Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Wired author Clive Thompson, everything is going terribly wrong these days for Silicon Valley. But they are living on the hope that in the future we might buy their software so we can use Bitcoin like blockchain systems to trade meagre scraps of power gleaned from our rooftop solar systems with our neighbours.
THE SUNNY OPTIMISM OF CLEAN ENERGY SHINES THROUGH TECH’S GLOOM
BUSINESS
01.01.1810:00 AM
THE MOOD AROUND tech is dark these days. Social networks are a cesspool of harassment and lies. On-demand firms are producing a bleak economy of gig labor. AI learns to be racist. Is there anyplace where the tech news is radiant with old-fashioned optimism? Where good cheer abounds?
Why, yes, there is: clean energy. It is, in effect, the new Silicon Valley—filled with giddy, breathtaking ingenuity and flat-out good news.
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Tech may have served up Nazis in social media streams, but, hey, it’s also creating microgrids—a locavore equivalent for the solar set. One of these efforts is Brooklyn-based LO3 Energy, a company that makes a paperback-sized device and software that lets owners of solar-equipped homes sell energy to their neighbors—verifying the transactions using the blockchain, to boot. LO3 is testing its system in 60 homes on its Brooklyn grid and hundreds more in other areas.
“Buy energy and you’re buying from your community,” LO3 founder Lawrence Orsini tells me. His chipsets can also connect to smart appliances, so you could save money by letting his system cycle down your devices when the network is low on power. The company uses internet logic—smart devices that talk to each other over a dumb network—to optimize power consumption on the fly, making local clean energy ever more viable.
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Mind you, early Silicon Valley had something crucial that clean energy now does not: massive federal government support. The military bought tons of microchips, helping to scale up computing. Trump’s band of climate deniers aren’t likely to be buyers of first resort for clean energy, but states can do a lot. California already has, for instance, by creating quotas for renewables. So even if you can’t afford this stuff yourself, you should pressure state and local officials to ramp up their solar energy use. It’ll give us all a boost of much-needed cheer.
Read more: https://www.wired.com/story/the-sunny-optimism-of-clean-energy-shines-through-techs-gloom/
What I dislike most about renewables, aside of course from the fact they don’t work as a general power solution, is the assumption enthusiasts embrace of a future of scarcity. Who in their right mind would trade fractions of a kilowatt hour with their neighbours, if there was a plentiful supply of energy? Who will care about the energy household appliances consume, if energy is cheap?
The Silicon Valley bubble might be getting all excited about blockchain driven micro-economies trading slivers of energy. I’d rather have affordable home heat and light which works on demand, when I want it.
As far as I can tell, the company just looks like they’re into energy trading, with no real interest in solar, wind or whatever.
It brings Enron back to mind. The green electricity ‘vision’ is largely just about restricting supply of a product (electricity) with a fairly inelastic demand. This is, of course, an excellent way to drive up prices and rake in the profits, whatever generation method is employed, and they want a piece of the action
The Wired article’s inane drivel just looks like the author is pressing the journalistic climate-buttons perceived as normal in these circumstances. Hence the keywords and concepts such as: “clean energy”, then words disparaging coal, “Trump’s band of climate deniers”, “climate-change denialism in Washington”, and not forgetting “Nazis in social media streams”. I think the article may have originally been intended as a bit of undeclared advertising but the author doesn’t appear to firmly grasp what the company’s products are, or how they function, so he just wrote a sort of op-ed piece instead.
Menicholas writes, “As usual, whenever PV is brought up, we have the scoffers show up.”
Of course, I worked in the power industry for over 40 years and yet to find a good reason for using solar instead of other power sources. So Menicholas, give me your one best good reason for solar.
“We see the same thing with all kinds of new tech. I hear people badmouth using LED lighting, reading off a litany of complaints that they memorized ten years ago as if nothing has changed since then. There are even people who scorn anyone who has a flat screen TV or a smart phone.”
For good reason, new is not the same as better. For example, electronic ignition is now much better but many systems were unreliable when new in the 70s.
Just returned an electric blanket we bought in September anticipating cold weather. My wife said she thought she smelled smoke. The controller on my side of the bed smelled of smoke was coming from it. About 25% of the reviews identified this problem dating back to 2011. More research found that fires had occured. The new tech controller looked better but is not better.
Menicholas does not understand the fundamental difference between using power and producing power.
In many respects, LEDs are better because they used less power. Less power means less current which means less current, and less heat, and less chance of fire. Light fixtures in our motor home where I replaced the 12 vdc bulb with an LED run 50 degrees F cooler.
I have old tech on/off switches. I have not replaced with LED when the normal position is off.
Our adults kids came home with outdoor LED Christmas lights that were on sale. I measured the power draw. The old string was 40 watts, the new string 1 watt.
As I said, power generation is different. PV is not new tech. It has been around as long as nuclear power. What have we learned from every PV system. It only works part of the time at best.
Earthing2 could you provide a link to your permit. I sure I can find a technical detail to take out of context to get a judge to shut you down.
“It’s called being self-sufficient. Off the grid to me means I don’t have politicians and bureaucrats trying to run my life when it comes to power consumption.”
It is called living someplace where it is too expensive to bring in a power line. If you want to be self sufficient sit in the dark at night. When you generate power you are at the mercy of politicians and bureaucrats.
@ur momisugly Kit
No you couldn’t you have no standing to challenge his permit
I suspect that Karl does not have a permit.
The reason I say this is three fold. Accomplished people are proud of their accomplishment. Second, the cost of a permit is prohibitive. Third having standing or not having standing is something an administrative decides.
I am proud of my accomplishments but by your words you would have a judge shut me down. And others would cause me material harm. And yet others would have my head on a stake…
“California already has, for instance, by creating quotas for renewables. So even if you can’t afford this stuff yourself, you should pressure state and local officials to ramp up their solar energy use. ”
But California has a weird definition that ‘excludes’ large hydroelectricity that anyone in their right mind would say is ‘renewable’ albeit it variable. California also drives major COST SHIFTING from poor to rich by driving ‘net metering’ for solar causing the retail cost of electricity near those in Germany — 30 – 39c/kWh last time i looked (Sept). Soon we’ll be talking about the “power poor” class where people will not be able to heat or cool their homes in vast portions of California. Crazy place.
Payback for Solar in PGE land is 6yrs if you HAVE CAPITAL ($20,000 – $30,000 to shell out). Net-metering sends you the poor’s calif-tax dollars every year for at least 25years. The biggest retail users (the 1%) benefit the most from this green-scam. I did it. Smiling all the way to “Sun-Bank”.
correction,.. not really the ‘poor’s tax dollars’,.. more like sending my their electricity bill payments which is a ‘covert (indirect) policy tax’ nonetheless.
Do you have some reason to think the system will still be working for 6 years?
I figured out a way to make money with PV after reading the incentives provided by my state at the time.
Buy a broken system on ebay. After it is all installed and permit sighed off, back feed grid power to the PV system taking advatage of $2k/yr incentive.
If you can do the time, do not do the crime.