Week 3

Pre-Session Reflection on the Comic "Energy Slaves"

The narrative of the comic is a very impactful one which gave me much to contemplate about. By illustrating the energy usage for our daily activities, and successfully comparing that to an easily comprehensible human scale - the "energy slave", the protagonist was able to make me realise the shift from the pre-industralised era to post-industrial modern era. Whereas in the past our economy depended mostly on human power or animal power to sustain itself, the present could not be more different. In order to fuel this immense economic growth, that is exacerbated by capitalism, we have resorted to depleting the earth's resources at unprecedented speeds. Our behaviour has disrupted the equilibrium of supply and demand, where it is getting increasingly uneconomic and requires more energy to extract fossil energy. At the same time, however, renewable energy sources would not be able to sustain our current energy usage. If we take into consideration the "triple bottom line" it becomes evident that we, as individuals, and also collectively (state, government) need to take more actions to protect our environment and ecosystems, without which our society and economy cannot function.

Personal comments on other people's reflections

"This comic shows from an interesting perspective how dependents we are on energy coming from non-renewable energy. We are so used to this lifestyle where consumption sets the course of our lives. Quite significant picture showing this is a chubby family eating next to their car, where reflects not just their unhealthy diet but the lethargic they become. Ironic, isn´t? Feeding themselves with lots of food in order to get energy that is not used to "move their muscles and generate energy",but they just get in their cars instead and use the energy generated by others."

- by Faustino De La Pena Suarez - Wednesday, 9 August 2017, 1:09 PM

Personal comment:

Maybe a feasible way to approach this is for the government to develop certain strategies for implementation. A lot of the energy we consume is for commuting which can be tackled by the government via more efficient planning long-term. Secondly, average work hours are very long, that also impacts how "healthy" or environmentally friendly our lifestyle can be. If we had a better work life balance, we could for example have more time to grow our own food, and depend more of our very own "human energy" for our needs, thereby decreasing our dependency on the "energy slaves."


"Such a powerful way to frame out the whole scenario of today's Energy consumption and humanity.The illustration draws how our modern Energy use far surpassed human muscle-power.
It is really sad to see how reckless we are to liquidating the resources of our planet Earth.
In the name of modern technology and high standard lifestyle, we are completely dependent on 'Energy slaves' in every walk of our life- processed food to daily transportation to travel cities-  with every foot step we are basically destroying our natural resources (fossil fuels) without implementing necessary strategies for Renewable energy.
Another alarming issue to ponder upon is comparing to 19th Century, today's Energy slaves are demanding high payments as a shrinking percentage are left over to serve us.
I believe this is the high time to pay our attention to remodeled our expectations regarding a healthy economic condition. Resources should be plenty and cheap to increase Energy efficiency of our systems and lifestyles. We must stop being dependent only on Energy slaves rather to encourage Zero Carbon ideology for a better Tomorrow!"

-by Sabrina Akter - Tuesday, 8 August 2017, 2:54 PM

Personal comment

I completely agree with you, we are very reckless and selfish. "With every foot step we are basically destroying our natural resources," the issue is so alarming that even drinking tap water or  reading a book under the lamp, would need energy slaves. It would only make sense to encourage Zero Carbon ideology, and at the same time tap more into Renewable Energy sources, while looking at ways to more efficiently curb our individual energy usage.

Reflections on Assignment 2.1 proposal

After much contemplation, I have decided to change the topic of my project from what I proposed last week. Instead of investigating atriums, I would like to propose to topic of "Greening" Elevator Systems. 

It is widely known that buildings consume about 40% of the world’s energy, and elevators account for 2%–10% of a building’s total energy consumption. During peak hour operation, elevators may utilize up to 40% of the building’s energy. Overall, there are more than 7 billion elevator journeys taken in buildings all over the world; and as such, energy-saving elevators will reduce energy consumption significantly. The importance of elevators are such that they could be compared to cars. While cars have enabled the horizontal development of cities, lifts have contributed to the vertical development of cities, allowing the concentration of people, and resulting in even taller structures. 

The scope of the assignment would be limited to two scenarios. The first being a case study on an existing high-rise building, where the potential retrofit of an existing lift system is examined, and the resultant reduction in energy consumption.The second part would involve looking at more recent and emerging lift technologies, and their potential impact on energy savings, as well as other benefits such as faster traveling times, more usable floor space, etc.

The overarching aim of the project is to provide a guide or manual with useful and succinct information to facilitate making “greener” decisions when choosing lift systems, whether it be upgrading an existing system or choosing a new one. Emerging vertical transportation models are also discussed with the aim that familiarity of these new technological advancements can allow architects to design greener, challenging forms and shapes of large-scale, mixed-use developments.

Post Session Reflections

Personal Reflections on "Slash Australians’ power bills by beheading a duck at night"

I was quite astonished to find out that there are currently 1.2 million rooftop solar powered homes in Australia, about 5% of homes based on a population of 24.13 million (2016). This has inevitably led to a change the patterns of energy usage. While there has been a significant decrease in energy usage during daytime (around 7am-4pm), there has been only a minimal decrease during peak hour (6pm and onwards).

Personally, I believe there are many solutions to this problem that strains our existing electricity supply infrastructure, thereby driving up our electricity bills. On an individual level, rather than just conveniently switching on the air-con and focusing on how to keep the house cool, we must pay more attention to why the house is so hot in the first place. The emphasis should be on the source of the problem, such as limiting solar gain (minimizing western heat, solar shading, improved insulation), using more energy efficient appliances, LED lighting, LED TVs, low energy refrigerators, etc.).

Another logical way of tackling the issue of energy peak hour demand is to encourage new and existing homes to add some battery storage to their PV systems, thus increasing the amount of time that solar homes are self-sufficient in terms of energy usage.

Personal reflections on "Energy storage is crucial, but it's not the only piece in the puzzle"

After reading this article, I made an important realization. Traditionally, companies that provided energy could be seen as monopoly or oligopoly, meaning that they were in exclusive control of the supply in that commodity, or at least the energy market was only shared by a small number of suppliers. In recent times, however, with on-site solar generation, things are changing. With PV panels becoming more and more common, we find  that we have the choice to no longer be consumers. Instead, we now have the choice to go off-grid, which changes our status from being a previous consumer to a partner, where there is even potential to sell our surplus energy back. 

Another interesting fact is that there are now smart appliances, such as motorised shading devices, fridges that have an in-built "cold pack" that can switch off during peak hour energy usage, as well as water heaters that only run during non-peak hours, etc. All these low -energy smart devices, coupled with a well-designed building envelope, has the potential to minimise energy consumption. It is a combined effort of having energy efficient appliances, storage of solar energy, and energy efficient homes, to maximise the cut on peak energy demands which in return results in a significant reduction to electric infrastructure costs.