There sure is a buzz in standards this week, especially in standards that can help change our relationship to the built world: buildings, systems, and energy. I’m watching them and trying to put things together. I haven’t yet, but this is what I am seeing.
Read MoreShe never wants an Electric Car
My daughter explained to me yesterday why she never wants an electric car. She has been reading about Shai Agassi’s and Idan Ofer’s efforts to build an electric car while building up an electric car infrastructure. She resents the “Gillette” (or Polaroid) model: sell them the handle cheap and sell them blades forever. She does not want to be even more dependent upon the power grid. She also mistrusts giving a single player access to her driving information.
Many of today’s twenty-somethings have deep doubts about our information society and its long-term stability. Cultural messengers from...
Read MoreCanute, Energy, and Natural Laws
Politics has been unusually intense this week, and many new themes of varying worth have echoed around the public square. One meme that surfaced held that belief in creation invalidates one for higher office. The argument runs that if a candidate is unable to understand natural law and science, as evidenced by creationism, then they are unfit to govern in the modern world. This week, numerous politicians showed ignorance of other natural laws and natural systems, ones whose effects are more immediate. I am more concerned with the immediate harm caused by those who ignore natural laws, as they did this week, that have been confirmed by repeated experiment.
Read MoreInterfaces for the Power Grid
This week has been crazy busy, but I managed to submit the following to the B2G interoperability group at NIST.
Each interface around each process of the grid should allow bi-directional buying and selling. The interface should support discoverable diversity, allowing the standard to grow over time. Ideally, the interface would be the same for different forms of energy, allowing the same economic interface to be used for buying standard power from the grid, solar energy from the neighbor, or thermal energy from the data center in the basement. I should be able to set my heat pump with gas pack to switch not only on peak efficiency, but on the price for each fuel...