Edison Almeida story
From Anything Goes Wiki
Edison Almeida's Story
Intention
I intend to help people help each other.
Once I had a dream were I hear a voice: "use your energy wisely toolmaker".
Tools facilitate work, amplify our energy. I am a toolmaker so I go make the tool.
energy -> natural resources -> nature -> environment
If we make a tool to solve energy, we solve our environmental problem, that's the fact of the matter! I shouted!"
After this dream I was dead sure that We live in the environment, We are part of It, We are It, We are One. If we harm the environment we harm Ourselves. If the environment is sick, we are sick. If we help the environment, we help ourselves. There is no reason to burn non-renewable natural resources when we have infinite supply of renewable natural resources: "Green energy".
When we help each other, we have the power to dwarf any problem, to make the impossible into possible.
Belief
I believe we can make our dreams reality.
I believe people need feedback.
We are six billion people, soon to be nine billion. Each one of us has a different dream. What would the world look like if we all had the freedom to make our dreams real? What could we do with abundance of creative power?
We are largely influenced by our surroundings, our environment, the people we meet, the information we assimilate. We experience this world with our senses and we respond: we make choices. The better the feedback we get, the better we experience life.
I believe we live to make our dreams reality, and the only way to do that is to follow our heart.
My People
My people need each other's help.
We should not isolate ourselves from this world, ignore our surroundings, pretend that others don't exist, that others don't need help, that we don't need help from others. We grow together as one society, one organism. Our unique creative power might be what the world has been waiting for. Like a flower transforms its surroundings into a flowered garden, our creative power has to blossom.
Invention
My invention gives people feedback: SKYNJA - Icelandic word for "to sense, to feel, to perceive, to make oneself aware of".
With feedback we have power to correct our course, to learn with our mistakes. Feedback enables us to make choices. Feedback is insight. Feedback is power.
An Icelandic person would explain it: " To 'skynja' something, means
to be aware of sth,
to sense something,
to perceive sth.
For example if there is a ghost in the house, you cannot see it, cannot hear it but you are aware of it (skynja).
It is a verb, means that you sense sth not too strong but you sense it. It is a good word, it is good to sense the presence of a ghost for example, people who sense (skynja) things like that are deep thinkers and extra aware of their surroundings."
Thanks to Bill for asking his Icelandic cousin for the meaning of the word "skynja".
Intention
I intend to help people help each other choose when to use power.
SKYNJA intends to provide people actionable feedback based on how electricity (power) is used real-time.
What I hear from friends is: "This is a fantastic idea", and from professional investors and industry people: "the market is too crowded and fragmented, and regulations are tough".
A simple idea with almost impossible execution... Meanwhile, the underserved people is waiting for a solution, and don't know when the system needs virtual power.
If you are an entrepreneur in this space, do you also receive this type of feedback?
Well, let's keep on trying.
Belief
I believe if people understand their power, they will choose wisely.
Today, our electric system is responsible for 50% (and growing) of our energy use.
I believe that if we measure electricity end-use (at the device that is using it), we could incentive people to turn off a hair dryer, a blender, electric stove, clothes dryer, or any other appliance during peak hour.
Red light: Don't use it now, maybe in one hour.
Green light: Go ahead and turn on your stove!
We can warn people they have the choice to help reduce peak-hour environmental harm if they can put off the use of that stuff for a while.
I believe people can choose when they are equipped with actionable information.
Just by doing small things, the net effect is the reduction of the cost to operate the electric grid, making electricity available for more people; making electric cars (80% energy efficient compared to 10% combustion engine efficiency) technically and economically possible.
My People
My people are Green Heroes, trying to find their own way to help.
My people are renters that pay utility bills of old appliances, because their landlords have no economic incentive to replace the old refrigerator.
My people get no immediate reward for doing the right thing.
My people want better quality of life, and they want to help.
They go the extra mile. They learn. They share what they learn. They turn off the lights, they grow food on their backyard, they get a job in the energy industry, they work for no pay at their start-ups, they buy organic food, they blog to their people, they go on cross-country trips in all-electric Tesla roadsters to prove it is possible. They are doing whatever they can on the best of their knowledge. They know it is time to action, not to wait for a given solution.
My people want to use more electricity to make their lives better, however they can't afford the environmental impact and inefficiency of our current electric system.
In addition I believe I can reward my people for helping each other.
Invention
A Virtual Power Plant
SKYNJA (Icelandic: "To sense") is a sensor network linked to social media to crowd-source energy management in the most scalable, cost effective, reliable, and user friendly way possible. Faster, better, cheaper than anything else out there.
On the other hand Skynja is also a Virtual Power Plant.
"The best solution suggested so far is a concept known as the "virtual power plant", says Lang. Each virtual plant consists of several hundred or thousand microgenerators lumped together in cyberspace into a unit comparable to that of a large power station." June 2009 by Peter Lang, at EDF Energy Networks, the Distribution Network Operator for London, East and South East of England
We are currently running a simulation of our concept at Carbonrally, to participate enroll: http://www.carbonrally.com/users/29180/referral/team
Also, vote for our official challenge, so it can be released to the mainstream community: http://www.carbonrally.com/suggestions
With SKYNJA we crowd-source demand response building a Virtual Power Plant. SKYNJA is the "EnerNOC of the rest of us", as my friend John said.
I know here in Boston I can build the right team to help make SKYNJA a reality: advisors, investors, scientists, graduate students, entrepreneurs, passionated people. They are my team, they are my co-flow. I even received a shout out from Governor Patrick, something I never imagined happening in my life.
SKYNJA
My Virtual Power
"At no previous period of history has mankind been so well equipped nor made such efforts to reduce its multitudes to order. We have 'mass movements' - no longer the hordes streaming down from the forests of the north or the steppes of Asia, but 'the Million' scientifically assembled. The Million in rank and file on the parade ground; the Million standardised in the factory; the Million motorised - and all this only ending up with Communism and National-Socialism and the most ghastly fetters. So we get the crystal instead of the cell; the ant-hill instead of brotherhood. Instead of the upsurge of consciousness which we expected, it is mechanisation that seems to emerge inevitably from totalisation.
Eppur si muove!
In the presence of such a profound perversion of the rules of noogenesis, I hold that our reaction should be not one of despair but of a determination to re-examine ourselves. When an energy runs amok, the engineer, far from questioning the power itself, simply works out his calculations afresh to see how it can be brought better under control. Monstrous as it is, is not modern totalitarianism really the distortion of something magnificent, and thus quite near the truth? There can be no doubt of it: the great human machine is designed to work and must work - by producing a super-abundance of mind. If it does not work, or rather if it produces only matter, this means that it has gone into reverse." Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man''
