I get it. Some of you out there don’t give a hoot about sustainability. I figured that out when people started unsubscribing from email subscriptions to my post feed. Sure, it could have been people switching over to an RSS feed reader, but it coincided with my posts about the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 summit (I may have gotten carried away with the writing).

For a while I was writing only about analog stuff, electrical engineering stuff and workplace stuff. To be honest, when the recession hit it was difficult to think of much else; when our security feels threatened (job, personal or otherwise), we revert to more basic creatures. It’s funny that we care most about the environment (the population as a whole) only when there is nothing  wrong with the economy. That is, if you don’t include gas prices; it seemed like we definitely felt threatened at $4 a gallon for unleaded. Anyway, I focused a little more on the electrical side of things whereas this site started out more on the renewable energy side of things.

And then I had the opportunity to attend the summit and it was really great. I met some awesome people and really got to see a side of Cleveland I never thought I’d see. It renewed my interest in renewable energy applications/technology and got me excited about the prospects of working on it in Cleveland. But I wasn’t completely satisfied with the summit. I found my experiences a few weeks later at a wind energy talk with Larry Viterna of the Great Lakes Energy Institute to be much more satisfying. Sitting and discussing the technical issues involved in a renewable energy system is much more appealing to me than going out in the community and rallying support for the idea (though I definitely understand the importance of doing so). I always feel that I am getting more done when I discuss the technical aspects of a project than the logistical aspects; it is not realistic to ever ignore one or the other, I just feel that I can contribute more to the technical side, due to my interest.

As a result of all of those experiences, I think I figured something out: I am much more interested in renewable energy and the technology behind it than the sustainability movement and working on how best to implement the methodologies. I completely agree with the concept of sustainability and try to lessen my personal impact by improving the energy efficiency of my house and changing my personal habits. However, I view sustainability as a management field whereas I view renewable energy as a technological field (a simplification I’m sure); right now, I am much more interested in technical matters than management matters.

As for the jumble of sustainability and renewable energy talk on this site and others, it’s important to realize they are different topics, yet intertwined. One cannot exist without the other: sustainable businesses require low cost, non-polluting power and renewable energy has greater demand when sustainable companies want a renewable source of power. As such, I plan to write only about the renewable energy topics, unless there are implications with sustainable business/life practices.

So while I do not plan on going out and knocking on the doors of businesses and homes to start pushing them to adopt sustainability practices, I do want to relay why I think they are important. Moreover, I want to point out the concepts I would embrace when I start my company (someday in the future). And even if I was completely detached from the business world, I feel that the benefits of adopting sustainability are relevant in my personal life and can have some serious implications for the future.

1. It saves you money — The zero-waste concept is a powerful one; it also can save a ridiculous amount of money for you or your business if you properly plan an execute a plan of action. If you don’t have to pay for waste removal, don’t have to pay extra for unused raw materials and possibly even get paid for recycling some of your spent resources, you can save or net a significant amount of cash.
2. It makes you less of a burden on the planet – This point doesn’t have any immediate benefits, but makes sense. Look all around you at every living thing: they all give back to their environment in some way. Humans aren’t great at matching this performance, but there is a movement to begin consuming less and being less of a burden on the planet.
3. It’s not hard — Yes, you will have to watch your production processes and make sure you aren’t unnecessarily creating waste. Yes, you might have to pay a little bit more for clean energy from the electric company or have renewable energy capability installed at your facility/home. Yes, you will have to recycle instead of sending it to a landfill. But once the mindset is in place it becomes second nature.
4. It saves you money — I can’t stress idea enough. Sustainable business practices make money. That’s why you see corporate giants like Walmart joining the party and delivering added value to their shareholders.

I plan to continue to focus on renewable energy research and applications, as it is where my greatest interests lie in the whole scope of the sustainability movement. I know there are many many more components that I will not be able to contribute to as a leader but will be able to adhere to as an ecologically concious citizen. What do you enjoy more? The renewable energy side of things, the sustainability side of things or none of the above? Let me know in the comments!

I must say, I’m impressed. My questions from day one have almost all been answered in one way or another. A few things really caught my attention today, some of which I didn’t really expect.

To start we had Ray Anderson of Interface. If you would have asked me what the company was just from the name I would have immediately jumped to technology. However, that’s not the case; Ray is in the business of carpets…and has been for 30 years or so. He also took a pledge, both for himself and for his company about 15 years back. A pledge to reduce environmental impact and do no harm. And they have succeeded so far (I didn’t get the feeling they were planning on quitting anytime soon). Here’s some of their broad stroke statistics on how they have progressed over the past 15 years:

• 76% reduction in waste since 1996
• 74% less water used to produce the carpet tiles
• 44% less total energy used in production
• 60% less fossil fuels in production
• 27% use of renewable energy for production worldwide
• 100% use of renewable energy for production in Europe
• 24% recyclable or bio-based materials.
• $405 million saved due to these reductions since 1994

Ray went on to explain the importance on reducing the overall impact of the technosphere on the biosphere (his words). He maintained that if we continue using technology in the wasteful, disposable ways we currently are, the future looks bleak. However, if we bring technology on as a reducer of waste instead of a primary contributor, great progress can be made towards a very low usage, need-driven (as opposed to want-driven) society. If I had to sum up the wonderful presentation by Ray Anderson, it would be this: do no harm in business and you will succeed. The results he has produced with his company Interface are a great example of renewable, sustainable practices producing a better shareholder solution and a better company for customers and the environment.

From there, we went on to explore the next stage of the AI process, the “Dream” stage. I believe this was an important component, trying to postively visualize where we believed the city could end up and finding a creative way of expressing it. There were many bold dreams of a Cleveland of tomorrow mixed in with a many themes that resonated throughout the presentations (more on those themes later). Some were sillier than others, which I have first-hand experience with: I was the captain of the Best Times 2019 boat.

Once the creative fervor was scaled back a bit, we smoothly transitioned into the design phase. This was by far the most exciting part and really what I had been waiting for. It is the meat of any AI gathering; when stuff really begins to come together and progress is finally made. We first were reminded about good brainstorming concepts. Personally, the concepts and ideas presented on how to brainstorm reminded me that this entire process was a great example of a crowd-sourced kind of activity. Key among the concepts was the notion having a multitude of ideas, so many that your head would spin. The concept is that among a large large group of ideas, a few winners would rise to the top, along with some accompanying themes. From there the groups would be able to identify the favorite ideas, group other thematic elements and begin to focus intensely on the top ideas. Hopefully, they can all be implemented into a single prototype that would later be presented as a final product, at least as a tangible result of the design/brainstorming process. Dr. Cooperrider used Ideo, the design firm and prior client of his, as an example of rapid prototyping and idea generation. I had heard about them previously but plan on finding out more about the world-renowned design firm.

Before going further, I think it’s important to list of the top-level themes that were identified from the “Dream” stage implemented earlier in the day:

• Advanced Energy Research
• Advanced Energy Generation
• Advanced Materials and Manufacturing
• Communication Campaign and Branding of the final ideas of the summit
• Engaging 1.6 Million People
• Fostering Social Capital
• Green Buildings
• Health
• Vacant Land Use
• Local Foods
• Maintaining Post Summit Momentum
• Metrics of Success (for the summit)
• Public Compact (or Manifesto if you will)
• Social Entrepreneurialship
• Strategic Partnerships and Learning
• Sustainable Business Innovation
• Transportation
• Waste to Profit
• Water
• World Class Sustainability Education

As new visitors to the site might guess (given the graphic at the top of my site) , I chose the very first topic. As an engineer really interested in renewable energy (and how it can be implemented), I felt it necessary to talk about the research aspect, as opposed to the generation, of the energy. I feel the latter can be left up to others for a time when the energy is cheap enough to be widespread; until it has reached the tipping point of being more economical to use renewables over other forms of energy, the research will never really be done. Past that, once commercial interests begin using renewables on a regular basis, investing in efficiencies will be a self-sustaining activity and one that only adds to the new benefit of renewable energy technologies. I plan on saving the results from today’s brainstorming session for a post tomorrow or the day after, simply because of the length of this post and in order to report on our finished idea, as opposed to an undeveloped seed of an idea.

While day 2 of Sustainable Cleveland 2019 was effective (OK, and a little bit fun, I’ll admit), I think tomorrow will really decide the final outcome of the entire summit. Without concrete action plans, the whole thing is for naught. The fears that the summit is actually just another run-of-the-mill convention will or will not come to fruition. If instead we take action on the plans we have in place tomorrow and the next day and the day after, then we will truly be able to say we have achieved something. I look forward to experiencing and writing about tomorrow.

I will be attending Sustainable Cleveland 2019 later this week. It has given me a renewed interest in renewable energy and has really been great motivation to learn more about my city.

The summit will be a gathering of more that 600 people from different walks of life in Cleveland, all trying to figure out what we need to do in order to become a leader in various fields of sustainability. The 2019 part of the title refers to the Cleveland 30 year from now, when all of the areas of sustainability will hopefully have been achieved. These sustainability initiatives could include:

• Renewable energy production
• Advanced energy (infrastructure)
• Advance material fabrication and advanced manufacturing operations
• Sustainable, local food sources
• Green buildings (LEED certifications)
• Stringent environmental policies, especially to protect our water source, Lake Erie
• Sustainable Business Practices

So what can we do as a group of non-policy makers to actually drive any change in this city? A question I’m not completely sure of the answer. At the most basic level, I think this summit will give the citizens and drivers of change in the city a chance to tell the administration what they think. In fact, the entire summit is being hosted by the mayor, Frank Jackson, so I am guessing that’s exactly what he’s looking for. Beyond the basics, there is a methodology being implemented known as Appreciative Inquiry; I’m not into organizational behavior, but from what I’ve read it’s a popular method. The leading researcher in this field, David Cooperrider, will also be present at the summit to lead and guide us. I was surprised to later learn that Dr. Cooperrider is a sitting professor at my alma mater, Case Western Reserve University. From what I have learned about the method so far (which in all honesty seems a bit touchy-feely to me), it is about bringing people together while they are still excited about a prospective idea, instead of after problems have developed and that same group is only trying to fix the problem. It has proven successful for many groups thus far so I am eager to learn more about it.

Although this was the first time they decided to host such a summit, the organizers required an application for entry, to ensure people who were signing up were serious about their pledge to attend (the summit requires a 3 day commitment). I thought including some excerpts of my application would help illustrate why I think attending a summit like this is important (Warning: I was very interested in attending, so I felt it necessary to toot my own horn a bit. You’ve been warned) :

Describe what draws you to this summit.

I understand that a 10 year plan is only as good as the people that are writing and later following it. I want to be an integral part of the planning progress so I can help shape a future city that is sustainable and one that I can continue to be proud of. I am interested in meeting others that are passionate about moving Cleveland  towards a future that is sustainable, successful and forward-looking. The people at this summit will be the leaders of the next phase of Cleveland’s evolution and I would like to start working with them as soon as possible.

What unique aspects will you bring to the summit (education, life experience, etc.)?

I currently write a blog that discusses electrical engineering and renewable energy. I write on topics relating to my profession (analog electrical engineering), my generation (Gen Y) and I tie it into content about emerging renewable technologies. I also have a unique perspective, being a student that left the area for a job after college, thereby contributing to the “brain drain” that has affected much of Cleveland; I have since been one of the few that has returned (in 2008) so that I could help contribute to the city and pursue my passion at a company that is a leader in the measurement industry. My work at Keithley Instruments has given me insight into the needs of renewable energy producers and allowed me to work with some of the finest engineering minds in Cleveland.

I feel that I bring a fresh perspective on the technological aspect of building a sustainable Cleveland. As someone who works in an industry that serves renewable energy and as someone who aspires to work more directly in the renewable energy sector, I feel that I can help define where Cleveland will be able to best capitalize on new technologies and strong business opportunities. These will drive the future growth of Cleveland as both an economic hub and as a model for hosting sustainable and eco-conscious companies.

What do you think are Cleveland’s biggest strengths or best assets?

I believe that the students graduating from local Universities will be the foundation upon which the next phase of Cleveland will be built. Enticing them to stay in Cleveland and encouraging them to create new companies will generate revenue and jobs in Cleveland. The technology and companies that are created will drive local development and help bring in more residents and investment. Furthermore, I believe the Universities that are producing these students are an asset and that they should be assisted in post-graduate retention and building businesses out of commercialized research efforts.

A second more obvious but yet untapped resource is Lake Erie. In terms of energy, I believe Lake Erie can produce a great deal of clean and sustainable power for residents in Cleveland and surrounding areas. From a sustainability perspective, the availability of fresh water must be considered and protected, as this will become an increasingly scarce resource as the world warms. Additionally, the wildlife and food sources the lake provides must be taken into consideration when planning for a more sustainable city and region.

What do you envision for Cleveland in the year 2019?

I envision a vibrant job market based on renewable energy companies that have sprung up over the past 10 years. More importantly, I see educational and research hotbeds such as Case Western Reserve being used as a launch point for multiple new industries and technologies. I see renewable energies being harvested from Lake Erie in the form of wind turbines and wave harvesting. I see axillary industries such as test & measurements adding even more to local economies and highlighting what Cleveland has to offer the world. I see tight-knit communities encouraging conservation and recycling and teaching these concepts in schools. I see programs in place to help every city have affordable recycling. I imagine local and regional governments encouraging restructuring and consolidating existing infrastructure as opposed to creating new sprawl. I see those same governments encouraging outside investment in the newly reconstructed and consolidated areas and in the new companies that have helped revitalize it . And hopefully, I see my own renewable energy company creating products that change the way we consume energy or how we cleanly produce it for use in energy efficient devices.

I feel that if nothing else, I will get the opportunity to meet others interested in sustainability and renewable energy in Cleveland. That alone could provide a great foundation for forming companies and coalitions later to help advance the city towards a sustainable future. On the other hand, I am hopeful that our work using Appreciative Inquiry will help lay a groundwork for where the city needs to go and what we need to do as a community to achieve our goals. I know there will be many planned follow up activities and I plan on discussing them more on here later. I would hope that my albeit limited audience might help to publicize the actions the city will take in the future.

Are you attending the Sustainable Cleveland 2019 summit? If you are, please let me know! If not but you have ideas that you think I should try to talk about while I am there, please let me know in the comments. I am interested to share what ideas I already have and if I can bring more voices than my own to the summit, I think it could be beneficial for everyone.

First off, a smart grid does not yet exist. It’s not exactly dumb, but it’s unwieldy and needs some help getting itself under control.

So let’s think of the electricity grid as an elephant.

It’s big, it’s powerful and it takes a ton of work to get it moving in one direction or another. It’s also really expensive to get it from one place to another. If you want to move an elephant over a distance of hundreds of miles, it’s going to want some peanuts, after all.

A Smart Grid in this analogy is the trainer that controls the elephant.  The consumer is a person off in the distance, holding a peanut. And elephants love peanuts, so they will naturally go where they are. The trainer might be able to guide the elephant towards the people willing to pay the most peanuts. The trainer might also be able to tell the consumer to save their peanuts because getting the elephant at certain times of days will be expensive. And for the health of the elephant, he can say “enough is enough” and start to scale back how many peanuts the elephant is really allowed to eat that day. In the end though, the trainer is only guiding the elephant. The things that truly are controlling the elephant are how much energy he has and how many peanuts people are willing to offer him.

So how does an elephant relate back to the actual power grid? Well, think of a typical coal power plant. The coal is used to heat water, the water turns to steam, the steam turns a turbine and then the water is cooled and recycled to be used for another cycle. The AC power is distributed to transformers that step up the voltage of the signal to thousands of volts before the power is pushed through transmission lines. When you flip a switch in your house, you allow current to flow into whatever device is “requesting” power, thereby utilizing some small portion of the total energy on the grid. Now, if there were 10,000 people trying to turn on their clothes dryers simultaneously, the system will likely not be able to keep up. More power stations could come online, but the instantaneous need would instead likely cause blackouts and brownouts to occur, leaving customers without power. So what they do is try to curb everyone turning on their clothes dryer at the same point every day by charging a lot of money for using the power then. They say, “Why not run the dryer at night? We’ll make it worth your while!”. The Smart Grid/Trainer is there to try and balance the needs of the consumer and the ability of the power generators. It will hopefully save people money and allow power generation facilities to avoid turning to readily available energy (coal, natural gas) to fulfill the demand.

A smart grid has a potential to bring a lot of engineering jobs, especially in waning job markets such as the US. I plan to write more about the Smart Grid because I truly believe it will bring some innovation and employment to whoever jumps on the technology first. There are a lot of pieces to the eventual solution–some more interesting than other–but all deserve analysis and consideration in determining what will result in the most efficient eventual system.

Do you know much about the Smart Grid? Have you experienced any development or funding activities for it yet? Please let us all know in the comments!

Thanks to exfordy for the photo

Irony is having a blog post in your queue with a title such as this one and just sitting on it for weeks on end. Luckily I’ve been trying some things instead of studying them, it just so happens that those things have nothing to do with this site. I hope to discuss those on this site soon.

I am a glutton for knowledge.  Part of it is my fear of looking silly in front of co-workers when I don’t know the answer to something. Part of it is feeling like my knowledge base is lacking and the thought that I can always learn or teach myself something new. But when presented with a new challenging situation that requires you to learn the question is always the same: where do you start? Do you jump in and try it out? Or sit back and study what others have tried so as to not duplicate their mistakes?

There are two extremes

1. You study so much and try to take in so much that you become paralyzed by information
   • I feel like this happens to Generation Y more than other generations. Not because we are dumber than others. Instead, I think we are so accustomed to having all of the necessary knowledge required to solve a problem at our fingertips (i.e. Internet, ChrisGammell.com, etc).
   • Academic thought processes often begin with simplistic assumptions about the model you’re considering. Analyzing these over and over can be very time consuming and can quickly become too complex to handle. Even analyzing the minutiae associated with a single transistor can be mind boggling. What happens when you try and expand that knowledge to 10, 10k or 10M transistors?
   • You over simulate, over analyze, over think a problem past the point of diminishing returns. An example would be designing a new type of toothbrush. You can model the toothbrush, the bristles, the handle, the shapes, everything; you can even go out and get ideas from your toothy customers about what they think they would like or dislike about your design. But until you prototype your new type of toothbrush and put it through testing (product testing, tooth scrubbing ability, will it shatter in someone’s mouth), then all of the testing and surveying in the world won’t matter.
2. You have little knowledge of a problem or situation that you just start changing stuff randomly and keep changing until something works…without realizing the consequences.
   • This seems to be the modus operandi of the inexperienced, but not necessarily the uneducated. A gutsy, recently graduated electrical engineer may emerge from the cocoon of the academic environment ready to go out and change the world. And every resistor value of a circuit board they encounter. And mess with the capacitors. And change the model of the op amps. Oh, and don’t forget to swap out transistors. “What?? It still doesn’t work? But why?”
   • This can be as much a symptom of engineering bravado as it is bad conditioning. If the person involved has always had simple problems placed in front of them that have obvious or at least semi-obvious solutions (ahem, most introductory electronics labs), they will fix the “broken” component and pat themselves on the back. In the real world, that “broken” component isn’t broken at all. It’s just out of spec and you can’t figure out for the life of you why that unit you’re testing refuses to turn on anymore after increasing 5 degrees internal temperature.
   • You forget/refuse to read the manual. Granted, some of the greatest “tinkerers” out there can just magically turn a knob and get a broken piece of equipment to work. But the reason they can do that is because they actually turned the wrong knob about 1000 times the last time they tried to fix something like this and that knob did absolutely nothing.

A Good Mix (for me, at least):

[STUDY] My own personal mix when it comes to circuit problems starts with the problem definition. Understanding the problem is so much more important than what you study, how long you study it or how you begin to test out your ideas for how to fix it. If you don’t understand what the real problem is all that later work is for nothing! However, I try to understand the issue without going overboard and trying to understand every single minute detail; this could be just as bad as studying a possible solution for hours on end.

[TRY] Once I have a grasp on what the problem is, I try the obvious stuff. You’d be surprised how often it can be the really dumb things that trip you up. And those might not even be the problem you’re trying to fix. You could try to troubleshoot a blank screen for 20 minutes, throwing your best ideas and debugging techniques at it before you realize, “Whoops!” you never plugged in the display cable. Or you can’t get your software to work once you load it onto your electromechanical whizzbang toy…but you actually loaded the wrong version of the software or the toy doesn’t have any batteries in it. The silly things will waste your time and throw you off the trail of the real problem if you’re not careful.

[STUDY] Next is researching the problem to see if it has happened before. Some of you out there will have unique situations, like making a new analog chip that no one has ever made before. But I’d guess more of you will be encountering problems that can be researched. Even the analog chip designers will see issues that are similar on some level to other products or models within a corporation. Oftentimes the best troubleshooters are those who are able to compartmentalize problems and then analyze where those problems came from and research how others have fixed it in the past. I’d rather have a boring problem that someone else can easily tell me how to fix than one that I can’t figure out at all.

[TRY] After trying and then studying all of the really obvious stuff, I start to go back to my resources–either online or in print–and start to search for information on the topic. Obviously the online information is much easier to search, but I also have some trusted books that I turn to on a regular basis. I might see a chunk of a circuit that looks familiar and try flipping through the pages to see if I can’t find a similar circuit. If that doesn’t work or the circuit looks extremely foreign to me, I’ll go back and study some of the basic properties of the components within the circuit to see if there might be a certain property the designer used that I have overlooked. And if all else fails, I’ll start to ask around to try and gather others’ knowledge of the circuit. True, this isn’t quite studying, but can often be more effective. I try and balance asking others for assistance only after I have tried to solve the problem on my own and not made any progress. I think it is important for my personal growth to struggle with a circuit before asking for help and I think it’s important to not get in the habit of running off and asking for an answer so I don’t waste the other person’s time. However, I don’t want to be so stubborn that I waste my time and the time of those who are paying me.

[STUDY] Alright, so now you know what the circuit is and how it sort of works. But you also know that you need to change the circuit in order to make it work better. What now? Next I would try and write out any equations I know that are relevant to the circuit. Not necessarily any equation, that could end up being a waste of time. Keep it simple and make sure you know where the currents and voltages are in different parts of the circuit. If there are components (such as capacitors) in the circuit, include basic equations that can help to describe their behavior. If you don’t need 3 chalkboards to do so, try and figure out the transfer function (relationship from input to output). If you have a circuit that is too complicated either break it down into smaller pieces and try and figure out the transfer function or take the plunge and try it out in SPICE. This will help you to better understand how the circuit might behave when presented with certain inputs. All of these exercises are done in order to present you with a solid starting ground for when you actually construct the circuit, so you know what to look for and what behaviors to expect.

[TRY] After all of the studying and simulating and pondering about this circuit, you should have at least enough knowledge to begin building up and trying the circuit. This is an important step in any circuit creation process because of the nuances the real circuit will show you. Perhaps you forgot to model a realistic op amp in your SPICE simulation and it was outputting 500 A. Perhaps you didn’t realize in your equations that a resistor will have different properties depending on how much current you actually put through it and that your circuit happens to be particularly susceptible to those changes. Perhaps you completely disregarded a simple concept such as bandwidth and your circuit is now oscillating so hard it breaks. All of these things will be uncovered when you begin to build up your circuit and try out different inputs. Once you realize what some of the realistic problems are you can go back and modify your assumptions and models and start to delve into whatever topics you believe will get your circuit to the optimum operating point.

Finding the right balance between slowing down and taking your time to figure out a circuit or jumping in and seeing what works can be a fine art. Sometimes projects are on a very tight schedule and need a product cranked out the next day (think startup). Sometimes you have one shot at making a final product or else your company will fail (think chip fabrication). Finding your own personal mix will take time and trial and error.

What is your personal mix of trying vs. studying that gets the best results? Leave your tips and tricks in the comments!