Blog to collect, organize and connect information around the project commissioned by E.ON Benelux to the Master department of the Design Academy Eindhoven. Also serves as a mean of recording the process taken on the project. Assignment for the 3rd trimester of the 1st year of all the Master programs, in this case (one, of three groups), mentored by Koen Kleijn.
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Questions that drive the research of the whole project
_What if we are all producers?
_What does this new, more individual and therefore less transparent, energy landscape look like? And how can it be mapped?
_Can we draw parallels between energy and other recent technological developments? Following the development of ‘social media’ can we speak of ‘social’ energy?
_How will energy manifest itself in this new world? What new meanings will our objects, our houses and our streets have once they start generating energy?
_ What if the super-consumers of energy (Dutch Railways, Philips, the city of Eindhoven for example) will also provide for their own energy needs? What could that look like? Could that be done in a sustainable matter? And what would be the consequences for the storage of energy? And what type of collaborations could this result in?
_Even in this future scenario there will remain a need for guaranteed energy supply on a large scale (eg industry that runs 24/7, heat in the winter). Can that be sustainable? And what does this mean for the position of the energy supplier that in effect sells energy guarantees rather than permanent energy.
_What is the new role of the energy company in this future? Will it take upon itself the transfer of knowledge of energy rather than producing it? What are the consequences for the identity of an energy company when the consumers are producers? How will an energy supplier communicate in this future?
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Questions specific to this group
Self-sufficiency, autarchy. In Germany, or Colombia. How real is that? How selfish is it – on a global scale? Who pays, in the end? How can autarchic systems be managed? By whom? What are the issues of scale?
Microsystems. How independent are they?
DAEnergy 