[tsakach]

Many viable solutions to the problem of energy resource depletion are being overlooked by industry, government and academia due to the need to find ways to explot or take credit for discoveries in the area of energy production.

The time is right for the open source movement to expand into the area of energy technology, and enable people to freely produce energy on their own, without concern for erratic markets or proprietary control of resources. Although migrating open source software development to energy technology requires a different set of infrastructure components and science, the core concepts and tools facilitating free exchange of ideas can be directly adoped from open source software development.

An example might be a project for developing a homebrew solar system:

* Plans and specifications for construction of devices that fabricate non-silicon solar cells.

* Information on how to obtain and process the materials required for homebrew solar cells.

* Schematics for construction of solar energy components, such as charge controllers, inverters and monitoring systems.

An example of an open source platform for energy production utilizing photosynthesis might consist of the folowing:

* Architectural specifications of an eco-system consisting of biological organisms such as bacteria and algae, that form a process whereby the inputs are carbon dioxide, water and sunlight and the outputs are useful hydrocarbons.

* A set of blueprints for construction of devices that facilitate collection and storage of hydrocarbons and enable the various stages of processing performed by bacteria or algae.

* Information on how to obtain, exchange or construct the various components of the system at low cost.

Applying the existing open source software infrastructure to energy technology is simple. Tools such as sourceforge, forums, wikis and blogs could be populated with pilot projects. Like open source software, intellectual contributions to these projects, regardless of how trivial or seemingly simple, would accumulate and self-organize over time into coherent solutions that could be adoped by many with relative ease. Some challenges are designing the technology to work at small scale with minimal investment and educating more people in basic science and mathematics. It is comparable to migrating from the mainframe platform to the pc. Or at least it might resemble the linux of energy technology - not for everbody, but everbody is free to use it if they choose.

[Ludi]

I would love to see this! I'm always looking for do-it-yourself info about small scale energy systems, and I've found a lot on the net, just not these particular processes.

[JayBee]

Have a look at Other Power

There was a website with Open Source energy projects set out like an Open Source software site but I have forgotten the URL. Anyway, the whole net is essentially open source with many individuals working on all kinds of things from researching new wind turbine designs, cheaper alternatives to solar heating panels, wood gas or hydrogen to run cars. My website has but a few links to them all.

Mother Earth News for example is full of homebrew alternatives to commercial energy saving designs.

[backstop]

Tsakach -

that's such an idea that I guess many people around the world are thinking about it and wondering how to move it forward.

Intermediate Technology Development Group [ITDG] should have some input, though I've never discused it with them - it sounds spot on for their approach. Might be worth contacting them via google.

Another aspect is the shelf-life of patents, over which I get conflicting opinions as to 25 years or 50 years duration. Even if the latter is correct, then devices whose patents were bought up and shelved by FF corporations & oil-states in '56 are now null and void, and there was a lot of very fine engineering design produced by then.

For example, ITDG encourage the local construction of the Banki or 'Cross Flow' Micro Hydro Turbine since it is relatively simple to build, out of patent, and has a very useful performance envelope.

Another example is the first Jet Turbine designed by the UK's Frank Whittle in the '20s, which was intended to run on Kerosene, or Powdered Charcoal . . . I've not heard of any development work on the latter option, though future charcoal production could become a serious scale of sustainable fuel production.

I'll do some searches on your idea and post what I can find.

regards,

Backstop

[hotsacks]

One of the great figures in open source development is a lady by the name of Maria Aldovar,aka GirlMark,who took fubared ideas on biodiesel manufacturing and condensed them into a cheap,efficient system that produces fuel for about $1.20/gal.
Google 'Appleseed Processor'.

[tsakach]

Thanks, these are all good suggestions. I plan to start up a few "open source energy projects" on sourceforge.net.

Before creating new sourceforge projects, a few catchy names are needed, similar to those used in open source software. Here are a few ideas:

Hyperion or Helios (greek sun god)
Homebrew solar cells and modules

Demeter (greek goddess of the bountiful harvest)
Solar charge controller and meter

Dynamo
Wind turbine

Triton (greek water god)
Water microturbine

Phasor
Power inverter

Cauldron
Deep cycle batteries from recycled auto batteries or lead

Cyclotron
Hydrocarbons from photosynthesis

[JayBee]

Here's the Open Source Energy URL.

http://www.opensourceenergy.org/News/default.aspx

[backstop]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('tsakach', 'T')hanks, these are all good suggestions. I plan to start up a few "open source energy projects" on sourceforge.com.

Before creating new sourceforge projects, a few catchy names are needed, similar to those used in open source software. Here are a few ideas:

Hyperion or Helios (greek sun god)
Homebrew solar cells and modules

Demeter (greek goddess of the bountiful harvest)
Solar charge controller and meter

Dynamo
Wind turbine

Triton (greek water god)
Water microturbine

Phasor
Power inverter

Cauldron
Deep cycle batteries from recycled auto batteries or lead

Cyclotron
Hydrocarbons from photosynthesis

[The_Toecutter]

The idea of an "Open Source Car" was discussed on the Electric Vehicle Discussion List. I can post the links to the discussion for those interested, provided it won't street this excellent discussion too far off topic.


One idea I've seen floating around the net is a very simple wind turbine design that can generate electricity. Anyone with above average mechanical skills could build a crude and ugly wind turbine of ~1,500 watts for pretty cheap, on the order of $2/watt and under not counting their own labor.

http://www.otherpower.com/otherpower_wind.html

Once the car is completed, I'm probably going to go this route, and I'll be damn sure to share the diagrams and dirary entries of both this and the car when I'm finished. A lot of people would duplicate projects like that if they simply were given any and all information on how it was done.

[tsakach]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('JayBee', 'H')ere's the Open Source Energy URL.

http://www.opensourceenergy.org/News/default.aspx

[Aimrehtopyh]

http://www.redrok.com/main.htm

More in-depth build info than you can shake a stick at. The site is pretty disorganized but this is definitely the kind of guy I'd want on such a project.

Whatever you do don't sell people stuff that you MacGuyvered together with hot glue. Giving away designs for free is fine, but the sale of poorly built gear has been giving alternatives a bad name for quite some time.

I don't think patent laws apply very well when the design would be highly bastardized. Not to mention you wouldn't be selling devices or even the designs.