Intro - Phloem

Hi !

My idea for Phloem is that the data would be owned and controlled by the user ideally. My idea for phloem is partially based on secure scuttle butt, where your various computers could follow your smart meter and store the data long term.

It gets more complicated when you try and figure out how much data to send to the energy companies. In a normal grid tied situation they need pretty accurate data, so they can both bill and predict energy demands.

In a situation where you have your own battery they only need to know your demand for grid energy (and predicted demand), not your entire energy usage. This could hide some demand and preserve privacy a bit more, so they can’t necessarily tell when you are home based on your energy usage, etc.

It both situations (and a long time from now, barring government regulation), you could imagine smart meters only sending their daily usage on a per house basis and the energy companies getting combined usage data from substations.

This would still allow power companies to predict demand accurately.

Just to let people know why I am not working on this at the moment, I haven’t had much engagement from the protocol design people. So it seems unlikely to help with CO2 emissions in the next 10-20 years, which was my hope. It would need significant investment and interest from lots of different parties and lack of engagement from the people I expected to be most interested was pretty discouraging overall.

So I am currently looking at putting my technical skills behind things that will either definitely help a small amount in a short time frame, or potentially help a lot in the long time frame.

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Ping @zelf, what do you think about this based on your experience with scuttelbug?

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Heya Eb!

I didn’t know you were thinking in this direction but it’s exciting to hear! How far along are you in the project and can one read more about it somewhere?

Also, where abouts are you physically now? Edgeryders is hosting a festival all around and the one in Malmö will be gathering some people from Scuttlebutt as well as having a deep green theme.

Let’s speak more about it as soon as we meet.

Thank you @MariaEuler for picking up on this :cherry_blossom:

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@eb4890, @BlackForestBoi s organising a hackathon for impactful project ideas in November in Berlin:

and COAT lab (@William_COACT) has opened a call for an incubator residency for green tech solutions in the early stages:

Are any of those interesting for you and your collaborators?

Hey @William_COACT, @eb4890, @MariaEuler

Maybe one of the teams of COAT or you @eb4890 wanna join the hackathon? Seems like a great opportunity to refine the concept, find collaborators an connect with the community.

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