[p2p-research] thinking about leapfrogging

[M. Fioretti]

Preface: a little personal anecdote is in order here. My computer
folder of "things I'd like to write an article about some day"
contains a file titled "Reverting the pipes". I wrote it not later
than 2002, because I remember reading the dust jacket of the italian
edition of the "Hydrogen economy" in early 2003 and thinking "rats,
this Rifkin guy stole my brilliant, revolutionary concept" :-) That
file reads:

> "reverting the pipes", that is being , each one of us, both self
> sufficient "consumer" and, at least part time, supplier of everybody
> else. In every field, not just web publishing or software
> development, starting from energy

I mention this to make clear that, even if I have only recently met
all of you and even if I've found myself several time playing the
resident skeptic, I'm not trolling, I am genuinely interested, and not
by yesterday, in finding solutions to the current centralized,
massified society. On to Vinay's message now.

On Thu, Oct 02, 2008 12:07:16 PM +0000, Vinay Gupta wrote:

> http://smallisprofitable.org Proves beyond a reasonable doubt that
> if you were providing first-world quality electrical services today,
> from a standing start (no grid etc. already) you would provide
> better services at lower cost using a decentralized energy
> generation strategy involving a lot (but not 100% yet!) renewables.

That's no surprise and it's true of almost all production activities,
isn't it? From car production to single building or whole cities, it's
pretty intuitive that if one could start from scratch without any
limit imposed from the past a better result would ensue.

This said, my remarks in the "notes on p2p production..." are not
really around "energy generation strategy". I started liking the idea
of decentralizing that 6 years ago, see above. What I pointed out are
the limits of:

- **production** of millions of microgenerators cheap and
    sophisticated enough to make a decentralized energy production
    strategy viable. Can that production happen in a P2P,
    decentralized way? note that
    http://smallisprofitable.org/ExecutiveSummary.html implicitly
    acknowledges this problem:

       "Some distributed technologies like solar cells and fuel cells
       are still made in low volume and can therefore cost more than
       competing sources"

- **management and transportation to medium/long distances** of all
    that distributedly-generated energy. If you want to minimize
    energy consumption, make the system more robust and above all
    power the plants who mass-produce the microgenerators, the
    microprocessors to control them and so on, you need a grid (or an
    inter-grid of local grids, if you prefer, the substance doesn't
    change) which transfers energy from place to place, and it better
    be a centrally coordinated grid to work.

So the fact that it is possible for everybody to become an energy
microproducer doesn't necessarily mean that you can really leapfrog
from cooking and lighting your home with wood to an advanced society
which, energy-wise, is 100% P2P.

Marco

-- 
Your own civil rights and the quality of your life heavily depend on how
software is used *around* you:            http://digifreedom.net/node/84