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
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Rachel Armstrong 200+
June Cohen 500+
Other industries -- like home energy efficiency -- don't always have the measurement tools to identify the exact moment when they start losing users. So this kind of feedback into the design process is critical.
Rachel Armstrong 200+
One of the things that fascinates me at the moment is the prospect of home energy being linked to domestic transport. For example, Copenhagen is considering a scheme combining electric cars, wind power and home energy supply - the energy analytics of this is being carried out by IBM. The idea is that car batteries serve as a distributed capacitor for home electricity and ideally cars do not just provide transport but are also able to dump charge into the grid when there is an excess. So from a consumer perspective the de-centralisation of the provision of home energy is going to be something that we'll see a lot more of in the near future. What fraction of the energy market this will be is not at all clear but most likely small in the initial stages - especially as it's going to be costly to set up effective distributed infrastructures. However, the success of these innovations - distributed patterns of use and home purchase of alt.energy generators - is likely to be influenced by social media, online activities and equally distributed virtual systems etc. that will play a key role in shaping our energy choices, or our perception of them and building energy conscious communities with purchasing power ...
What intrigues me is whether engagement into these pioneering ventures will be dovetailed with something like - distributed gaming (where you can earn points that are cashed in for energy credits - or something) as a way of incentivising new patterns of usage and finding new ways of engaging with these complex, important and challenging scenarios. I'm not sure how successful these more playful approaches to engaging the public are with these kinds of issues ... and what kind of impact they've had ... In any case ... I'd be keen to find out!!
Tore Land
Mark Meijer 100+
June Cohen 500+