There’s already a quick and, relatively, low cost way to setup a solar charging system in the home, but online step by step directions are fairly terrible:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Solar-Car-Battery-Charger-DIY/
I propose to build solar battery charging system, to write/record clear instructions, and to put them on instructables for people to find.
This would:
- Make existing information easier to find, so people can build their own and iterate on the idea.
- Make it easier to introduce energy diversity into a household.
- Provide the opportunity to create a new sexy gadget for consumers. (Assuming I can make my system super nice looking and cool)
I think that we are still in the ‘priming the market’ phase of consumer energy diversity. In addition to efforts to diversify city energy consumption, asking for solar and wind from ConEd for instance, I think that there is value to bringing the change into the home. Ideas and changes make more sense when people can see and touch them every day.
This is a really great(!!!) idea Jess – right along the lines of Occam’s Razor – it’s wonderful in its simplicity and actionability. I think as a companion piece it would be interesting to think about how to get people who are not already invested in the conversation to join it and by extension eventually use the technology. Is there a way to do this as collateral fallout from the streamlining you are doing with the design/instructions?