The OnSupply project was inspired by a run on the beach at TTW5 (March 2013) and then launched at TTW6 (October 2013).  OnSupply studied awareness of renewable energy supply.  The project name suggests a change form thinking of energy as something that is “on demand”, there when  we want it, we need to think of utilising energy “on supply”, when it is there.

As part of the process of thinking about this, myself, Adrian Friday, Maria Ferrari and others started to think about issues around renewable energy and the fact that storage technology was lagging behind production, meaning that sometimes wind turbines were paid to stop producing.  In any largely renewable future that has enough renewable capacity for storage to offset the periods of low supply, there were bound to be periods of over-supply.

Rather then seeing this as a problem, we realised it was an opportunity, just like the feasts at harvest time, we need to think of ways to radically re-imagine industry and domestic like that can use these periods of abundance.

For more read the working paper “Abundance a new approach to energy sustainability“.