Dutch Micro Community Goes Off The Grid To Test Imaginative Smart Grid

March 15, 2010

Someday we all may live like this.

A small Dutch community a short ride from Amsterdam began an imaginative test of the green economy last week. The 25-family Hoogkerk neighborhood interconnected its homes to take advantage of central heating and cooling, and to jointly draw power from a wind farm, rooftop solar panels and a gas turbine.

Twenty-five homes in Hoogkerk are replying on energy from solar panels, wind turbines and a gas turbine.

By making use of smart meters, recycling wasted heat and relying on smart household appliances (dryers don’t go on unless there is a surplus of solar energy, for instance), the homes form a virtual, interconnected power plant. The goal is to use energy more wisely and efficiently, and to generate useful data on whether such extreme forms of distributed energy connected on a local smart grid may work on a large scale.

The test is nearly two years in the making. It is being supported by Dutch energy research center ECN and several companies: consultancy KEMA, software maker Humiq and utility Essent. It also is introducing electric cars to the community.

The project is the first such micro experiment in Europe and could pave the way for other trials. Organizers hope to gain insight into how and when energy is used and whether residents can adapt to such as radical design in exchange for financial incentives.

The system is especially unusual because of the two-way energy traffic among homes. Because of this, its may change the way residential smart grids are conceived and implemented.

And it will put Netherlands on the cutting edge.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Dutch Use Open Source For Car Design

July 28, 2009

The Netherlands is pondering one of the most ambitious ecological goals in the world: putting 1 million electric cars on the road by 2020.

Is this the electric car of the future or just version 1.0?

Is this the electric car of the future or just version 1.0?

The benefits would be many fold. The first is an almost certain reduction in greenhouse gases – 90 percent if the electricity to recharge car batteries comes from wind power. The second is a steady source of new infrastructure jobs as the country builds recharging stations and other needed facilities.

Some proponents of the grand project, referred to as C,mm,n (pronounced common), also claim electric cars could save drivers money. It isn’t clear yet exactly how. But it probably assumes the price of oil will rise in the next 10 years.

So how does the country get from here to there? It kicked off a community design project by providing the blueprint of an electric car to any one interested in contributing know-how or elbow grease.

“Everyone is free to use and modify the design. The only condition is that any resulting derived designs are returned to the c,mm,nity as open source. We believe that the best results are achieved through cooperation,” according to the project.

Apply open source to the car industry is something that hasn’t yet been attempted. So it’s anyone’s guess whether it will succeed.

But considering the industry’s recent record of technological advancement, crowdsourcing a car is welcome approach that probably won’t leave the industry worse off than today.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

US Loses More Ground In Global Broadband Race

May 29, 2009

The United States is the world’s largest broadband market.

But the country lost considerable ground last year in the average broadband speeds its residents receive.

And the despite its affluence, the U.S. remains far from the top of the list of developed countries in the number of broadband subscribers per 100 inhabitants. With 26.7 broadband users per 100 residents, the U.S. is 15th and trails many Western European nations along with Korea and Canada. Denmark leads the world with 37.2 subscribers per 100 people.

The survey is interesting fodder for the debate that has sprung up over President Obama’s planned broadband spending initiative. With some of the leading nations having received government support, the analysis from the European based Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development points to their advantage.

The U.S. remains the world’s largest broadband market with 80 million subscribers, or 30 percent of those in the developed countries the OECD surveys.

But in 2007, it was 13th in the world in terms of the speeds its commercial providers offer users. Last year it slipped to 19th.

The average download speed available in the U.S. is 9.6 Mbps, or almost a tenth of what is offered in Japan, where the average speed is 92.8 Mbps. Korea, which like Japan uses a lot of optical fiber, provides an average speed of 80.8 Mbps, and countries such as France (51 Mbps), Finland (19.2 Mbps) and Netherlands (18.1 Mbps) also best the states.

The U.S. didn’t lose ground last year in broadband per capita. But that points to an interesting observation that should influence government policy makers as they allocate money to extend broadband into rural areas.

Perhaps some of the money should be used lifts speeds in communities that already have broadband since that is where the nation continues to lose ground.

The US is 19th in the world in average broadband speeds, according to th OECD

The US is 19th in the world in average broadband speeds, according to the OECD

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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