Key Questions

This is an initial list of key questions I think are important. I'll be creating a separate page for these and will add to it every now and then. with links to relevant blog posts, my own and others

What scale will relocalization progress to and how will it differ for different classes of goods and political systems?

Since our society is global in scale (or close enough), any change to this (short of colonizing space) will create a more local world. This is because relocalization is relative, it doesn't have a set point at which you've relocalized, all it indicates is a change in scale. And there is quite a large range of options between a global economy and one focused around a village. This also applies to political systems, there really isn't a set point at which something is local (it could be 5km or it could be 50km) because it will depend on transport methods, technologies, terrain and a host of other factors. So when someone says that the world is going to relocalize, they could mean a change of scale to anything from national, regional or village level economics unless they specify what scale they're referring to.  

So what scale economies are likely to develop?
10-100km sounds reasonable for the majority of food trading and luxury goods could easily remain globally traded. But what about manufactured goods, will they be as local as food or traded over a larger scale? on a national scale or a global scale? And what about different types of manufactured goods? 

And what about political systems?
Obviously some nations will break up, likely many in Europe and Africa, but not necessarily all. Iceland, New Zealand, some of the South American nations and maybe even Germany are good candidates for surviving (among others) completely intact. What will distinguish nations that break up from ones that don't? What will the aftermaths look like? How will sub-national politics (state or local) change? Where will democracy survive and what other sorts of political systems will exist?

And how will the scales change over time, space and with different transport systems? And how can the outcome be affected? 

How will the differing aspects of various energy sources affect overshoot and be affected by overshoot?

Oil is mainly used in transport (about 70% of oil goes to transport), coal for electricity and natural gas for electricity + heat. Renewables are turning out to be great at producing electricity and are driving electricity prices down in both Australia and Germany. The rises in retail (different from wholesale) price are due to different factors. There are going to be problems with the transition to more distributed energy sources and they'll need to be solved, but storage problems are quite solvable (playing catch up really) and the entire idea of base load power actually comes from the characteristics of fossil fuel plants, not the use of electricity. In short, fossil fuel plants have giant boilers that you don't want to let cool down, so near constant operation is wanted which has further implications (like offering cheaper prices at certain times) which affects the entire electricity system in ways that renewables don't and can eventually be phased out. Transport is a different story however, while the most efficient forms can easily use electricity, extensive infrastructure changes are necessary while the only available drop in energy source (biofuels) are a niche energy source at best. The specific characteristics of the various energy sources available are going to affect their deployment, utility and development.

So how will this play out? What will happen to the electricity grid? Will it disappear, divide into lots of micro grids, become smaller or something else? Where will industrial heat come from? Electric arc furnaces are likely to stay for steel making, but what about for sterilization and other processes? How will renewables affect the electrification of transport? How will it affect transport in general? What about other processes?

And how will it vary over time and in different areas? What can be done to change the outcome?

What is the future of new and underused transportation methods?

Airships (a hybrid of planes and blimps) are being developed by big experienced companies, like Lock-Heed martin, along with a few low energy/solar airplanes. Sailing ships are starting to come back, luckily more like windjammers than wooden hulls (see here), and some interesting ideas are appearing. Here's a few; the Vindskip, Skysails and Solarsails, but there are others. It's not going to take off hugely in the near future (5-20 years), but the possibilities for the mid future are there. And then there's bikes, what modern roads were originally built for and now in an electric form, so what's the likely future then for road transport and will velomobiles be involved? And if transport is largely electrified, how will people get to slightly out of the way locations and transport materials to new sites?

How will overshoot affect the development, deployment and use of these technologies? Which innovations will work and survive? What will the long-term  and secondary effects be? How will other changes affect the changes in transport? How will transport affect those changes?

And how will it vary over time and in different areas? What can be done to change the outcome?

What is the future of electronics and functions currently carried out by electronics?

Electronics are incredibly useful and ubiquitous in modern life, for very good reasons, even the third world has plenty of cell phones (Africa especially). Electric sensors are useful for a wide range of applications, electronic calculators are faster than hand calculations for equations beyond basic arithmetic (try doing 4x4 matrix calculations by hand). But a lot of functions can be carried out without electronics or by far simpler ones. Light (semaphores) can be used for rapid and long distance communication, radios themselves are rather simple (relative to laptops), slide rules and log tables can replace some calculations and indicators can be used rather than electronic pH readers. New production methods are appearing, partly an offshoot of the 3d printing boom, and that alone will change electronics.

So how will overshoot affect the spread of electronics? How will society cope with the lose of mass electronics? What will happen to the production, distribution and status of electronics? How will the replacements fare and what difference in performance will they have? What will change in communications and mass media (actually quite old)? What will replace the current forms? 

And how will it vary over time and in different areas? What can be done to change the outcome?

How will the change from optimizing labour to optimizing resources and energy affect society? 

Desert animals and plants do all they can to preserve water, one desert rat doesn't even need to drink, yet rainforest creatures for the most part don't bother conserving water. Everything is done to lighten aircraft, but wing production produces 90% swarth (excess aluminum shavings) because of this, yet I've never heard of a similar scale of concern for a ships weight. A similar difference exists for mobile and stationary batteries, the majority are designed for mobile use and most stationary ones are adapted mobile batteries, and the development of stationary batteries is something that's only happening now. In short, mature battery technologies are designed for mobile uses rather than stationary, so aren't suitable for stationary storage by that alone even through good stationary batteries are possible (size and weight isn't an issue, price is).

Economies, technologies and organisms optimize/minimize the use resources that are scarce and expensive, not those that are cheap and abundant. For the last 300 years or so, the Industrial economy has mainly optimized labour not energy and raw materials. And this has quite a few implications for EROEI, societal complexity, what's achievable and quite a lot more. 

Industrial civilization doesn't optimize around any single factor, but by price and net present value (NPV). The advantage of this is that everything is automatically weighted and value comparisons are quite easy, rather than only looking at labour or energy for improvements. Rising energy and material prices automatically change how the Industrial economy acts, the information is easy to access and in a very simple form. Material costs have been on a steady downward trend since 1800 while energy prices are fairly similar, so automatically the industrial economy is going to be relatively wasteful of those resources, they aren't valued that highly. Now to provide an example of how this process could change EROEI, first to the data; according to Wikipedia wind's EROEI is 18, in 1995 the average energy intensity of steel production was 27.9Gj/t, the lowest average was 12Gj/t (for the USA), you can reasonably get to 8Gj/t and if every technical trick (not looking at economic viability) is used it can be theoretically lowered to 2Gj/t. If those advances are taken to be the average energy reduction possible for wind turbine production then the EROEI changes from 18 to; 41.85, 62.77 and 252.1 respectively. It's unlikely to actually be those numbers (especially the last one), but chances are that renewable s EROEI will change for the better.

So what are all the implications of changing from optimizing the use of labour to the use of energy and materials? How will it interact with overshoot and the recovery period? How far can/will it go? What can be done to make the transition easier while keeping as many benefits from labour optimization as possible? 

How will this process and its benefits vary over time, space, demographics and with different energy and material resources? What can be done to change the outcome?

What will happen to long term (deep time) trends?

Over the last 10,000 years since agriculture started and civilization started, humanity has been adapting to it's new environment (like every other time our environments have changed). One adaption is lactose tolerance in 35% of the population (evolved separately in Africa and Europe) while most people can drink alcohol (which is a toxin after all). Recent and rapid evolution is happening in humanity,  causing us to be biologically different than our ancestors while making civilization not so alien to our bodies.

First, by its nature evolution cannot be stopped and it happens continuously, by this I don't mean that the alleles of a population are constantly changing, if the alleles are remaining constant it's because natural selection is causing them to be constant. All evolution is is adaption to the environment by a rather imperfect (there are big flaws in evolution as a design method, like all design methods) but elegant design methodology. And in humans this is just as trues as any other organism, we evolve and adapt to our environments, in this case civilization and the changes brought by human actions. Also, we have never been perfectly adapted to any environment or behavior set (there is no one paleo diet, but instead many) and by its nature evolution cannot make an organism perfectly adapted to an environment (it is filled with compromises, e.g longer legs are faster but lose more heat as well as legacy issues), it is by evolutions nature impossible. Here's some of evolutions flaws; evolution leaves legacy issues, e.g we hiccup because we retain some features from our fish ancestors and cannot get rid of those features without interrupting other functions, evolution cannot easily move organism to different "mountains" in the fitness landscape and outside of bacterial plasmids evolution can't take features from one branch in the evolutionary tree to another.

Secondly, evolution isn't actually a slow process that unfolds over geological time but a rapid process that can unfold over short periods of time (in some cases less than a year). It's one of the big study areas for biology now, but importantly I don't mean changing from one species to another but microevolution which differs from macroevolution only on the relevant timescale. Here's an example of rapid evolution, the threespine stickleback lost and then regained their bony amour in a few decades, a potential rapid evolution is adapting to obesity by have more brown fat (exists not as an energy store but to expend energy for warmth) to burn off excess calories. And if anything, human evolution is actually accelerating; here's john hawk talking about his research on that topic and here is a review of it after he's published his research. And I'm not even talking about epigenetics which is changes to genetic activity without changes to DNA the study of which is fairly recent and is explaining a huge range of biological problems, like the development of organisms. 

In short, while humans are not a separate species to our hunter gatherer ancestors, we are not biologically the same. We have evolved, and we will continue to evolve until the human species goes extinct in whatever way it does (including evolving into a different species). This evolution isn't big changes that completely alter the nature of being human, but they are important for day to day life. In 10,000 years humans will be biologically different. Also different areas and cultures already show differences in evolutionary pressure in certain traits (blood pressure, weight, height, age of first birth etc).

So an obvious question appears; how will humanity continue to evolve in the future? How will the variations change over time and space? How will cultural and technological changes affect human evolution? Will some future society ever start playing around with human genetic engineering on a large scale and what would the outcomes be? How will human evolution affect technology and culture?

Another deep time question set has to do with scientific and technological progress. To start this of I'm going to quote Thomas Kuhn writer of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and his position on it. "That is not a relativist's position, and it displays the sense in which I am a convinced believer in scientific progress.", quote here in the last section. The thing is, science has specific criteria by which you can judge theories and laws and you can definitively say that one scientific theory is superior to another. As he explains science (basically applied empiricism) is a problem solving method, also a predictive method and it should be judged by that criteria. Science isn't about finding the "truth" in some abstract way or finding out whats "really there" and inbuilt into the scientific method is the impossibility of it doing so, a scientific law is only one good experiment away from being disproved and the criteria of a theory is problem solving and concrete (i.e not vague) predictions. Occam's razor is the codification of this.

Also to be clear, a scientific law in no way operates like a law in human society, they just get called that for historical reasons. Scientific laws are generalizations of observed phenomena in mathematical form, they are precise and consistent with the majority of data. So the first law of thermodynamics is the generalization that energy has never been observed to either disappear or be created while the second simply states that in an isolated system (the universe is really the only one) entropy has never been observed to decrease. Scientific laws are what happens, theories are are guesses at why stuff happens and are testable while predicting specific (they can't be vague) future observations.

An interesting consequence of how science functions is that when one theory supersedes another, not a lot actually changes. A new theory or law has to predicate almost everything the old theory did, a scientific revolution doesn't actually change that much about our understanding of the material world. And those revolutions are generally slower than most people think, evolution had a long history before Charles Darwin was born, it takes a while for evidence to build up, theories to appear and actually problems have to be around. So we can reasonably predict that ideas that have routinely popped up but have never sticked and lack evidence or failed to gain acceptance, such as vitalism or various physic phenomena (which has been through everthing, including attempted military development) won't be accepted as part of science in the near or even somewhat distant future since they require a large reworking of our understanding of the natural world and quite extraordinary evidence/observations, which as the evidence doesn't exist aren't problems for science.

An example of this would be the theories of Rupert Sheldrake, his ideas are fairly vitalistic and like Hans Driesch went from inventing a vitalistic theory and then moved to parapsychology, both also ignore Methodological naturalism which is one of the important ground rules in science (a highly successful one). An interesting look at his latest book can be found here, parts; one, two, three and  four. In a few significant ways, Rupert Sheldrake is a recurrence of ideas and stances that have appeared before and could easily reappear in periodic manner and for similar reasons, such as the disenchantment of the world (here's an interesting look at that). If that's the case, then its for cultural reasons and the clashes between what people would normally think (vitalism seems right and is what children automatically think is right) and what comes out of the scientific method, which is often unintuitive. There have been, and will continue to be, attempts to make science support or disprove various spiritual/religious stances and this is a good example of scientific misuse and cultural clash. The thing is, you can practice and belief in pretty much any religion while still practicing science, there is far less of a clash than most people assume. Methodical naturalism is a working assumption, not an actual philosophical stance (that's philosophical naturalism) while most religions don't actually need science to agree with their statements on the physical world (they aren't actually literal statements). It's rather unlikely that future religions won't be compatible with science.

So what will happen to science? Also what will happen to the related, but distinct, sphere of technology and manipulating the physical worlds? After-all, in a way technological progress has happened in that sphere over the long term, steam engines wouldn't have been invented otherwise (the Romans couldn't have possibly invented them, they lacked too many ancillary technologies). What will the next big changes and revolutions (remembering that they aren't complete changes) be? How will it fit into future societies? How will the scientific method change over time?

What structures won't change as society's values change?

Simply by necessity and time, values are going to change and the societies of the future will be very different from ours in that respect simply because the world and our nature force them to be. However, societies change values as a natural process anyway, here's a discussion on that, and even societies that seem to keep to tradition often change (traditions don't actually have to be that traditional, only seem to be). And this will greatly affect how various human structures are arranged, like the prioritization system we call economics.

But instead of asking what will change, it's also important to see what won't change. After all, quite a lot we do is in response to the non-human world or is our way (most organism do this) of manipulating the environment. So there is going to be a wide range of behaviors that aren't affected by a specific societies values, well outside of the basic ones like survival and basic material needs. And the structures that do change, still have criteria to fulfill and nonhuman forces that affect them. So I don't expect this collapse/decline period to be different from previous ones in that we suddenly ditch agriculture and cities, especially since they are quite advantageous.

An example of a human structure that probably won't change is some very key parts of the military and similar institutions, like the chain of command and formation marching.  Those structure haven't appeared because society has imposed a hierarchical and team based model on armies, but because those systems work in practice better than the other options. The chain of command is the only way that orders could possibly be sent to the right people and for information to flow properly, something which isn't easy to do in combat, and allow it to be processed at the same time. In some situations you can do without them, but that's rare, and there is a variety of hierarchies, so it isn't completely set in stone. While armies don't move around on foot as often as they used do, actually marching, learning to march in formation still has benefits ignoring that armies still have to be able to move by foot. When I did officers training for St John, we had a ex drill sergeant (can't remember his actual title) teaching us and he talked about them, basically it teaches teamwork, they ability to work in a group and to keep track of where everyone is. Valuing equality and democracy hasn't affected these structures that much, other future values won't either.

 While I don't know about philosophy and logic (but they're probably similar), science also is largely independent of societies values and generates it's own.  To quote this review of Mystery of Mysteries, "Ruse concludes that epistemic values have advanced markedly at the expense of the cultural values.". Put it like this, the theory of evolution is an entirely human construct in that it it only exists in human minds and artifacts. However, that misses that evolution describes what is observed in the world and how things happen, it isn't an arbitrary idea built to support some political system or religious stance (Darwin's grandfather used his evolutionary theories to justify Deism and the Whigs, but not Darwin himself). Put it like this, while aliens may not come up with the exact same scientific theories they will observe the same phenomena  (like evolution ) and have the same laws (e.g thermodynamics doesn't change just because they think differently).

Future societies may have completely different values, similar to how much opinions on homosexuality differ in history, in classical civilization it was closer to an expected behavior than anything else (the Sacred band of Thebes was an explicitly homosexual fighting unit). But human structures aren't entirely designed just around human values, but in response to the external environment.

So what parts of civilization are malleable to changes in cultural values? What doesn't change? How sensitive are the things that change to changes in values? Since some structures will have parts that are malleable and parts that aren't, how will that resolve itself?

Peak oil technical challenge report.

Peak oil Technical report: Krampus Challenge 2013

Problem – The re-communalising of cooking 

Modern industrial civilization is incredibly wealthy, not just on the societal level but also at the level of the individual. This has had significant consequences, some of which have changed society in drastic ways. One marker/consequence of this incredible wealth is that individual households have baths and kitchens, someone that is almost unheard of historically for urban societies (outside of the houses of the elite). Public baths, for example, existed until the 16^th century in England before the Puritans got rid of them and are still used by many cultures today, a Korean friend used public baths here in Melbourne. Cooking & eating is still partly a communal (as in not done on an individual or family level) activity, think fast food joints, restaurants or cafes. but this is often more as a special thing than a normal activity.

Fast food is itself incredible ancient, it dates back to ancient Persia (Iran) and it existed largely because most urban people didn’t have their own kitchens, the average Roman loved fast food (Viegas 2007).  To give you an idea of how common fast food was in urban settings, for every 60 residents of Pompeii there was 1 Thermopolium (fast food joint) along with Tavernes (cafe) and Popinas (wine bar, often a breakfast of vegetable stew or wine soaked bread was served). Now, there are large differences between modern and ancient fast food, the ancient fast food was less processed while also containing less meat but they otherwise share similar criteria; cheap, quick to prepare en mass and filling. Also Street vendors are a very old tradition, one that is still strong in Asia (think Malaysian hawkers) and it has its own style of food while still sharing the same criteria. 

The food served at these places varied; Paella, curries, nuts, a pot of soup mix, stew and so on were served. Traditionally, only the rich don’t eat this food in cities (since they could afford kitchens and/or servants) and the otherwise there would be a kitchen & dining room in the apartment buildings (Bed and Board), with the owner or staff cooking food. It is only really in modern Industrial civilization that these options aren’t standard for people living in urban settings.

The economic reasons for this are fairly simple, just as its more energy efficient to heat up one large bath than lots of small ones, its more energy efficient to cook large amounts of food at once in one place than in multiple small kitchens. By doing these things communally, energy is saved, less equipment is needed, appropriate economics of scale are achieved and benefits of specialization are achieved that family or individual kitchens just don’t provide. And, importantly, fuel, a scare and precious resource, is saved which since it was commonly wood also lessens the impact of cooking on the environment. We know these systems of cooking are economically viable in low energy settings and they will be perfectly viable in the future, no matter what decline may bring.  Eating, along with a few other activities, will become a far more communal affair in the future than it currently is now. Note, I’m not referring to any specific economic or political system, communal here refers more to large groups of non-family related people eating in the same place rather than as small family units, whether its under a Roman style economy or Maoist communal kitchens.

And here is one of the many problems that will exist in the near future; how to bring this change about in the best way possible. How do we take advantage of this model of cooking while fuelling it with renewable energy? After all, most renewable energy sources produce mechanical energy (wind and hydro for example), while the main historical source of renewable heat (biomass) is likely to be scarce and large scale use of wood in the cities would lead to devastating deforestation. Where can the energy for this cooking model come from and how could it best be put to use in a sustainable manner?

Overview of a Solution - Concentrated solar power

Only a few renewable energy sources produce heat; geothermal, solar and biomass. Geothermal is impractical outside of a few scattered areas and biomass already suffers depletion problems in the third world, adding depletion problems to the first world won’t be very helpful, which leaves solar power. Since this is using heat in the 100-600^oC range, kitchens are generally inside buildings and these specific kitchens will be running for the majority of their time, the system will require; solar concentrators, a heat transfer mechanism and thermal storage at a minimum in addition to the specialized cooking equipment. A few more things can be added, excess heat is available after all, and some provision for mobile vendors would be useful but the core system is enough to begin with. Importantly, this system is not like current solar cookers in that it isn’t a standalone piece of equipment, but an entire building and includes a system that is only now being incorporated into regular solar cookers, thermal storage.

Also, while I am talking about this system as a replacement for standard restaurants and eateries, that isn't the only option available. Instead the system used in some college campuses can be copied/modified. Where each floor has a small kitchen units, more for snacks or small meals, and the building has a single big kitchen area, most likely the big kitchen could be the easiest part to adapt. There are a few options in how the system could be arranged, specific districts could be built instead (like shopping districts), and that would in turn affect what technologies are used.

Solution

Requirements:

The System shall

• Run entirely on non-biomass renewable energy 
•  Only require backup heat sources in very unfavorable conditions 
•  Have a backup power supply 
•  Provide excess heat under normal operating conditions
• If necessary during winter as well
• Be operational in temperate areas
• Pay for itself and provide a living for its operators 
•  Provide any level of heat required for cooking 
• Use less energy than conventional eateries 
•  Able to use a variety of technologies
• Serve as many or more people as a standard eatery 
•  Be as technically simple as possible while still fulfilling operational needs

Core Sub-systems:

Solar concentrators

In order to get the necessary temperatures for cooking, especially at this scale, sunlight needs to be concentrated. This heat is not going to directly heat the food (as modern solar cookers do) but instead heats the fluid used in the heat transfer system. There are a variety of technologies available and it’ll depend on the buildings location and architecture which one is used. One promising project at RMIT is Micro Urban Solar integrated Collectors (MUSIC)(RMIT 2013), which aims to develop collector platforms that can be mounted on roofs and produces heat in the 100-400^oC range. If this technology works out that would be a perfect option but there are other roof mounted technologies that can be used. 

Trays of parabolic mirrors are quite common in solar applications, parabolic mirrors are cheap, but Fresnel lens are being used in an MIT salt solar cooker, so Fresen Lenses are also an option. A tracking parabolic dish is also a possibility and so is a solar bowl, instead of a fixed spherical mirror with a tracking receiver, this technology is already used in a solar kitchen (Auroville, India). Scheffler reflectors are also an option and are used in quite a lot of solar cooking technologies and modified evacuated tubes could also provide hot or boiling water. 

And the solar concentrator component doesn't necessarily have to be mounted only on the roof, using a nearby open space is an option for some places, particularly rural ones. This system will be easier to implement away from city centers for the basic reason that the buildings can be wider and more land is available for sunlight harvesting. Otherwise the solar concentrators can be mounted on the roof, but sunlight could be deflected from nearby roofs or gardens (similar to how the Japanese put solar panels over fields) to increase the available sunlight. There will be a small range of technologies that work best for this application (I doubt that evacuated tubes will work), but the mixture used will depend on local conditions.

The main problem is likely to be the availability of sunlight and locations for solar collectors. Roof sharing is an option; the specific eatery could use neighboring roofs for solar collectors and the neighboring building gets free food or payment. Instead of building this solar restaurant only in one building a group of neighboring buildings could be linked up in a heat distribution network (like a microgrid) and pool their available space for sunlight collection. As it stands, architectural design would have to change to accommodate this along with construction techniques and urban planning.

Thermal storage

Most cooking isn’t done during the day (Magazine 2012), so heat is going to have to be stored. If enough heat is stored then a week or so of cloudy days won’t interrupt business. There are a variety of heat storage technologies; the most likely to be used are those that use oil, water or molten salt, though phase change materials could be used in the cooking equipment. Concrete, and some other solid materials like packed rocks, can also be used store heat, but liquid storage is likely better for this application. Thermal storage is an area in which research is still continuing, there’s a concrete thermocline method (John, Hale et al. 2013) that could turn out to be the most efficient option available, but it isn't the only developing heat storage technology out there.

The most efficient storage method is a large cylindrical tank (for liquid storage), since increasing volume decrease the surface area to volume ratio, the larger the better and this also applies for solid heat storage for the same reasons. However, for small vendors, and as a potential backup system, some form of portable heat batteries would be useful.  There would be two primary models; a small one for mobile vendors that is light enough for one person to move and a big one for stationary purposes. The big one doesn’t necessarily have to only power the eatery, it could be rented out for other uses; space heating, public baths, process heat, sterilization etc. This battery would most likely combine liquid heat storage (for lightness) and very strong insulation in order to function adequately.

However, since the bigger the thermal battery is the better it is, having shops that are close together sharing one large storage device makes a lot of sense. Another option is sharing the storage among a group of buildings or even a village/town. The main issue then is how to share the heat when the batteries are low.  

Thermal transfer system     

This is what connects all the other sub-systems together. None of the other components are actually connected to each other directly (that is an option however) and without this system a radically different architecture would be needed.  All this system has to do is move heat where it’s needed and when. Steam pipes are a good and traditional way of doing this and it’s likely the method that’ll be chosen.

If possible, this component should be powered by excess heat. Stirling engines could be used; they only produce mechanical power when enough heat is available, which is when you want the pumping done. This system could also be connected to a larger heat grid, mostly as a supplier, and this would provide benefits to surrounding heat users while adding an extra revenue stream for the eatery.

If possible, the pipes should be imbedded in heavily insulated walls and themselves be thick and heavily insulated. And if excess heat is being used to drive the system, consideration should be paid to lowering the required pumping power, there won't be much mechanical power to waste. there are two main ways of doing this (both surprisingly recent practices) are to make the pipes as straight as possible by placing the pipes before you place the equipment or making them as wide as possible to reduce friction. Also this system could be used for space heating of the eatery, small pipes that are normally closed could branch out from the central pipes and when space heating is required, while extra heat is in the pipes, they can simply be opened. It won't be highly responsive, but its an option to consider.

Cooking equipment

Since the heat is going to be delivered directly as steam, the cooking equipment will need to be specially designed. Ovens would have a surrounding cavity into which steam is pumped and a thermo-electric generator could power a fan when necessary. The rest of the equipment can be modified in similar ways; high pressure steam could be pumped underneath metal plates to heat them up, similar to how electric stoves work, coffee machines could extract the heat from the steam and the leftover heat from these processes can be used to keep things warm. It likely inadvisable to use the steam from the heat transfer system directly, so steam cookers will need a heat exchanger to swap the heat between the steam for cooking and the steam for heat transfer. 

Refrigeration unit

Refrigeration is quite useful for food storage and luckily the overall system will produce excess heat. This excess heat can be used in a vapour absorption cycle (Said, El-Shaarawi et al. 2012), or absorption refrigeration, to refrigerate. If the climate warrants it, this could also be expanded to provide cooling for the entire eatery. Absorption heat pumps are also worth looking into, along with any other similar technologies that use waste heat. Absorption refrigeration is quite an old technology and there are already designs out there that could be dropped into the system with minimal modification.

The main problem with absorption refrigeration is that ammonia is the best refrigerant for these cycles and it's toxic. This means that safety and the placement of the fridge needs to consciously looked at, so when a leak happens it causes the least harm possible and doesn't leak into the main dining area. Otherwise it's worth exploring if the refrigeration system should instead of being linked to the main system, be a physically separate system that has its own solar heat supply. Another is also how to deal with intermittency, is the fridge heavily insulated and cooled extra low so the system can deal with losing power for a few days, should it have a separate thermal battery to smooth out the heat supply or a combination of the two.

Peripheral/optional sub-systems:

Small/mobile vendors

Eateries that aren’t stationary or are too small for this system to be used are still fairly important. Whether it’s a mobile hot dog stand, a hawker cart or maybe a small store in a train station, the full system likely isn’t a viable option. That however, doesn’t mean that they can’t benefit from this system. As mention above, small thermal batteries could be used to power these stalls or there could be a heat grid and specific outlets where vendors can charge their batteries.

How this is done depends greatly on the running times of the stalls and vendors. At my local train station there’s a small coffee shop that’s only open for the morning and afternoon commute, it wouldn’t require a large battery and there’s a commercial area right next door, though this example could use a small solar system. Other places would require either multiple or larger batteries, though the option of installing a small and stripped down system is there.  As it stands, these stalls would already benefit because the demand for cooking fuel is reduced by the core system and this just extends the solution slightly. Besides, the mobile vendors and small stalls would generally be able to use standard solar cookers while using thermal storage as a backup.

Thermo-electric conversion

In this situation thermo-electric generators would be better than heat engines for producing electricity, despite the low energy efficiencies (typically around 8%), however as this is converting waste heat the low efficiencies aren't that important. As it stands, adding thermo-electric generators to cooking equipment is already being done and it turns out to be very worthwhile, see the BioLite stove or Powerpot. The best things to power are going to be the LED lights, kitchen fans and possible a radio for music + ambiance. After that comes customers micro-electronics (energy sippers), small batteries and possible energy efficient computers. Small vendors would greatly benefit from this system as it reduces the need for batteries (for lights and stuff) while letting them run certain electronics cheaply or mechanical applications (fans for improved combustion for example). 

The thermo-electric generators should be placed where heat flow is already happening or where you want to slow it down, so that you don't have to create a extra heat flow which adds extra costs of its own. Basic thermo-electric generators are technologically simple, but more advanced ones are available if necessary, and that would be the first place to start. One possibility is to use 3D printed thermo-electric generators (Roch 2013) which could be quite cheap and available in quantity, but the main advantage is that they could wrap around the heat transfer pipes rather than being large blocks, which makes placement easier.

Waste Heat

The system is quite likely to generate excess and waste heat. If enough is generated, not guaranteed, then some use for it should be found. The most immediate use would be for space heating or cooling (using absorption cycles), after that comes heating water and possible using steam for cleaning or sterilization. If a district heating distribution system is available then excess heat could be pumped into it, otherwise nearby buildings could use it for certain processes. It all depends on the form the waste heat is in (steam for example), how much is available and when is it available (randomly, periodically etc). And it will be a limited resource, budgeting it carefully will be crucial.  

John, E., etal. (2013). "Concrete as a thermal energy storage medium for thermoclinesolar energy storage systems." Solar Energy 96(0): 194-204.

               

Magazine, L.T. (2012) Solar Cookers That Work At Night. 

               

RMIT (2013). "MUSIC project will establish Australia as a world leader." from http://www.rmit.edu.au/browse/Research/Our%20reputation/Achievements/Funding%20successes/Other%20Grants/2013/MUSIC%20project%20will%20establish%20Australia%20as%20a%20world%20leader/?QRY=engineering

Roch, D.-I. A. (2013) Harvesting unused energy with flatthermoelectrics. 

               

Said, S. A.M., et al. (2012). "Alternative designs for a 24-h operating solar-poweredabsorption refrigeration technology." International Journal ofRefrigeration 35(7): 1967-1977.

               

Viegas, J.(2007) Ancient Romans Preferred Fast Food. 

Microgrid

This is a project that i just finished that is relevant.

Associated spreadsheet unfortunately not live but at the optimized state for NPV.     

1.1.   Scope

The scope of this project is a one house system, through other houses could be easily added, and only looks at electricity production. Only current off the shelf technologies are looked at, no prototypes or possible systems are included.

1.2.   Background

This project is looking at the optimisation of a microgrid that is only powered by diesel fuel or solar PVs.

Batteries are used as an energy storage medium and hot water is produced by the diesel generator but this

hasn’t been modelled.

Fixed into the system is the battery (specifically chosen) bank, load, generator model & type along with

Solar panel model.  What can be changed is the number of solar panels.

Left out are other renewables; wind is ignored because it is inefficient at a small scale while Melbourne’s

wind resources aren’t sufficient to make it worthwhile and Biomass isn’t suitable to a suburban or urban

location.

Optimization is aimed at an improvement over connecting to the grid, specifically around NPV rather

than total price.

1.3.   System Architecture

Generator: Two machines joined together, an ICE to provide torque and an electric generator to turn the torque into electricity which is then feed into the battery

PV: Converts the energy in sunlight into electricity

Battery: Stores excess electricity produced by the generator or PV panels and allows it to be used at a later time than when it was produced, normally night-time.

2.      REFERENCES

1. Lilley, B; Satzow, A; Jones T; (2009) ‘A Value proposition for Distributed Energy In Australia’  CSIRO.

1.  WholeSaleSolar (2013). "Deep Cycle Battery Banks." Retrieved 10/10, 2013.

1. Winaico (2013). "Technological leader: WINAICO QUANTUM." Retrieved 10/9/2013, 2013.

1. Decker, K. D. (2009). "Small windmills put to the test." Retrieved 10/10, 2013, from http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-results.html.

3.      Discussion
3.1.   Some Advantages and Disadvantages of Islanded Microgrids

The reason we are looking at microgrids is because they offer advantages that are useful for a wide range of people in pursuit of various goals. Below is a sample of those advantages.

Advantages:

• Lower transmission losses

• Which leads to lower distribution costs

• Linked is the lower technical complexity

• Can be easily automated

• Is more disaster proof

• Can be set up to link to the grid and detach when necessary

• Lacks diseconomies of scale

Like anything, microgrids also have their disadvantages that make them unsuitable for all uses. Below is a list of some of those disadvantages.

Disadvantages:

• Can’t aggregate supply and demand from a large area

• Some energy sources aren’t suitable (large wind turbines)

• Requires battery or similar storage (instead of it being optional)

• The initial cost and F.I.T

• Lacks economies of scale

• Isn’t reliable unless well built

3.2.   Some Requirements

Since this system is designed to be owned and operated by the average Australian, its requirements are geared towards that sort of situation. Price is important, along with usability and it’s a functioning investment that needs to provide some sort of return.

Requirements:

The system shall be modifiable/future proof. Say any component can be replaced within another model with performance indicators within a 10% range

The total running costs of the system, including maintenance, fuel and repairs, shall be at the same price or lower than electricity from the grid

The set-up costs of the system shall be affordable ($10-30,000) and at or less than connecting to the grid

The technical skills require for running the system shall be readily obtainable by the clients

The system shall have a high reliability (about 99.9999%)

The system shall be islanded

The system shall provide hot water and electricity at an equal or greater rate than the client’s need, when they need it.

The system shall have a minimum of overnight storage (16Kwh) for winter months

3.3.   Introduction to Optimisation

Each of the various element falls under a different category: those that can be changed (variables), limits to the model (models), the outputs of the model and options.

Variables include:

• Size of the batteries

• Load management of the batteries

• Size of the PV panels

• Generator chosen and fuel choice

• Generator run time

• Cost of electricity

Constraints

• The price has to be less than simply connecting to the grid

• Number of houses that can be connected

• Roof space

• Load (24KWhr)

• Spread of sunlight throughout the year

• System life cycle (20 years) 

What’s being optimised

• Price of electricity needs to be as low as possible

• CO₂ emissions need to be minimised 

What can be changed to improve the design

• The batteries cycling is a separate optimisation between total capacity and lifespan

• Size of the PV’s and battery capacit 

3.4.   Basic Relationships

Microgrid relationships:

• CO₂ emissions are directly proportional to generator run time

• Alternate generators and fuels will also affect CO₂ emissions

• Size of the solar panels is inversely proportional to generator run time

• If there are enough solar panels, increased battery size can lower generator runtime

• Solar panels increase initial cost of the system

• Diesel use affects running cost

• The cost of fuel can fluctuate, while solar panels costs are locked in

• An increase in battery size increases cost

• Generator run time affects how many houses can be connected

• The cost of electricity is setup cost/lifetime plus maintenance costs

• Increase in storage (batteries or fuel tanks) reduces risk

• Risk here refers to the chances that no electricity will be provided when needed

• Battery load management affects battery lifespan

• Life cycle cost is simply the capital costs + maintenance cost divided by lifespan

• Load is serviced from the battery, there is no direct way for generated electricity to service load

3.5.   Mathematical Relationships

PV power produced = #PV x PV% x Solar exposure x PV area

Excess Power = PV power – Load

Storage = Previous days storage + excess power: range 0<Storage<Max Storage

Fuel consumption = g/Kwh of diesel / generator %

Fuel use = Fuel consumption x deficit of storage

Fuel cost = total fuel use x fuel price

Capital cost = Battery price + generator + PV panel prices

Total cost = Capital cost + lifecycle x Fuel cost + replacement battery

Cost per Kwh = Total cost / (lifecycle x load x 365)

CO₂ production = Total fuel use x CO₂ production

Improvement over grid = Cost per Kwh – Comparison cost for grid

NPV = inflation^year*(cost/(1 + discount rate)^year)

• Two forms, one for grid electricity and the other for off grid 

 3.6 Assumptions

The generator is 90% efficient

            -which means the engine has to produce 1.11 of the required load

We have unlimited roof space

Maintenance costs are negligible

No transmission loses

Batteries are 100% efficient, no electricity is lost by storage

The density of diesel is 0.832kg/L

Engine consumption is .204kg/Kwh

            -therefore consumption is 0.245L/Kwh

The price of diesel is $1.5/L

CO₂ production is 2.68/Kg

We are using the Winaico Quantum panels

            -Efficiency is 17.46%

            -Area is 1.663m²              

                -$290 per Panel

Meteorology data is for the botanic gardens, 2012 data

Projects lifecycle is 20 years

Load is 24kWh, spread evenly over a day

Assume batteries are fully charged at the beginning

Assume 27c kWh for comparison with the grid (based on recent electricity bill)

Any battery deficit is recharged by the generator that day

Components don’t lose performance over time

            -batteries just have to be replaced

For a battery bank, I have chosen a specific model 12 Surrette 6v, 400 Ah S530 from whole sale solar

-Price $4497, load 28.8 Kwh and a lifespan of 10 years, warranty 7 years

-Assume that it will last all 10 years then die without losing performance

3.7 Flow chart of calculation      

    

3.8 key data from optimised state    

Optimal #PV: 43 panels

Set up cost: $10967.12

NPV improvement over grid: $38,892.70

NPV cost: $28,229

3.9 Interpretation of spread sheet & Discussion

If optimising for NPV, 43 solar panels is the optimal choice as it has the lowest NPV. Importantly, lowering the load decreases the advantage of going off grid, at 15Kwh it is better to stay connected to the grid. This suggests that adding more houses to the microgrid will further increase the advantage of going off grid, especially if those house have a low electricity usage. In that case this model simulates 3 houses of 8 Kwh load each fairly well and as long as the battery is about one days storage this approach is accurate.

Importantly, this model shows that reducing the battery size as much as possible is the optimal solution. But since calculations are done at a daily basis, when the battery gets below a day’s storage the model will be inaccurate because night-time electricity use isn’t accounted for. If calculations were done an hourly basis, then the day/night cycle can be taken into account and the variation of load over the day can be simulated, then battery storage can be lowered below a day’s storage without the model losing accuracy. This is the prime reason I choose an off the shelf battery, optimising the exact size by buying individual batteries isn’t an option supported by the current model.

The main component missing from the model is heat storage and hot water for space heating. This is actually a separate task that then informs the main model. It is also where the optimum number of attached houses (and thus final load) is likely to come from, more houses means a bigger heat storage tank but also more heat loses in moving the heat around. Having heat storage also allows the excess power produced in the summer months to be used rather than wasted, it can simply power an electric heating element or heat pump.

The heat storage would be modelled like the battery, except that storage lose is added, a certain amount is needed and if there isn’t enough the diesel generator is run for longer. In most cases, the diesel generator won’t be run that much more than it already is but when it does it will provide extra power. This power can again be used by electric heating elements to store heat for tomorrow. Heat for other uses can be added, but this is more complicated since hot water use for showers varies widely with households.