the urban citizen.
It was great to meet and work with the Amsterdam Sensemakers team, but
also work with completely random people from the Eindhoven community
who are interested in renewable energy mechanisms. All of our
subgroups recruited people we never met before, which made room for
new ideas and awesome prototypes. Bert and I worked on using potted
plants to harvest power, Estefanie’s team applied the KinetiKit
circuit to objects (pinwheels, wheely shoes, turntables) and Dan’s
team prototyped a walking stick that charges USB devices.
Jam Session (Day 1):
We just wrapped up 2 days of jamming on decentralized power systems at
the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. We got a bunch of people together
who are committed and passionate about disrupting current systems of
power generation and distribution.
Ed and Amsterdam-based Sensemaker Casper moderated our work sessions.
We kicked things off with a few presentations, including some talks
from Dan, Estefanie, and I on our past research and what we worked on
at the Science Hack Day. We drew a lot of inspiration from Jeremy
Rifken’s work and plastered the walls with post its of ideas, quotes,
and images of what we found noteable and inspiring. Attendee Tim van
de Rijt talked a bit about the platform he’s currently developing:
energysharing.com, which spurred an open discussion on what we
envision the future of energy sharing to be and how those interactions
would play out.
From there, we broke into teams to focus our ideas by doing user
scenarios for three different personas. The daily activities and
opportunities of energy creation and exchange were white-boarded for a
housemom/dad, a freelancer, and a business person.
Our story is largely centered on the archaic foundation of centralized
power systems. We, as a society, have progressed to be a mobile
people. Much of what we do is based on tools of communication (phones,
tablets, laptops, etc…) but those devices are limited by power, by our
dependance on the electrical grid. To narrow our focus, we decided to
work through visualizing a system that would take powering cell phones
off the grid.
After a show and tell session of our findings, we switched gears and
isolated 3 different domains that needed exploration to begin making
our ideas more tangible and accessible to a greater audience:
sharing: what does a energy sharing mechanism look like? (physically
and virtually)
product: what types of products will be involved in energy harvesting
story: what is the story we are trying to tell?
After another round of show and tell, we scrambled groups to iterate
on the previous teams process. Our biggest hurdle was/is the sharing
mechanism. We kept running into the issue of storage, battery
transactions, and visualizing the decentralized, peer to peer energy
sharing grid (now dubbed The Intergrid). The discussions of the ethics
behind energy sharing were also discussed. Should people be selling
their energy? Is purely freely available energy the right thinking
(Wikipedia model where everyone benefits, but success is reliant upon
the minority of hyper-users)? We talked about citizens in a community
who enjoy gardening, and how although its not a cheap hobby, people
happily and gladly give away things that they grow to those around
them. Could energy possibly function in the same way?
It was a super productive day and after lots of great ideas,
storyboarding, and open discussions, we broke for dinner and drinks
and continue the jam session tomorrow!
Jam Session (Day 2):
The best/worst part of the design process is finding flaws in your
system, and throwing out a previously crafted vision for one that, for
lack of a better phrase, makes more sense.
Our redirection came primarily from the central issue, which is
determining how independently created energy would be accessed and
distributed.
In order to start a movement, you need momentum. For us, that means
building a framework for a community to a) learn about energy
producing technologies and b) sharing that information with each other
and the public.
No, our current prototypes don’t create mass amounts of power, but our
goal right now is to harness the everyday actions of people with tools
that collect power. In order to achieve this, we decided that we must
complete the following:
people must have devices that harvest energy
these devices must be quantifiable, in that the amount of power
created needs to be uploaded and shared
a web platform must exist, where independent energy producers are able
to share their own data on the quantity of energy they are producing,
where they are in the world, and how they are doing so.
We see these goals being fulfilled by way of Kickstarter, where we can
deliver micro-energy harvesting devices to a large amount of people.
From there we can monitor natural trends within the community, and
what kinds of sharing tactics occur amongst users. Emerging behaviors
with our target demographic seem more useful and feasible in designing
the infrastructure for a larger sharing system instead of dictating
how sharing energy should function.
Our next steps include iterating through our products a bit more so
that they are easily understood and useable by the average person. We
also need to continue to refine our concept and the story behind it to
continue to gain momentum and excitement.
Third industrial revolution, here we come!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Resources
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/from-internet-to-enternet-creating-the-energy-network/305009
Bob Metcalfe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZv9H62xm0&feature=related
http://www.npowerpeg.com/
http://www.inc.com/ss/kinetic-energy-chargers
http://archis.org/
http://inhabitat.com/city-in-the-sky-futuristic-flower-towers-soar-above-modern-metropolises/#
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/what-a-smart-grid-can-do-for-you/329408?tag=content;siu-container
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/who-will-manage-the-smart-grid/312779?tag=content;siu-container
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/who-will-pay-for-the-smart-grid/418912?tag=content;siu-container
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fggyqAMp8DA
Dan
Reflecting on conversation today (6.15), seems like there is some
good effort happening between public and private sectors to start
realizing some of this shift.. most notably in Germany... but how do
you connect with people? I think the community aspect needs to be
addressed in order to create the pressure needed to see this shift
occur elsewhere. This can be facilitated by participation and data...
convergence of quantified self and energy. The innovation in energy
can come later... the innovation in connecting the quantified self
London Notes
Beginning to see a transformation toward green renewables. Are we
going about it in the right way?
Traditionally, energy has been created by extracting fossil fuels from
specific locations… which makes sense when the resources are sparse.
Vertical systems of organization are necessary to manage such a large
centralized system.
With demand for green energy and reduced CO2 on the rise, energy
companies are naturally beginning to embrace green technologies…
however they are applying a fossil fuel collection mentality, lots of
wind turbines in areas where it is windy, lots of solar farms where it
is sunny etc… and relying on heavy centralization to produce and
distribute energy. Yet this model makes no sense when the resource is
literally everywhere.
We are dependent on the inefficient centralized supply… even through
renewables we end up paying the energy company in transaction fees, if
selling back to the grid is an option.
A decentralized peer to peer renewable energy system, on the other
hand, managed and coordinated using the internet (which has already
proved capable of organizing large horizontal systems) news to be the
future. We must become owners of our own energy. We can be both the
producers and the consumers. With renewables, a horizontal system
needs to be in place…
Jeremy rifkin… a energy and economic consultant has been talking about
this future for years… he envisions"hundreds of millions of human
beings will be generating their own green energy in their homes,
offices, and factories and sharing it with one another across
intelligent distributed electricity networks-an intergrid- just like
people now create their own information and share it on the internet."
Rifkin sees this as a essential to ushering in a third industrial
revolution that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and spur new
innovations at unprecedented rates. Yet he is working with industry
and the EU government to realize this goal… a slow moving political
machine that is still tied to an entrenched energy industry. Yet the
EU is still making more progress towards this so described smart grid.
The US is even further behind… our idea of a smart grid is
unfortunately simply a centralized system with a smart metering
infrastructure.
In any case, we're asking the question, how do we begin fostering a
community around peer to peer energy and how can we build the
infrastructure (loosely defined) to increase the pace of this
transformation.
This is what the past week or so has been about… exploring micro
generation at an individual level and brainstorming ways for us to
connect and share the data of this lifestyle and eventually our
energy. We've struggled to define this as off-grid or smart-grid and
so for now are just sticking with peer to peer.
We're not the only people who envision this future, but we think we
can help get more people on board.
(@hirumianajones), and Estefanie Duque (@stefyduq) during a trip to
Europe early June 2012:
Hack Day:
The Sensemakers team splintered into 3 groups, but we all focused on
the overarching theme we dubbed “The Digital Metabolism of The Urban
Nomad.” We basically were looking at microenergy harvestation
opportunities in the daily life of the urban citizen.
It was great to meet and work with the Amsterdam Sensemakers team, but
also work with completely random people from the Eindhoven community
who are interested in renewable energy mechanisms. All of our
subgroups recruited people we never met before, which made room for
new ideas and awesome prototypes. Bert and I worked on using potted
plants to harvest power, Estefanie’s team applied the KinetiKit
circuit to objects (pinwheels, wheely shoes, turntables) and Dan’s
team prototyped a walking stick that charges USB devices.
Jam Session (Day 1):
We just wrapped up 2 days of jamming on decentralized power systems at
the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. We got a bunch of people together
who are committed and passionate about disrupting current systems of
power generation and distribution.
Ed and Amsterdam-based Sensemaker Casper moderated our work sessions.
We kicked things off with a few presentations, including some talks
from Dan, Estefanie, and I on our past research and what we worked on
at the Science Hack Day. We drew a lot of inspiration from Jeremy
Rifken’s work and plastered the walls with post its of ideas, quotes,
and images of what we found noteable and inspiring. Attendee Tim van
de Rijt talked a bit about the platform he’s currently developing:
energysharing.com, which spurred an open discussion on what we
envision the future of energy sharing to be and how those interactions
would play out.
From there, we broke into teams to focus our ideas by doing user
scenarios for three different personas. The daily activities and
opportunities of energy creation and exchange were white-boarded for a
housemom/dad, a freelancer, and a business person.
Our story is largely centered on the archaic foundation of centralized
power systems. We, as a society, have progressed to be a mobile
people. Much of what we do is based on tools of communication (phones,
tablets, laptops, etc…) but those devices are limited by power, by our
dependance on the electrical grid. To narrow our focus, we decided to
work through visualizing a system that would take powering cell phones
off the grid.
After a show and tell session of our findings, we switched gears and
isolated 3 different domains that needed exploration to begin making
our ideas more tangible and accessible to a greater audience:
sharing: what does a energy sharing mechanism look like? (physically
and virtually)
product: what types of products will be involved in energy harvesting
story: what is the story we are trying to tell?
After another round of show and tell, we scrambled groups to iterate
on the previous teams process. Our biggest hurdle was/is the sharing
mechanism. We kept running into the issue of storage, battery
transactions, and visualizing the decentralized, peer to peer energy
sharing grid (now dubbed The Intergrid). The discussions of the ethics
behind energy sharing were also discussed. Should people be selling
their energy? Is purely freely available energy the right thinking
(Wikipedia model where everyone benefits, but success is reliant upon
the minority of hyper-users)? We talked about citizens in a community
who enjoy gardening, and how although its not a cheap hobby, people
happily and gladly give away things that they grow to those around
them. Could energy possibly function in the same way?
It was a super productive day and after lots of great ideas,
storyboarding, and open discussions, we broke for dinner and drinks
and continue the jam session tomorrow!
Jam Session (Day 2):
The best/worst part of the design process is finding flaws in your
system, and throwing out a previously crafted vision for one that, for
lack of a better phrase, makes more sense.
Our redirection came primarily from the central issue, which is
determining how independently created energy would be accessed and
distributed.
In order to start a movement, you need momentum. For us, that means
building a framework for a community to a) learn about energy
producing technologies and b) sharing that information with each other
and the public.
No, our current prototypes don’t create mass amounts of power, but our
goal right now is to harness the everyday actions of people with tools
that collect power. In order to achieve this, we decided that we must
complete the following:
people must have devices that harvest energy
these devices must be quantifiable, in that the amount of power
created needs to be uploaded and shared
a web platform must exist, where independent energy producers are able
to share their own data on the quantity of energy they are producing,
where they are in the world, and how they are doing so.
We see these goals being fulfilled by way of Kickstarter, where we can
deliver micro-energy harvesting devices to a large amount of people.
From there we can monitor natural trends within the community, and
what kinds of sharing tactics occur amongst users. Emerging behaviors
with our target demographic seem more useful and feasible in designing
the infrastructure for a larger sharing system instead of dictating
how sharing energy should function.
Our next steps include iterating through our products a bit more so
that they are easily understood and useable by the average person. We
also need to continue to refine our concept and the story behind it to
continue to gain momentum and excitement.
Third industrial revolution, here we come!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some Resources
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/from-internet-to-enternet-creating-the-energy-network/305009
Bob Metcalfe
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EZv9H62xm0&feature=related
http://www.npowerpeg.com/
http://www.inc.com/ss/kinetic-energy-chargers
http://archis.org/
http://inhabitat.com/city-in-the-sky-futuristic-flower-towers-soar-above-modern-metropolises/#
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/what-a-smart-grid-can-do-for-you/329408?tag=content;siu-container
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/who-will-manage-the-smart-grid/312779?tag=content;siu-container
http://www.smartplanet.com/video/who-will-pay-for-the-smart-grid/418912?tag=content;siu-container
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fggyqAMp8DA
Dan
Reflecting on conversation today (6.15), seems like there is some
good effort happening between public and private sectors to start
realizing some of this shift.. most notably in Germany... but how do
you connect with people? I think the community aspect needs to be
addressed in order to create the pressure needed to see this shift
occur elsewhere. This can be facilitated by participation and data...
convergence of quantified self and energy. The innovation in energy
can come later... the innovation in connecting the quantified self
London Notes
Beginning to see a transformation toward green renewables. Are we
going about it in the right way?
Traditionally, energy has been created by extracting fossil fuels from
specific locations… which makes sense when the resources are sparse.
Vertical systems of organization are necessary to manage such a large
centralized system.
With demand for green energy and reduced CO2 on the rise, energy
companies are naturally beginning to embrace green technologies…
however they are applying a fossil fuel collection mentality, lots of
wind turbines in areas where it is windy, lots of solar farms where it
is sunny etc… and relying on heavy centralization to produce and
distribute energy. Yet this model makes no sense when the resource is
literally everywhere.
We are dependent on the inefficient centralized supply… even through
renewables we end up paying the energy company in transaction fees, if
selling back to the grid is an option.
A decentralized peer to peer renewable energy system, on the other
hand, managed and coordinated using the internet (which has already
proved capable of organizing large horizontal systems) news to be the
future. We must become owners of our own energy. We can be both the
producers and the consumers. With renewables, a horizontal system
needs to be in place…
Jeremy rifkin… a energy and economic consultant has been talking about
this future for years… he envisions"hundreds of millions of human
beings will be generating their own green energy in their homes,
offices, and factories and sharing it with one another across
intelligent distributed electricity networks-an intergrid- just like
people now create their own information and share it on the internet."
Rifkin sees this as a essential to ushering in a third industrial
revolution that will create hundreds of thousands of jobs and spur new
innovations at unprecedented rates. Yet he is working with industry
and the EU government to realize this goal… a slow moving political
machine that is still tied to an entrenched energy industry. Yet the
EU is still making more progress towards this so described smart grid.
The US is even further behind… our idea of a smart grid is
unfortunately simply a centralized system with a smart metering
infrastructure.
In any case, we're asking the question, how do we begin fostering a
community around peer to peer energy and how can we build the
infrastructure (loosely defined) to increase the pace of this
transformation.
This is what the past week or so has been about… exploring micro
generation at an individual level and brainstorming ways for us to
connect and share the data of this lifestyle and eventually our
energy. We've struggled to define this as off-grid or smart-grid and
so for now are just sticking with peer to peer.
We're not the only people who envision this future, but we think we
can help get more people on board.
Ed Borden
Jul 2, 2012, 2:08:26 PM7/2/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
Some great pics from some of these events here:
Ken Boak
Jul 2, 2012, 8:51:42 PM7/2/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
Ed,
Very interesting - taking mobile phone charging off the grid.
You should look at what Moixa are doing - a low voltage dc, renewable (solar) micro-grid.
Rather than everyone having a "roof full of pv panels" you have just one, of about 300W which you can take with you when you move apartment.
It recharges a battery during the day, and in the evening you have low voltage dc to recharge your phone, power your entertainment, laptop etc.
It takes your electronic devices off grid - and as more and more of our possessions are electronics, it makes sense to power these from PV.
Who needs the inefficiency of ac chargers, when modern power electronics can convert dc voltage up and down - with very high efficiency.
With small scale personal PV, - an ideal candidate to get them all talking via IoT, and provide valuable performance data - about how much energy you had taken off the grid.
Ken
Ed Borden
Jul 2, 2012, 9:02:48 PM7/2/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
I just reached out to Moixa, we've done business with them in the past
at Pachube.
While Moixa's stuff is fantastic, one thing we are finding is that our
goal with this project is first and foremost to build a community, and
we don't want cost to be a barrier. That's why we're looking at
methods of generation/participation with costs on the order of
[hopefully] $10-ish.
But that doesn't mean that people who want to spend more or already
have large PV deployments can't also be a part of this, so any
suggestions like this are certainly appreciated.
at Pachube.
While Moixa's stuff is fantastic, one thing we are finding is that our
goal with this project is first and foremost to build a community, and
we don't want cost to be a barrier. That's why we're looking at
methods of generation/participation with costs on the order of
[hopefully] $10-ish.
But that doesn't mean that people who want to spend more or already
have large PV deployments can't also be a part of this, so any
suggestions like this are certainly appreciated.
Dan Selden
Jul 2, 2012, 9:07:33 PM7/2/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
Ken-
This is a great resource and an awesome company… delivering smart grid functionality to an individual. Definitely a shows us there's a market for smart charger circuits… and its especially interesting to see their pitch towards business… powering a conference room and required devices etc. Would love to see them start exploring the actual sharing side… perhaps connecting these to each other through the web would allow a bigger system to emerge and better control the ac/dc switch over a larger community… no energy is actually being exchanged but the intelligent switching becomes more informed… this definitely has my mind moving.
-Dan
Cesar Garcia
Jul 3, 2012, 3:48:06 AM7/3/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
Hi,
Regarding low-cost energy gathering solutions, you could check also
Devergy: http://www.devergy.com/
They are creating shared grids for developing countries and even if
the method/goal is different, technology could be interesting to
explore more.
Best,
César
--
Cesar García - @elsatch
Ando con encolamiento para responder correos y los proceso lunes,
miércoles y viernes. Si es algo urgente/rápido contáctame por Twitter.
Gracias!
Regarding low-cost energy gathering solutions, you could check also
Devergy: http://www.devergy.com/
They are creating shared grids for developing countries and even if
the method/goal is different, technology could be interesting to
explore more.
Best,
César
Cesar García - @elsatch
Ando con encolamiento para responder correos y los proceso lunes,
miércoles y viernes. Si es algo urgente/rápido contáctame por Twitter.
Gracias!
Ken Boak
Jul 3, 2012, 1:51:50 PM7/3/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
Hi All,
Many of us spend our days in brightly lit air-conditioned or heated offices.
We are passively consuming a large amount of power from the grid - and often have no choice or influence over how that power is managed.
Whilst working from home some years ago, I came up with the notion of the "200W office". This included laptop, printer, phone, lighting, ethernet and a small budget for tea and coffee.
At these sort of power levels - we can power our lives from small scale PV. Modern electronics is far more efficiently run off dc, than ac.
Examine your work environment, and ask yourselves how you could run it on a sub 300 watt per person power budget.
LED lighting, low power laptops, and cloud based computing all help to minimise the power needed in the work environment - but all those cloud computers have to be powered and air conditioned somewhere.
This makes me wonder - What is the true cost of the internet in terms of global power usage. How many tens of thousand tons of coal are burned a day just to drive the web?
Working fro home - or in small local groups is a great model of how we can budget our energy consumption better. Forget commuting, and hauling yourself plus a car, many miles to work in a bright, sterile office environment. This is an area where we can reorganise the way in which we work - and have the recent economic recession force us into a more sustainable Plan B.
Here's the original post from September 2005
Ken
Ed Borden
Jul 9, 2012, 10:26:41 AM7/9/12
to sensemak...@googlegroups.com
Ken, this is great. Very similar with to our thinking around
"electronic metabolism". I think with this project, though, we are
trying to focus in on the themes around independence versus reduction
of consumption -- which although related are not the same thing.
We're trying to hone in on that "thing" that can really scale to a
widespread movement and the consumption reduction/save money bit is
being done all over the place, so we're trying to think differently.
"electronic metabolism". I think with this project, though, we are
trying to focus in on the themes around independence versus reduction
of consumption -- which although related are not the same thing.
We're trying to hone in on that "thing" that can really scale to a
widespread movement and the consumption reduction/save money bit is
being done all over the place, so we're trying to think differently.
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