Futureworld brings you Mindbullets: News from the Future, to spark strategic thinking about leadership, innovation and digital disruption. These fictitious scenarios aim to challenge conventional mindsets and promote understanding of the future context for business.
March 15 2023
Everybody knows that solar power is the most efficient way to generate electricity — and the most affordable. But how do you balance surplus solar with peak demand at night, when the sun isn’t shining? You need storage solutions, and that’s the problem. Energy storage is costly and inefficient. Even the latest battery packs have a limited cycle life, and green hydrogen only makes sense at the gigawatt scale.
Until now, we’ve been buying and selling our excess energy to and from our neighbours on the nascent “energy internet”, but that doesn’t work when everyone has more than they need at the same time, and even the utilities don’t want it. Imagine if there was a way to turn surplus daytime solar power into digital data, and back again, as often as you like, lossless and error free.
Well there is, and anyone can do it, at any scale. With bitcoin batteries, you simply generate bitcoins when the sun shines, and buy the power you need when it doesn’t. And if your grid provider accepts bitcoin as payment, it’s a seamless exercise. It’s way better than degrading your lithium battery with every charge cycle, or throwing away free energy from the sun.
That’s the beauty of a digital asset that can be created electronically with just electricity as input, and an internet connection of course. Digital storage is 100% efficient, and there’s no data loss, ever. Cryptocurrencies can be volatile, but bitcoin has established itself as the benchmark, which is why everyone uses it. Dispatching electricity over power lines is costly and difficult, but bitcoin can easily be sent from one part of the planet, where the sun is shining, to another, where it isn’t — and back again, when the sunshine has shifted.
Bitcoin batteries. It’s the new way to power — and finance — the energy internet.
Date published: March 10 2021
Solar power goes viral
Rooftop, backyard and portable solar is the new meme
March 15 2022
The biggest energy revolution in 150 years has arrived gradually, then suddenly. Now it’s here. Personal solar power has displaced central utilities completely for individuals, homes and small businesses.
What’s more, large businesses and corporate campuses are also contributing to the energy internet, sharing their excess power in slack times, and buying back from the smart grid when they need to. Utility-scale generation has shrunk to essential services only, heavily subsidised by the government.
The remarkable thing is, this revolution in energy didn’t come from organised business or government programmes, or even environmental groups. Like the smartphone boom, it was driven by innovation and empowered individuals. Like a YouTube video or a Facebook meme, solar just went viral.
Africans were the first to embrace cheap, portable solar packs, mainly to charge their phones and give them reading light at night. Most villages in Africa still don’t have any grid power, and LED lighting and phones are invariably kept going with batteries and small solar panels.
At the other end of the scale, Californians, Australians and Germans have embraced rooftop solar in a big way; nowadays you just don’t design a roof without considering where the panels will go.
It’s a culture shift that was evident to future-thinkers, but has caught many old-school utilities and state-owned enterprises off guard. There’s just no demand for traditional “baseload” power any more!
Date published: March 10 2016
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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