Dans le cadre de mes activités professionnelles, je co-publie aujourd’hui un article dans le dossier Objets connectés du site Smart-grids de la CRE, relayé par EY.
J’y explore les applications et impacts des objets connectés et de l’internet des objets dès aujourd’hui et à attendre dans le secteur de l’énergie dans les pays développés.
Bonne lecture !
Dans le cadre de mes activités professionnelles, je co-publie un article sur le site Smart-grids de la Commission de Régulation de l’Energie (CRE) et relayé sur le site de mon cabinet EY.
Souvent vu comme une contrainte pour le réseau électrique en raison de sa forte consommation et de sa mobilité rendant la charge peu prévisible, le véhicule électrique pourrait se révéler un levier d’optimisation des réseaux. Comment ? A condition qu’il puisse reverser son énergie sur le réseau électrique, il pourrait agir comme une batterie de secours en raison de la désynchronisation de ses besoins de charge. Les véhicules pourraient charger la nuit et participer à l’alimentation électrique d’une ville dans la journée ou aux heures de pointe, tout en respectant les besoins de déplacement de leurs propriétaires.
Une vision… pas si futuriste que ça puisque les premiers projets pilotes de développent partout dans le monde, comme ici le département de la Défense américain qui envisage le remplacement d’une partie de sa flotte si les essais sur la base de l’Armée de l’Air de Los Angeles s’avèrent concluants.
Bonne lecture !
Pour bien démarrer cette année 2014, je vous propose un article à propos de cette start-up dont je connais bien les associés et qui décalque sur l’acte d’investissement les fonctionnements collaboratifs qui nous intéressent. Un cas bien concret de “crowdinvesting” !
Bonne lecture sur mon blog Un voyage de Serendip !
Last time I was writing about 3D printing and saying it was going to revolution our economy because it leverages the move towards peer-to-peer systems that appears in our society. So what about 4D printing? What more will it offer, what more will it change?
Remember I was saying the assembly of multiple parts can’t be overtaken by 3D printers? 4D printers might know how to do that. Let me explain the point.
What’s the fourth dimension? Time. And if you add time to an object, you allow it to move. With movement, you can articulate pieces together and make them form a new object. But 4D printers are not very much different from 3D printers. In fact it’s all more about the object you print than the printer itself. The object has to integrate certain characteristics that will allow the self-assembly after printing.
And if you’d like to watch the video which made me discover 4D printing, please play Skylar Tibbits’ talk at TED2013.
Have you already heard of 3D printing? I have discovered it about one year ago, when I was reading Jeremy Rifkin’s bestseller The Third industrial revolution. What does it have to do with an energetic and economic revolution? That’s what I first wondered about. But it has everything to do with it and everything to do with the main theme of this blog. And before I tell you more about this, let me explain for those who do not know about 3D printing how it works.
Your home printer is today printing ink on paper and working in two dimensions. A 3D printer is able to print different materials on three axes: horizontal, lateral, and vertical. You could send the printer a numerical file (like today’s text documents, presentations, or pictures) containing the useful information to print any metallic or plastic structure and the printer, printing each microscopic layer after the other, and welding it with the previous one through heat would slowly build the whole piece. As of today, a 3D printer can’t print an object made of different pieces. The assembly must be done afterwards but many objects could now be printed, ranging from chairs to iPhone shells for example.
So now, it’s a new technology and its very interesting but why is it so important, why would it radically change the economy? Because, as you noticed it: you can use it at home. Creating new objects is much cheaper this way, and leading aeronautic industrial players are already using it for this reason. But it’s also simple, and small enough (about the same size as your traditional printer) for anyone to use it at their place. Plus, it’s becoming more and more affordable in just a few months time. And if you could print your own objects at home, would you continue going to the store on open hours to buy them and then bother about bringing it back home? No, of course. Basic productions could therefore progressively be overtaken by individuals and become decentralized. This has everything to do with lateral power and change of uses and habits.
And it is very powerful: entire economic sectors might disappear with this new level of individual empowerment. The next step is then for people to exchange their production on peer-to-peer internet platforms and / or through local peer-to-peer systems, making the 3D printing economy stronger and more viable. And as autonomous production (for example with solar panels on your roof) and peer-to-peer exchange systems become more and more attractive to us, private 3D printing surely has a bright future ahead.
Grids at work 