Hi there. Welcome to Synergy Module.
This blog is intended as a forum for ideas on energy generation, conservation and management.
One day in 1973, during the middle east oil crises, I sat in a field opposite a garage and watched people queue for petrol. I was fourteen years of age and I knew that the world was going to run out of oil during my lifetime. My passion was engineering and I decided to devote my life to energy. So I became an electrical engineer to solve the world’s looming energy crisis!
Surprisingly electrical engineering took me into electronics, computers and software. Also surprisingly, the world didn’t run out of oil as fast as futurologists in the 1970s were predicting.
While in university I worked for a while with a wind energy company but once I graduated I moved into semiconductors and later computers and then into software. Only now, thirty four years after that life defining moment am I returning to energy as a field of study and business. It is like meeting your first love in later life and starting to rebuild your relationship while realising that the intervening years had been barren in some way.
I have formed deep opinions about energy generation, conservation and management. This blog will be my journal to get these ideas into the public domain. One idea I particularly want to focus on is the stabilisation of the electricity grid by demand management. Electricity is going to grow in importance as a method of delivering energy. Traditionally, energy has been produced flexibly to meet inflexible demand. A significant problem exists in energy management if we start adding energy sources such as wind, solar and wave power that produce electricity inflexibly. There is an excellent entry in Wikipedia on energy demand management.