The Internet Tower

There is an internet tower near to my house in Luxembourg.

Deep in the woods, where I am from, I use it to orient myself. But more importantly it points to my passion. It points to my desire. It points to my longing to be a software engineer. Which I am not done with yet. I am not there yet. I am not ready.

I still have so much further to go.

Reflecting on this week's learnings in renewable energy x software engineering

I can't believe it's been less than a week since my first blog post on this topic. It's not a project though. It's my life. As Edward said to Bella: "You are my life now."

LOL.

What have I learned then this week?

Last time I wrote a reflective post I wrote about what I had learned by reading through my old blog posts. But this time I want to go on my memory.

What is the biggest theme I have found? Hardware vs. Software. 

Hardware vs. Software

Hardware in renewable energy is expensive to build. It requires new materials and almost to some extent is even a pollutant (sorry, offshore wind farms!). But moreover, the invention of new hardware in renewable energy cannot keep up with the shifting demands of supply from the grid. The way things are changing then we cannot keep inventing, let alone physically building, new pieces of hardware.

It simply cannot keep up with the demands in shift in renewable energy supply.

And it is expensive to build and it requires materials. Innovation takes too long.

Enter Software

i.e. coding. Enter coding. Coding mode.

Software innovation can move faster than hardware innovation. It requires no new materials in the physical realm to build. It is the future. It can contain information and order it and store it in order to help us to keep up with supply and demand and make the grid more flexible and provide clean, green, and renewable energy. 

In particular, one of the most recent and most likely to be major shifts in renewable energy is the introduction of DERs - distributed energy resources. These are things which "live on the customer's side of the meter". Think things like turbines, solar panels and any other little things which can be used on the individual's home micr-scale of energy production and storage.

The grid is going to need to take this information and this data and to integrate it into its own planning for supply and demand. But in order to do this and to integrate all of this new information, big data, into its planning it is going to need good, sensible and reliable software. 

This is just one of the ways in which software can help with the renewable energy transition. 

However, working in renewable energy tech myself though, I can see that there is so much more.

There is so much more to give here.

And a big part of it is empowering renewable energy suppliers, which is a large part of what we do where I work. A big part of it is also empowering consumers to be the masters of their own energy.