Research/Energy Harvesting Motivation

Why is energy harvesting an interesting topic for WdKA students?

General Motivation

General motivation is found in the current complex problems around energy production and consumption. Energy production is depleting resources of the Earth and is destroying environments. Energy consumption is related to commercial global strategies and political power structures.

• Energy availability

The general availability of Energy on the long term is questionable.
Although pessimistic views about the future are widespread and are proven wrong many times, the problem of keeping the energy comsumption on the current level seems real in relation to the exponential growth of world population. Given a reduced amount of available energy, the idea of "scraping", "scavenging", "harvesting" energy will be one of the topics of innovative technologies.

• Energy and Climate change

The amount of energy the earth population is currently using can be called "big", because there is a relation between energy consumption over the last 100 years and climate change. Reducing energy used by future devices will hopefully accomodate or moderate future problems for example with predicted rising sea levels or other problems within the domain of the Earth heating up.

• Energy and Democracy

Energy production and concumption is embedded within global commercial and political power structures. Therefore, gaining independency is making a contribution to the democratisation and empowerment. More specificly can energy harvesting make a difference for poeple living in area's which are not yet connected to the electrical network. Making people independent of global electricity networks can also be reducing the pressure to exploit the last natural resources of the Earth, rain forests, deserts, mountain ranges.

• Opportunities

Energy Harvesting is already one of the leading innovative industries. It is connected both to idealistic views on making the world a better place to live as well as hard commercial opportunities because in this domain a lot of money can be earned.

WdKA specific Motivation

The motivation for the research on Design and Energy Harvesting can be found on several places of the current curriculum of the bachelor KUO and Autonomous of the WdKA.
The bachelor students of the WdKA are taught to conceptualize projects in relation with "real complex problems" of today. Making the world a better place and innovative practices play a very important role. The mentioned "complex problems" or themes of study are introduced in the so called "practices" (2/3 year) and play a main role during the minor (4th year) and are categorized in three domains:

• autonomous practices
• commercial practices
• social practices

These domains are subdivided into:

• Autonomous Practice
  

Critical Studies , Public & Private , Digital Craft , Hacking

• Social Practice
  

Cultural Diversity , Sustainability , Open Design , Gamification

• Commercial Practice
  

New Frontiers , Branding , Data Design , Service Design
The subdivisions which could directly benefit from intuitions and knowledge about energy harvesting are:

• Digital Craft
  

Prototyping could have as an added future challenge the constraint of energy harvesting. Experiment and playfulness are needed for acceptance of the constraints of energy harvesting. Several current projects can be found which could be examples.

• Hacking
  

Hacking is amongst others a strategy for empowerment, using existing devices and make them energy independent would make a difference within existing political power structures.

• Sustainability
  

Main topics: ‘New Ownership’, ‘Expanded value’, ‘The Future is Now!’, can all be related to energy harvesting. Making the world a better place by using resources more efficiently and consciously is at the heart of the possible benifits of energy harvesting.

• Open Design
  

Energy Harvesting knowledge is typically knowledge that should be shared and open for further improvements by "the ordinary people".

• Gamification
  

Within the research the game component has become clear: use small setups around energy harvesting to make the users more conscious about the energy they use. These small setups are mostly inefficient, but the consequences will be that in real life people will use energy more wisely, more efficently.

• New Frontiers
  

New ideologies and new industries are directly related to the two topics mentioned above: democratisation, empowerment and innovation.