home-grown solutions

[Gil Hardwick]

I am very much in favour of modular, home-grown energy solutions, especially those based on local energy audits and projected demand curves. A great deal of the design work we have been doing here in Australia has been built around residential clusters sharing modular hybrid infrastructure.

Most of it is not rocket science and does not require a university degree. Students in our sustainable networked campus can be designing and installing energy systems at the same time they are putting up buildings, as part of their hands-on literacy and numeracy classes for example.

We can contribute quite a lot here with fairly simple, straight-forward circuit diagrams, and online tutoring in first principles; basic electricity, basic electronics, all that stuff.

It is not difficult either to install web-based control interfaces that can be accessed from anywhere on the planet, making set-up and configuration a real-time interactive experience in which we can all participate.

Last thing I can think to add here is component supply. We can source very cheap and readily available parts here in Australia, since our rural and remote area capability is very highly advanced these days.

Anything else please do keep in touch.

Gil