Solarpunk Collective

-From a children’s fairy tale book in a Solarpunk library 2062 Once upon a time there was a great dragon. It lived in a mountain cave and slept all day on a vast hoard of gold. At night it flew out and gorged itself on a goats and cattle. Sometimes it ate villagers or burned towns. Eventually, the dwarves who lived in the valley grew tired of being terrorized by the dragon, so they assembled an army and marched on its cave. They defeated the dragon and imprisoned it, but no mortal can slay the great primordial beast. The victorious dwarves soon fell to arguing about what to do with the dragon’s hoard. Such a great treasure was difficult to divide. Every dwarf had fought in the battle and many had died, but some fought harder than others, and without the help of the sword smiths and armorers, there could have been no victory. Guards were set while the dwarves decided what to do with it. The sly dragon lay on its pile of gold, grinning at the tiny dwarves who thought they h...

I got the call on my beeper just after lunch. Not much of a lunch, just an old unlabeled tin that turned out to be beans and vegan sausages, cooked on our solar stove on the roof of the squat. Downstairs I waited in line to use the community deck, anxiously tapping my foot and looking at the old patched LCD of the beeper, waiting to see if a second call would signal that the run had been cancelled. It hadn’t. When I finally got to sit down at the ancient computer and check my mail, the coded message was clear. I had barely enough time to put together a team and run the five blocks to the target. There was Otter, our physical pen expert. A tall, lanky dark-skinned bloke, he got his name from his unusually extensive body hair. That and the fact that he was the only one of us who could swim. Jewel considered herself to be a ‘leet hacker and at least had a discerning eye. She usually acted as appraiser for our runs, helping us decide what was worth taking and what should be left ...

Solar power is often discussed as one of the most promising forms of renewable energy, but it has a problem. It only generates energy during the day. This isn't too much of a problem, because a lot of our energy needs also happen during the day. However, there is a peak of energy consumption in the evening, when everyone gets home from work and sits down to watch Netflix and eat their microwave dinner for one. You can see the effect above, in the famous duck curve. So called because it looks like a duck. As well as a lack of energy in the evening, you can see that increased solar capacity leads to an excess of capacity during the day. My immediate thought is that we need to reschedule our day. Let's make sure we do all the high energy activities in the middle of the day, and accept that evenings are going to be an expensive time to plug in and play. But what if we could mitigate that problem a little? If we could extend the peak of solar by just a few hours, it ...