A Conversation with GE
GE partnered with TED to launch TED Conversations. Here, their scientists and leaders engage with the TED community on key global issues.
Tore Land
Director,
Ecomagination Challenge
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A conversation with GE: What are the best ideas for alternative energy management at home?
Last month, GE announced the second phase of our Ecomagination Challenge: a call to businesses, entrepreneurs, inventors and students to share their ideas for capturing, managing and using energy in the home. We see this as a critical global challenge, and together with our partners we've committed $200 million to fund the most innovative alternative energy solutions.
We know the TED community is at the forefront of sustainable energy and design, and we want to enlist your help in identifying the most innovative, investment-worthy breakthroughs. So tell us: What groundbreaking idea for reducing residential energy use looks most promising to you? Who are the up-and-coming "green" designers, eco-architects and innovators we should seek out? Where are the hotbeds of invention? We're looking forward to uncovering a variety of fresh ideas from around the world. We look forward to hearing from you ...
Closing Statement from Tore Land, Director, GE Ecomagination Challenge
We at GE want to give our heartfelt thanks to the TED community for participating in this conversation. Your ideas and insights -- ranging from home automation and discussions about a two-way grid to apps and gaming methods that can drive behavior change -- have been fascinating to read and stimulating to respond to.
On a personal note, as the host of this conversation, I want to thank you for your participation and fresh thinking here. And on behalf of the whole ecomagination Challenge team, we look forward to working with you to help imagine and build technology that can meet these pressing environmental challenges.
GE believes widespread adoption of clean energy technology will start in the home. And we believe the second phase of the ecomagination Challenge will help drive that change. We invite you to continue to follow this project via our website:
http://challenge.ecomagination.com/home
We're currently reviewing the submissions to the challenge and, together with our partners, will evaluate the most innovative. We'll be announcing the winners next month -- stay tuned for the announcement!
Home energy is a critical global challenge, and we want the TED Community to know we are committed to building -- and scaling up -- innovative solutions.
Thank you for letting us pick your brains!
Sincerely,
Tore Land
Director, GE ecomagination Challenge
Gavin Thomas
Cameron Harris
How about heat? How much is 3 hours of sunlight on one square meter of a solar collector worth if we’re talking about heat? Well 1KWH = 3400 BTU so 3KWH = 10,200 BTU. Since one gallon of fuel oil contains 150,000 BTU 10,200 BTU’s are the equivalent of .07 gallons of fuel oil.
Now if fuel oil is selling for $2.00/gallon which it soon will be the value 10,200 BTU’s is about $0.14. You might think this is an unfair assumption since we're not taking into account the heat conversion efficiency factor like we did with the solar panel. I’m glad to see you’re paying attention and you are right about this. The heat transfer efficiency of a solar hot water system is between 50% and 70% the same as oil burner heat transfer efficiency. Since the heat transfer efficiency for an oil burner is about the same as solar collector and the price of oil is $2.00/gallon than the value of 3 hours of sunlight on one square meter is worth actually $0.14.
How about the value of heat energy over the period of one year on a roof (20’ x 50’) tilted south at a steep pitch designed to maximize heat gain?
The surface area of the roof is 1000 sq ft or 95m2.
The solar energy available (for north central USA ) over the period one year on one square meter is 1500KWH. So on 95m2 we’d have:95x1500 or 142,500KWH or 484,500,000 BTU or the fuel oil equivalent of 3,230 gallons of #2 fuel oil. At $2.00/gallon our solar roof could save us as much as $6,460/yr. If half this energy is used for heating and half is used for electric power we could meet the residential requirements for energy independence.
Timothy Smith
After that being able to receive revenue for power being put in to the grid by solar panals, wind turbines, etc.
dennis thompson
clay blasdel
Peter Gooley
Would be great to hear from those who REALLY know. How about you GE?
Below is from Jack Lifton in a Resource Investor magazine in 2009.
1. Reactors using thorium in their fuel can be constructed so that they produce little or no products useful for explosive type (fission- or fusion-based) nuclear weapons.
2. Thorium reactors previously built and currently near operation, or in the design stage, produce far less radioactive waste material than the presently used uranium and/or plutonium based reactors.
3. Thorium is more abundant in the earth’s crust by a factor of between three and four than uranium, and coincidentally is also found in recoverable (as a byproduct) grades and quantities in the United States, Canada, Australia, the Republic of South Africa, and the People’s Republic of China (that is, the mainland). It has not yet been mined as a primary ore (more on this in a moment) but is rather always produced as a byproduct of either uranium or rare-earth metals primary production.
Edwin TheCrow
1. is that there will be no need to lease or buy land for the creation of this energy.
2. is that there doesn't have to be any specific global atmospheric condition for it to work, such as the blowing of the wind for windmills or the sunlight for solar panels.
3. this energy is consistently around us and making use of it for conventional use has never been thought of up until now. (it is nothing at all scifi like or mysterious)
Thank you Tore Land & TED for the opportunity of writing of this and maybe one day I'll be one of those speakers at TED talking about this.
Langston Montierth
Martha Djourdjin
The problems with the technology right now are that for larger capacity you need very large batteries, that their technical lifetime is rather short, and that they are very toxic, and on top they are expensive. Basically, you need many expensive short-lived batteries that you can't recycle very well. Advances in better batteries will definitely be very very positive both for the grid and for powering homes...
What you are referring to I think is called arbitrage.It is also what is intended by using electric vehicles to feed electricity into the grid when the price is high and get charged when prices are low.
Christophe Cop 500+
(partial repost from http://www.ted.com/conversations/90/create_a_team_within_our_ted_c.html)
=> "Save the planet, save your allowance ; An integrated domestic edutainment game"
The basis is simple: we couple the energy that enters a house (the electricity meter, or 'smart grid' data) to a game-platform (like this Conversations, but with more level up and graphic things).
As such, any kid can play this game: the more energy he saves around the house (turning of lights & stand-by modes,...) the more XP he get's for his character.
As a bonus, the energy bills of the parents go down. As such, the kid can be rewarded with the money saved (he ought to)
=> While playing, one learns to understand energy use and conservation, becoming eco-minded. By earning the money, the kid becomes entrepreneurial. And planet and parents profit from it as well
We might need Jane Mcgonigal involved in this too ;-) www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jane_mcgonigal_gaming_can_make_a_better_world.html
This can be extended to gas and water consumption, adding 'things to improve' quests
Note: this game needs to be designed to be adaptable to multiplayer mode.
Any people ready for a startup?
Augustin Capka
Robertson Klaingar
Martha Djourdjin
There are plenty of biogas-based technologies both in the developing and the developed world... For static/built systems, Austria and Germany I believe are leaders in large community-scale applications, while you are more likely to see single-family systems in India or Nepal.
There are plenty of home-scale applications such as biogas stoves (an airtight recipient connected to a gas burner) that can easily be used in homes. Most of what I have seen though is either too rudimentary and DIY or requires a rather large home with a garden and animals...
Producing your own biogas and using it for cooking and maybe even water heating (with pipes going through the digester without contact between the water and the organic matter) should be feasible even for smaller households with just the organic waste they produce or maybe adding glycerol.
I think this may be a great area for bringing out new and better home applications!
james morgan
From Wiki: "GE has a history of some of its activities giving rise to large-scale air and water pollution. Based on year 2000 data,[36] researchers at the Political Economy Research Institute listed the corporation as the fourth-largest corporate producer of air pollution in the United States, with more than 4.4 million pounds per year (2,000 Tonnes) of toxic chemicals released into the air.[37] GE has also been implicated in the creation of toxic waste. According to EPA documents, only the United States Government, Honeywell, and Chevron Corporation are responsible for producing more Superfund toxic waste sites.[38] "
From Wiki, "In 2010, Forbes ranked GE as the world's second largest company after JPMorgan Chase,[5] based on a formula that compared the total sales, profits, assets, and market value of several multinational companies.[6]"
I propose we stop supporting mega conglomerates like GE, who are simply using alternative energy as a front for business as usual. Rather than finding ways of producing more energy, and lining GE's pockets, I propose we all start finding ways of reducing our energy consumption. I no longer heat or cool my house unless it's totally freezing, hey add some layers of clothes. I try to reuse and make as many things myself as I can, without purchasing new products from major corporations.
I wonder whether I will get a response, or if this will be deleted.
Charles Lazin
Thomas Hjort 50+
We live in a spoiled socity where power 24/7 is assumed to be a human right. Many of the load scheduling and power production balancing considerations are heavily halted by this, so what if we could only be garatied power 20h/day???
What charateristics would the products in our homes have to exhibit? My take is that this is entirely doable, only very few loads needs to run always, such as fans and pumps for heating and cooling distribution. I my view the rest is a result of the evulution of power supplies as one giant interconnected gird, as the technologies of storing power (short time with batteries) are only now mature enought to rely on.
Supporting a household for 4hours per day is 100% possible with batteries. In the electricfication of Africa, this may be a needed and fully accepted approach, and may drive the evolvement of products with the needed charateristics.
The apporach would ease the peneration of renewables in the grid, as production/load balancing becomes uncritical, peak procution may no longer be needed, and transmission lines may no longer be a limit. Now we can wait for the wind to pick up, or for the sun to rise and not have to impose tough requirements on a giant complex infrastructure.
If further this is evaluated in conjunction with a matched production and load type (such as 1: solar power driving airconditioners, 2:wind turbines driveing heating - and many more - all having high concurency of load and production) setup I think we can go a long way.
Adam Burk 500+
A net-zero home with feedback of electricity use noting whether the home is using more energy than it is producing or not.
Thomas Hjort 50+
As an example let us assume that everyone has a net-zero hous based on solar production, meaning that the entire energy usage is covered over time by solar panels. On the energy balance this is great, but if there is no storage in the setup the entire supply will fail at night where no power is produced.
So the equation is more complex than that. We need a battery! - currently we can use either the grid, thermal storage, physical batteries or the hydro plants as storage. The latter, by using surplus daytime production to pump water "uphill" into the ressevoirs, and reclaim whem needed. omly problem here is cost, as we now have 2 time the power capacity to supply the need - a heavy investment.
Linda Ashworth 100+
Mark Dawes 100+
Consider an alternative lens/approach. The home budget is owned and operated by women, not men. The DIY model is very male-centric. I think we need to re-engineer the consumer presentation at the retail level and target women. This will mean that we need to reframe the model in terms that motivate and inspire women. At a minimum a transformative home energy solution will involve both home decision makers.
Here's a nugget to chew on - discovered by an all female design team at Volvo - "Designing to meet the needs of women will exceed the needs of men." Assume its true. So if the home energy business model is designed for female home budgeters,it has the chance to meet all needs.
I discussed this with McPhail and his colleagues at BB and they are intrigued. In fact they may see a way to re-configure the presentation through the Geek Squad and their Magnolia "store-in'store" concept to re-present home energy management.
Love to chart more. I can be found through the TED community.
Mark Dawes
Tore Land
Martha Djourdjin
I am no specialist, but maybe instead of (or along with) gadgets and control, solutions should be marketed around empowerment, durability, sustainability, health, savings, user-friendliness, flexibility, multitasking, even decoration or home-madeness (such as my own compost as opposed to my own remote control of the sprinklers in the house)...
Also, women are probably more likely to cooperate in projects to pool and share resources. This could be used for developing a completely different line of products and solutions, not home-centered, but community-centered.
Debra Smith 200+
Martha Djourdjin
3. The renting issue. This is really a big one, and it is about incentives. If I know I will only stay in an apartment a couple of years, I am not interested in investing in infrastructure that I cannot take with me. So better windows, for example are out of the question. Yet my landlord is also not interested in installing better windows, as he is not the one paying the energy bills. We need portable solutions that I can take with me, wherever I live! Alternatively, we need better standards and maybe programs that give an incentive for landlords to invest in better energy management in their properties. Given the recent massive unemployment in the construction sector in Spain, for example, how do we redirect all those developers from construction to refurbishment of the largely inefficient housing to be found here? I really don't see the Energy Passport and similar programs work very well yet, also because they are not very mainstream in the rental market. This is probably more of a policy issue rather than a technological one, but it is part of the problem.
4. Energy poverty is a term widely used in the UK. Many people simply cannot afford efficient appliances or good quality construction, and they waste a lot of energy, which in term takes even more resources away. This is especially true for the entire former Eastern Block, where poor quality housing and subsidized energy have lead to very poor energy management practices and inefficient homes. It is also true for all places, where construction has been done in a fast, cheap way, such as in Spain. Can we find low-tech solutions for this kind of homes too?
Martha Djourdjin
In order to develop solutions to a larger number of homes, maybe we should consider:
1. Is it a house or an apartment
2. Are we talking new construction or can we do something with old buildings too?
3. Is the home owned or rented?
4. Can we think of solutions for not-so-affluent people, so we improve their energy management as well?
I´ll try to go deeper on those 4, but there should be even more aspects to consider:
1. I think it is great to think that people who own houses should be enabled to generate part of their own electricity, just like they can plant vegetables in the garden. This reduces the enormous electricity wastes during transportation and makes people more conscious about their energy use. What about apartments though? Are there options for people who have no roof or large facade to generate their electricity? Maybe an advantage of apartment dwellers is the agglomeration of homes, where the whole building can generate its own energy on site through larger-scale technology which is also usually cheaper per unit of output...
2. After the construction bubbles exploding recently the US and Europe, I really think the % of homes that one can reach through solutions for existing homes is way larger in developed countries. In developing countries, this is probably the opposite. Now, what can my parents with their 30 year old apartment do? Change the windows, close one of the balconies, possibly put external insulation. Such activities make blocks of flats in Bulgaria look like patchwork and are impossible in countries with stricter building codes for aesthetic reasons. There should be other solutions!
David Burk 200+
Roy Kizzia
tips.
Paul Van der Werf
I believe changing consumption behavior is a little more difficult than that. Simplifying energy control in the home would make more sense to me. Such as a simple switch connected to your key, like motels, that turns off all none essential electrical use (stand by) while you are not in the home. I am essentially lazy and prefer that than trying to reach behind the furniture to switch off all the power points in my home.
Further to that, appliance manufacturers need to make appliances that do not use any electricity when they are not used. Seriously, how many clocks do we need in our homes.?
Adam Burk 500+
Pairing this with smart grids and appliances that speak to one another so that energy use is dispersed so that renewable resources can power more of our power use and there is less on-demand need for burning coal, will certainly move us forward.
Scott W 20+
Most modern homes are blocks, being blocks they all contain corners which largely go unused. However those corners still have to be lit and the air trapped in them heated or conditioned. However with little exception there isn't even furniture nor appliance which would need that space. If we can design out this wasted space in the structures themselves we can save a great deal of energy.
Bob Washick
E G 10+
Josh Sailar
Philip Crume
I see several points of opportunity:
1) Point of production - full-containment geothermal throughout the Ring of Fire. Pumping water through bare drilled holes is not ecologically sound. But if you can place a fully contained heat exchanger at the heat source and use binary-type secondary exchanger that uses a more thermal dynamic fluid, you might have something. Another possibility is to invert the whole process by using solar thermal energy where the heat exchanger is above ground and the cooling chamber is below ground.
2) Transmission - all kidding aside regarding DC transmission, there's a LOT of energy wasted in transmission lines. What about using MASERS to transmit energy over long distances via repeating satellites? Microwaves lose very little energy by atmospheric absorption.
3) Energy conservation - the other major source of energy waste is heating homes. Lower the cost of producing Vacuum Insulated Panels (VIPs) and consider buying companies that produces them. If you could corner that market, gain a sustainable competitive advantage, and make it an adopted building standard, that alone would reap enormous dividends. The same goes for vacuum insulated pipes.
4) Automotive - consider getting back into the electric car business. Tesla motors is basically drawing a line in the sand, insulting you by virtue of its name, and slapping you across the face with a steel gauntlet daring you to compete against them. Are you honestly going to let ANYTHING named Tesla get the better of you? Edison will be rolling in his grave if you let this slide.
5) Industrial - lower manufacturing costs by using mirrors in desert environments to generate solar thermal energy for producing silicon-based products (photovoltaics, semiconductor devices, fiberoptics, fiberglass, glass, etc.).
Scott Brusaw
Thanks for the mention. I don't know if you're aware of it, but we did a TEDx Talk in Sacramento last year about the Solar Roadways project: http://www.youtube.com/user/TEDxTalks#p/u/0/nvWTaqUvsfA
It was a great experience and the video is approaching 5200 views.
Our current entry in the second round of the GE Ecomagination Challenge is here: http://challenge.ecomagination.com/home/Solar-Roadway-Home-Application
We'd appreciate the support of our fellow TEDsters!
Thanks again,
Scott
Dominic Muren 50+
We should recognize that houses are not spaces, but surfaces which separate inside from outside. The severity of this separation defines the eco-responsiveness of household living.
For example, in the Brady Bunch house, the separation was complete. Electricity, natural gas, water, and groceries were the only inputs to the system (processed into light, entertainment, warmth, cold, sterility, and dinner) and the only outputs were "waste" (waste heat, gray water, black water, and garbage). The inputs were generally divorced from the local ecosystem within which the house existed -- artificial electricity and gas, water from a reservoir hundreds of miles away, and groceries from the store via the newly constructed interstate highway system. Wastes were just as separate, pushed into pipes below the street, whisked "away" as quickly as possible.
No wonder the Bradys got canceled.
To find an alternative vision of how a house might operate in a more integrated way, you need only move forward to the present day to look at permaculture construction strategies, or back 400 or so years to the great estates of Britain. These homes (to greater or lesser extent) look at the flows of energy and matter around and through the surface of a house as potential motive forces for beneficial work. Water comes from springs on the property which are replenished through careful swale construction and vegetation management. Likewise, energy comes in the form of current solar income (solar panels, solar hot water, passive heating strategies) or stored solar income (fuel from the woodlot). Food can be grown on property, and it can be fertilized with with composted organic wastes.
Buildings are membranes. Separation means death.
Jessica Green 200+
I have heard architects discuss the inherent beauty of variation light in buildings (versus the homogeneous light provided in the interior of fat homes), and the need for greater variation in temperature in buildings (which would dramatically reduce energy costs). Do you think we will reach an era when homeowners in the developed world embrace variation versus homogeneity? What might expedite this cultural shift?
Larry Winiarski
roofing nearly every house in sunny areas with panels directly. Not putting them on our roofs. But
using them AS our roofs...especially for new construction. What is needed is glass panels designed
explicitly with roofing in mind. Glass should easily outlast metal and if the attic can be a controlled environment then some creative "encapsulants" could be used (like argon filled or something so that the electronics can be
accessed from the attic.
Tore Land
Scott Brusaw
http://challenge.ecomagination.com/home/Solar-Roadway-Home-Application
Debra Smith 200+
Eric Pritchett
1. Home Hub (optional, but a much cleaner setup)- Create a framework/hub within the home that can be expanded on. Leviton has wall media enclosures that would be perfect for this at http://www.leviton.com/OA_HTML/ibeCCtpSctDspRte.jsp?section=10345&minisite=10027. Design a unit that easily allows modules (plug computes) to be plugged into it.
2. Modules - Use SheevaPlugs and GuruPlugs found at http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/p-22-sheevaplug-dev-kit-us.aspx for the necessary computing power to run certain application servers such as power monitoring, home automation, phone system, etc. These plug computers take 3 watts of power on idle (I think 8 watts max) and run a 1.2Ghz processor. http://www.marvell.com/ is the company behind plug computing and it's a completely open hardware and software platform.
The modules discussed in item 2 would plug into your home hub. So, if you want home automation server, file server, power usage server, phone system, etc plug it into your hub... easy takes 1 step. The dev kit for the SheevaPlug cost $100, but much cheaper if you order them in bulk. This is something I've been working on with the company I just started. All of this can be done today with existing technology and be ready for the masses in months.
Gavin McQuillan
Maybe we should enlist economists or game-theorists to strike up incentives and deterrents that encompass both of these strategies, but on a personal level. A singular program, whether philanthropic, governmental or self-bootstrapped that combined these ideas into one program would huge in my opinion.
Tore Land