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Open Sourcing Energy

posted by CoolHand on Wednesday April 29 2015, @07:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the rich-energy-mogul dept.

sigma writes:

Open Source.com has raised an interesting issue.

With household and municipal scale electricity generation becoming commonplace, it appears that the energy market is about to experience a major technological disruption. Of course, with disruption comes opportunity, and there's already some clear contenders in the field, from Tesla with their cars and batteries, Suntech with their solar panels, to Vestas with their huge turbines.

There's a big caveat with all of this large-scale investment though, and that's contending with the existing centralized power grids and the utilities that manage them. Open source models are a good fit for this new paradigm, with collaboration replacing monopolies and open systems displacing proprietary vendor controls. High quality open source software tools exist already, including the well-supported PowerMatcher suite, but how will this collection of solutions wrest control of the key "last mile" hardware from the hostile and entrenched utilities?

Any suggestions from the SoyLentil team? If we get it right, all of us could become unfeasibly wealthy...

 
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  • (Score: 2) by TrumpetPower! on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:25PM

    by TrumpetPower! (590) <ben@trumpetpower.com> on Wednesday April 29 2015, @11:25PM (#176867) Homepage

    I can't comment on building codes for places that get accumulations of snow, save to note that that's a truly ancient engineering problem that has very little to do with solar panels.

    My panels are installed according to local codes that required that they be attached to the roof trusses. Nothing short of a tornado is going to get them off the roof, and anything that would puncture them would embed itself in the foundation's concrete slab if it hit a part of the roof not covered by panels.

    I would hope that installations done in different locations similarly take local hazards into account -- earthquakes in California, snow in New England, and so on. I just know that my panels are up to code and a definite improvement to the safety of my home over not having panels...not that the improvements are to any dangers I'm likely to face, but still....

    b&

    b&

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