Hasta La Ideas

Markus Kayser’s “Solar Sintering” machine

Energy: In the developed world it is ubiquitous, essential, invisible and seemingly abundant. And we have an ever-increasing hunger for it; in fact, a veritable dependence. Our evolving need for electrical power goes back to the 1880’s, when a “War of Currents” was fought over how to supply electricity. Alternating current (AC) had the ability to travel over distance, but was infinitely more dangerous; direct current (DC) was safe, and useful for charging batteries, but hard to transport. Nikola Tesla’s AD won the day, leading to the widespread installation of our modern electricity infrastructure. We have adapted over time to this convenient energy source, whose true threat became apparent only in recent years.

Distant power plants generate electricity by burning fossil fuels or creating dangerous by-products, emitting increasing amounts of CO2 with little ability to respond to fluctuating need. As a result of this, designers and engineers have latterly dedicated their abilities to drastically increasing the efficiency of energy-guzzling devices, but due to the apparent abundance and relatively low cost of energy, these improvements are vastly overshadowed by the exponential growth, over the last sixty years, in the number of consumer products that are dependent on energy and the number of consumers who are able to buy them. Ironically, many of these products are devices requiring re-charging, that would far better suit a DC power supply. It is clear, therefore, that changing the way we generate and use electricity are equally—if not more important—than the drive to improve efficiency and that rethinking the infrastructure that supplies our energy is an absolute necessity.

In his introduction to Dott 07 (Designs of the Time), John Thackara said:

There’s a truly gigantic design opportunity here. Someone has to redesign the structures, institutions and processes that drive the economy. Someone has to transform the material, energy and resource flows that, left unchecked, will finish us…Are we happy to let Accenture or McKinsey do it all? I don’t think so.

To many people, infrastructure is the most unfamiliar territory for design activity because it moves furthest from design’s traditional role of creating objects. It seems rather to be the preserve of disciplines such as finance, politics or engineering. Designers are now challenging this, showing that their skills can be of enormous practical value. This is not a matter of supplanting other areas of expertise, but coordinating discussion between them, visualizing problems and possibilities, prototyping solutions and putting the focus on end users to ensure real needs are met. It is about design navigating and managing complex networks of interdependent factors quickly and cheaply. It is also about design promoting the adoption of new behavior by making it desirable.

In recent years, students from different departments at the Royal College of Art have been considering this issue and coming up with some interesting solutions. Some of these have turned into fully-fledged businesses.

Wattson

In 2006, design team Jon Sawdon Smith, Greta Corke and Richard Woods realised that the existing tool for helping users understand their electricity consumption was insufficient, providing feedback in numbers that meant little to the average energy user. They re-designed the smart meter to create the “Wattson,” which translates watts into pounds spent, delivering the message in green characters that become redder the more you spend. Made available on the desk of the mayor of a town or the facilities officer of a large corporation, this could have an enormous impact.

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