behind.untappedEnergy

Publicity

A selection of posts on the batteries

The concept was picked up by the editor of hackaday.com who wrote an article on the project. As hackaday.com writes about often advanced technology re-configured or built into something new by private persons, they have become a primary news source for numerous other blog/news sites. From here the concept spread like wildfire. inhabitat.com, threehugger.com, ohgizmo.com, cnet.com, Boing Boing, wired.com, gizmodo.com and engadet.com were amongst the larger to write about the concept.

Numbers
In the moment of writing are there 7520 hits on google and 172 blogs that link back to my original post. But the most interesting result of this hype was all the discussion generated over these sites, my blog and flickr. It was most encouraging and lead directly to the format of the result.

Comments
The most interesting part is that no one that I have discovered says the concept is fake. A few points out that it would not work due to some technical details, and they might be right, but even they did not dismiss the idea. In fact did several commentators suggest improvements and work a rounds to make it function.

Here are some:

The helpful:

Goondoks/Gizmodo: You really only need the the PV on half the battery, unless you use mirrors. The windows in my house don’t track the sun all to well. Maybe you could charge them by setting them up like sun dials[1].

The Smart:

Carlhage/Cnet:A flexible cell might be 50W/m2 or 5mw/cm2 in full sun. An AA battery is about 3mWh, and
there will be a small area, maybe 3cm2, but reflection at shallow angles might reduce this to 1 or 2 cm2. Also, it won’t be at the maximum power point, so 1/2 the power is lost. It might need 1000 hours of full-sun to charge– probably longer than the self-discharge rate[2].

The not so helpful, but funny:

abeagle/hackaday: get your self some radioactive waste, mix it up into a paste. Then smear the radioactive goo all over the face of the solar cell. Finally roll up the solar cell into the size of your desired battery. Viola, This will work during cloudy days too[3].

Finally there was a request to buy volumes of these batteries to Haiti and a request came from a Japanese television show to have them featured on TV. But that will be for another day.

The concept is also presented as the DIY project of one of my personas in the blog untappedenergy.org.

1. http://gizmodo.com/5156389/suncat-solar-batteries-well-that-was-obvious#c10841369 [*]
2. http://news.cnet.com/8618-17938_105-10173434.html?communityId=2007&targetCommunityId=2007&blogId=1&messageId=7633851 [*]
3. http://hackaday.com/2009/02/16/solar-batteries/#comment-63241 [*]

Things That Talk
I have for a long time been fascinated by the notion of objects having their own social lives and networks. Be it Donald A. Norman’s advanced, but inexpensive “Information Appliances”[1], Adam Greenfield’s “Everyware”[2] or Bruce Sterling’s omnipresent “Ahrphids & Spimes”[3] I really enjoy the notion that as computing spreads into the fabric of everyday life, objects take on a life of their own.

So.. what would wires say?

I want more of this. Please?

1. Norman, D. A. (1998). The Invisible Computer. London: MIT Press. [*]
2. Greenfield, A. (2006). Everyware. Berkley: New Riders. [*]
3. Sterling, B. (2005). Shaping Things. London: MIT Press [*]

An Ideom
“One Step Removed” implies that the current situation is happening one iteration away from the source or base. Be it a relative, someone outside of the “inner circle” or as in this case on top of the electrical wires.

Direct Manipulation
As we all know these old circuit breaker panels they are rather simple in operation. When a fuse is blown you unscrew it and replaces it with a new one.

The standard analogue breaker panel

Indirect Manipulation
The idea is that I do not want to directly manipulate the hardware, I would like an advanced interface that lets me do what ever i want to. Ofcourse it would need a connection to the hardware, but that is for the engineers to figure out!

Additional layer of communication

Based on the cheap current detector or the more expensive AC Clamp the initial idea was an attachment to a cell phone to share with others that you turned something off. This developed into a to a toy design that served children to earn money by being rewarded, in money, by their parents. The toy/service is sold by a bank such as DnbNOR that creates services around small money transfers by SMS. Parents make a deal with the bank to transfer a small amount of money each time the child switches off a light. The role of the toy was to “eat” wires and to detect when the current in the wire stopped and thereby signalling a gained credit. Then the funds are transferred. This creates a game where the child must balance the annoying aspects of switching light off with the reward of money. “Parents deal, Kids play!”

Artefact

The concept became more of an art project when the early concept was sketched. Research at that point led away from gadgets and into more service design and therefore was killed off.