Every World is My World

"Ordinary World" by Duran Duran is such a cathartic song for me and one that I love so much. But I really love the Joy Williams cover version - so soft and so gentle.

Sometimes you've just got to keep on writing.

No matter how tired you are.

You've just got to keep on going.

And today is one of those days.

Software Engineering x Renewable Energy 

I have a million thoughts running around and swimming around in my head. I can't read today - I have tackled a huge coding problem - but I can write.

So let's see. Let me think about this.

The smart grid. How are we going to make this happen? 

The smart grid that can support 3x as much electricity generation and up to 5x at peak time. When we get rid of gas and we all have EVs and heat pumps. When we become "electrified". Electrification. That is what we are working towards.

The Integration of the Grid with Home Generation

But in order to meet demands like these, it could be that we need huge amounts of home generation. Imagine, perhaps even up to 50% of homes could be producing their own energy. 

Solar power, solar heating, wind turbines, heat source air pumps (??!), even home hydroelectricity is possible (blog post for another day).

So how are we going to integrate all of this home generation into the grid?

Obviously I know by now that this is going to be a software solution.

Software is taking over everything.

So how will we integrate mass electricity generation with the individual electricity generation of homes?

Surely it will be some tech that measures how much capacity homes have and are likely to produce... Environmental factors such as lack of sun, lack of wind... And then calculates how much each grid will need to produce.

This is where it gets really exciting. I get really nerdy here. Because we will need to somehow integrate the information of every individual home with the overall aggregation of information from the grid. So how will this be done? 

Would it be an app? Can homeowners enter their property's info? Is this compulsory? 

Will it have to be? 

Is it done through the energy supplier? Is it done through some kind of a smart metering system as well? Will smart meters become obligatory?

I'm serious though. Will people have to update their home energy generation through their energy supplier? Through some kind of a government adminstered app? 

What if they refuse?

Will we have some nation-wide "smart grid" app?

How will we go about gathering this information from all of the relevant stakeholders?

Also what about e.g. council housing - will solar panels and wind turbines be council adminstered? Will we increase social divides between those who can afford renewable energy devices in their homes and those who can't? Between those who own homes and those who rent or live in social housing?

Is renewable energy a housing issue?

I suppose you could argue that the problem that we are trying to address here is energy.

So even if properties are rented they could have their own distributed energy resources (DERs) - and equally social housing could implement it too if it had the budget (which could be tricky).

In an ideal world where we all own our own houses this kind of perfect transition is easier. But is it the job of renewable energy to fix this housing crisis? Or is it the job of renewable energy tech to provide the best tech it can - and then trust that it will be integrated into the housing market such as it currently is?

But what if - when the time comes - the tech is there but the actors who we need to help us in this transition are not available, are not ready to go?

Integrating Batteries

On that slightly depressing note, I would like to come back for a minute to batteries. We may need more of them to store electricity - but at the moment they are inefficient and costs are huge.

We may need to have batteries both in the grid and in or near to people's homes. How does that come back to software? I don't know. Will it be the same issue as above, I guess? Building the software to aggregate the data from the grid with the information from people's homes.

And information, trends, patterns, forecasting, etc. 

We want something that will be easy to use and able to make intelligent and good predictions as well.  And that is the power of tech. And thus we will need really good tech.

And that is why we need people are experts in both fields...