Category: Energy

I sometimes wonder if the scheduling people are having a bit of a joke. They have ‘Jack of All Trades’ on at 6:30, followed by ‘The Great Australian Trade Off’ at 7:30. So you get an hour of everyone being snippy and awful to each other in a game show, followed by another hour of everyone being terribly lovely and sportsmanlike. I should just be glad they’re aired in that order, so you don’t go to bed mumbling and raging at the indecency of some folks.

Still, it WAS the grand finale of JoAT, so people were a bit nicer. They had to go into a building under construction and basically fix everything in there, turning it into not only a finished product, but a building that would be cutting edge. They each had fifty workers assigned to them, with a number of eliminated contestants on both teams to act as sub-project managers.

Nathan was the most interesting, going instantly for the idea of commercial energy monitoring and storage. He gave this speech where he said that energy-usage was going to decide the future of the company that inhabited the building, and they were going to secure that future by giving them the most efficient energy usage possible. And actually, I almost welled up a little bit. Nathan was SO low-energy in the early stages, so much so that the judges nearly kicked him of for not having enough passion for the process. And of course, let’s not forget his many gaffs in electrical week. Now he stands here, burning with life and drive, talking about energy storage, commercial LED lighting solutions for Melbourne companies and directing like a champion. It’s exactly what he needed to be, and he’s shown that he managed to get there with his own moxey.

And then there’s Lucille, who made a big song and dance about how there needed to be proper insulation and then managed to fill the whole building with asbestos, all due to an ordering error. So yeah…not the closest finale. It had its ups and downs, certainly.

-Carol

Here we are, in September. It sure is interesting how time continues to flow in a linear fashion, creating the same progression of year, every year, forever. But then, the only reason we call it September is because we as humans came up with that concept. We could’ve had six months in a year that were double the length. As if February wasn’t already complicated enough.

Maybe in the distant future, it will be. I’ve been looking into future technology, and the good thing about actual, REAL sci-fi is that there’s actually some scientific baking behind a lot of the ideas. Here on Earth in 2017, we’re only just getting into commercial energy storage and monitoring on an industrial scale. I wouldn’t call the technology primitive- we’ve had solar batteries and power plants for quite a while- but we’re still limited by only living on a single planet, and only having access to a single solar system.  Just imagine how much energy storage we’re going to need when we’re jetting around the galaxy, building skyscrapers to the moon and terraforming planets left right and centre. The energy need will be massive, which is why people have theorised Dyson Spheres. They wrap around a star and essentially store its energy for other uses. When you think how much energy we use right NOW, harnessing the power of a star could be on the cards in some way.

Baby steps, I know. For now it’s great to see more people going for energy efficient solutions like LED lighting and solar panels. I am excited to see where it’s all headed though. Unfortunately I can’t disturb the linear flow of time and catapult myself into the future…unless I COULD. But the energy required for such a feat is immense. All of Melbourne commercial energy storage, or indeed the storage of the entire world, may not be enough. So…the slow path it is?