Ja-Nae Duane Show EP 8 -The Grid is Dying with Arash Aazami

You can learn a lot about the future of energy from someone rebuilding an 1897 house with their own hands. Arash joins us from Rotterdam to talk about the fears, mistakes, and hard-won confidence that come with DIY electrical wiring, plumbing, and structural work and why that same “follow the logic” approach matters when we try to fix much bigger systems.

From there, we trace Arash’s path from jazz guitar to Silicon Valley during the dot-com rush, then into the energy industry after burnout pushed him to find more purposeful work. He shares the idea he calls “energy Buddhism,” a metaphor for a world where energy is flow, everything is connected, and nobody should be able to “own” what the sun provides for free. We also dig into incentives: why volume-based utility models stay stuck in the past, what a value-based model could look like, and why the phrase “flat fee energy” can change how you think about pricing, fairness, and sustainability.

We zoom out to nature for design lessons. Ecosystems don’t rely on a single silver-bullet solution; they build resilience through diversity, self-balancing feedback loops, and local adaptation. That leads straight into the Internet of Energy: distributed energy systems where solar, batteries, heat pumps, and thermal storage can coordinate at the edge, share locally, and use the grid as backup instead of default. Arash also explains how hackathons and open standards can turn this from a concept into real infrastructure, including rapid prototyping at music festivals as “pop-up cities.”

If you care about renewable energy, grid resilience, microgrids, climate solutions, and the future of the energy transition, this conversation will stretch your thinking and give you concrete mental models to keep. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves systems, and leave a review with your biggest question about local energy resilience.

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For over 20 years, behavioral scientist Dr. Ja-Naé Duane dedicated herself to one mission: Make life better for one billion people. This award-winning innovator and expert on global systems focuses on helping corporations, governments, and universities understand and develop systems of the future using emerging technology such as VR/AR, AI, and blockchain. Ja-Nae guides companies forward, helping them get out of their own way to create exponential innovation and future forecasting. She has had the pleasure of working with companies such as PWC, Saudi Aramco, Yum Brands, Samsonite, Natixis, AIG, and Deloitte.  A top-rated speaker within the Singularity University community and the author of the bestseller, “The Startup Equation,” Ja-Nae at helping both startups and multinational firms identify new business models and pathways for global scale. Her next book SuperShifts is due out in April 2025.

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Transcript

Cold Open: Rebuilding An 1897 House

SPEAKER_03 0:00

So you said you you're building the house from the ground up. Walk me through what it is it means to build from the ground.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

Oh well during COVID, we had no events and you know, all these conferences I used to to attend and speak at and things like that. So I got bored. And I I went to the Chamber of Commerce and I registered uh one of my businesses as a construction company. Did you really? I did, yeah. Because because because that gave me the right to visit the professional construction stores.

SPEAKER_03 0:35

So you learned all of this via YouTube. Not only YouTube, but yeah. Tell me what was your biggest assumption going into starting this project?

SPEAKER_02 0:48

My biggest fear was what if I'm gonna do something structural on the house, or you know, with the electrical wiring or with the plumbing, and then I'll have to cover it up for the next 30 years and it will have to work. And I made such stupid mistakes during the entire process, but you know, I learned so much from them. And by now I'm confident.

DIY Fears, Wiring, And Learning Logic

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Hello and welcome to the Darling Dwayne Show, which explores the systems that shape human behavior in society through the eyes of technologists, scientists, executives, and leaders. From the algorithms that govern our digital mind to what the future of work will look like, we'll be taking a closer look at how these systems function and the implications they have on our lives.

SPEAKER_03 1:38

So Orash is uh is chewing because it's in true fashion.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

We're gonna do this better. Okay, good. 10 seconds. Give me 10.

SPEAKER_03 1:51

Okay. Which uh which won't make sense to the listeners and the viewers right now, but but may later. Uh, by the way, thanks for joining me for this conversation. This is a long time, uh, a long time coming in my mind. So how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_02 2:16

Good, good, good. It's your morning, it's my afternoon. I'm here in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, and um it's just it's beautiful weather. I'm at home. It feels like a summer holiday, and we were just prior to this recording discussing the concept of being busy, and apparently I'm doing all kinds of stuff, but it doesn't feel like it.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Yeah, so you said you you're building the house from the ground up. So is this an an older house that that you bought? Walk me through what it is it means to build from the ground up.

SPEAKER_02 2:51

Oh well, well, it's yeah, okay. So is it is it really from the ground up? Yeah, in a in a certain way, yes. It's an old house. Uh so Rotterdam was very heavily bombarded during the Second World War. Um, and so that means that most of the inner city had to be rebuilt. And this house is just outside of the fire line, which means that it's from 1897. It's so it's an old house. And I've been in this house for about 20 years, and I bought it as two apartments, and I put them together at some point. And it's just, you know, it's become my place. And during COVID, we had no events and you know, all these conferences I used to to to attend and speak at and things like that. So I got bored and and I I went to the Chamber of Commerce and I registered uh one of my businesses as a construction company. Did you really? I did, yeah. Because because because that gave me the right to visit the professional construction stores, you know, the the the things that you need to to. And uh I basically YouTube taught myself to build stuff. So I rebuilt one of the floors of the house, and I was partially happy with it, and uh, you know, I did I did all the wiring and all the plumbing and all the uh everything, actually. And walls, I broke down walls and I built new walls, and I made big mistakes and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

So you learned all of this via YouTube?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

Not only YouTube, but yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:19

Yeah. Tell me, because so this is this is really interesting. So I I'm the daughter of a plumber. Tell me what was your biggest assumption going into starting this project. And then and then I'd also love to know what was uh one of your biggest surprises, because it sounds like you've already done a tremendous amount of work on the house, though I know you're still working on it.

SPEAKER_02 4:46

Yes, I am. So it's it's uh three floors soon to be four.

SPEAKER_03 4:52

Of course it is.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So as I said, it's old, it's from 1897. And what I just did was um on the top floor, I stripped everything down to the to the bare skeletal construction of the house and then rebuilt it from there. And that gave me the opportunity to insulate everything to today's standard, but with eco-materials. So it's all wood, fiber, sheep wool, stuff like that. And now I'm getting to the point where I'm gonna finish it, which means it's gonna be a living, a living space again. It's gonna be a studio and workspace, and my wife and I are sharing this house, and and I have a bunch of guitars that will be finally put in a place where it's actually nice for them. So my biggest assumption was actually I'll I'll start with my biggest fear when I started this project. So I I started it in 2020. 2021, something like that. And my biggest fear was what if I'm gonna do something structural on the house, or you know, with the electrical wiring or with the plumbing, and then I'll have to cover it up for the next 30 years and it will have to work. What if I did something wrong, and after two years out of those 30, you know, something happens that's gonna destroy the entire place? That was my biggest fear. Actually, the biggest fear wasn't even in the plumbing, and I had some help with one of the old neighbors who was actually a plumber. So he helped me. And he and but he but he really said to me, you know, I'm gonna be your help. It's not gonna be the other way around. And that empowered me so much. And and then the even bigger fear than the plumbing actually I had with elect well, with the electrical systems of the house. And you know, I work in energy, so I thought, I'll have to know this, right? It's not the theoretical stuff, not the PowerPoint stuff. This is the actual wiring that will have to work. And I made such stupid mistakes during the entire process, but you know, I learned so much from them, and by now I'm confident. So, and I think that's the biggest that's the biggest win. I actually learned during the process that, hey, I can do it, and there are so many other people that can do it. And the thing is, you have to follow logic. So, yeah, that's cool.

SPEAKER_03 7:10

I love that for you.

Hands-On Work As Mental Balance

SPEAKER_03 7:14

Is there a specific way in which you learn? Because you obviously you were learning so many new skills during this process. Is there a specific way in which you learn that you've taken over into this project? Andor, you know, a follow-up question is Is there a new way in which maybe I've either you've learned or you've explored mastery in in taking on such a bohemoth of uh of a project?

SPEAKER_02 7:43

So yeah, it's for sure, it's not mastery. Uh so uh, but by now, you know, here and there people are starting to ask me to help them with their jobs, and I love it. And so I helped my brother tiling yesterday, for example. So I took, you know, I basically took a day off work and I tiled, and I love it. And and and the thing is, I'm I'm educated as a musician. Musicianship or or artistry in every sense um has some unique qualities because they are both mentally and spiritually and physically. And and what I've learned through this process is that by using my hands, I liberate my mind. And by using my mind and my heart, I liberate my hands. So so for me, it is it is a quest to find a balance in life in a certain way.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

Well, I I love that. And I love it, it was actually your background as a musician that that prompted the question initially.

Music, Early Internet, And Startups

SPEAKER_03 8:47

And for folks, since I I I want folks to get to know your background a little bit more, so you have a background in both music and technology. I would love for you to tell us a story of that journey, but then also how you ended up really getting focused in on energy, which is where you spend so much of your time right now.

SPEAKER_02 9:11

Yes. Well, energy is the currency of the universe. You know, it's everything that has ever changed or grown for the past 13 and a half billion years, for as for as far as we can think of, has been through energy with the help of energy. So eventually everything will end up in energy. Um career-wise, I took that turn in 2006. Prior to that, indeed, I studied music, I studied jazz guitar in conservatory in the Netherlands. I worked as a musician for a few years. I ended up as a musician actually in Silicon Valley in the late 90s. I was a first-hand witness of the dot-com rush, you know, the gold rush of dot com, the the the the uh at that time, which was amazing, and which also inspired me to go back home in the Netherlands and try and do something with the internet. And and actually I was the story actually has uh multiple layers because because this is not coincidental. It's because my mother was an internet pioneer in the Netherlands, uh really, yeah. So she was one of the first to go online in this country, and she was rather activistic, she was very much in in um um fighting for women's rights, for example. And this was a way for her to not leave her home and be in touch with the entire world that is you know around that theme already. And and she was hardcore. I mean, we we had this 286 um BX computer with a monochrome yellow screen. Some of you know, some of the old viewers may still remember that kind of machinery, and a 14k4 modem, which was you know that the squeaky that that kind of so we went online typing code. This was before the www. It was before we had graphic user interfaces. So uh so that's how she did it. And she literally told me at some point, Arash, I'm fine with you playing outside so much, but you'll have to spend more time on a computer because I think this is gonna be really big. And so and I know that so many of the viewers, you know, that they they they tell their kids the exact opposite, which proves my mother's point. It really did become something. Um in 1973, the internet itself had 36 users. You know, at that time it was still ARPANET.

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Right.

SPEAKER_02 11:39

This year it it surpassed five and a half billion users. Um that's how big it became. And why did it become so big? Because it was denerded, it was denerded through protocols like www protocol and http and dcpip. So so when I was in Silicon Valley as a musician, I was watching that, you know, um very closely. And I thought this is what I want to do. One of my first domain names at that time, and I had no notion of the value of these things, and especially, you know, I I had no ability to uh extrapolate the potential effects of choices that I made at that time. But I purchased this domain name, you know, at at first, which was EJ.com. Because I because I figured, you know, you have the DJ, and then in the time of MTV, you had the VJ, the video jockey, and then I think the next thing is gonna be the EJ. You know, it's gonna be the and so I had and I didn't know what to do with it. There was no bandwidth, there was no so I kept it for a while and just let it go. And and you know, by now it's a huge streaming service and station, and and um, and I did a bunch of these things with friends of mine. We were it it wasn't called pioneering, it was just called playing around, thinking. That's you know, that's what we did. We had fun doing it, we had no notion of potential value or or you know, and and the thing is with with with with all these, especially if you're looking at technological revolutions that have a massive effect not only on how we use technology, but on how economies and societies work, is that I think that even the greatest visionary could only come so far as to extrapolate one or two or three of the parameters of these changes and have no notion of what all the other things are doing. Which is, you know, so you're gonna have a massive shift in business models. Okay, what's it gonna be? I cannot imagine. You're gonna have a massive shift in how people work together. Yes, by now, in retrospect, we can actually attest to that, you know, thanks to the internet. But and with energy, we're actually undergoing the exact same thing right now. That's why I was drawn into energy in 2006. It's a long, long story how how I got there, but in the end, I I was severely burnt out.

Burnout Sparks A Purposeful Energy Pivot

SPEAKER_02 14:05

I had to re rewrite my future from that point. I was you know, I wasn't I wasn't tech. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I wanted to do something purposeful. I decided to go camping on my own at some point, and I came to the conclusion it's either gonna be energy or um finance because I do believe that both of them need a fundamental rewriting of what's underneath them, you know, the design principles. And literally I woke up in my tent one of those mornings, I got a phone call. It happened to be a headhunter who came with a proposition to me who said, Well, you know, I've been following you for a while in tech, but I can see that you have nothing to do with energy, and still I want to invite you to pick up a role at an energy company. And I thought, okay, so that'll be it. It's gonna be energy.

SPEAKER_03 15:03

So you were already thinking either energy or finance at that time, and this was very much a signal to head in that direction. Is that correct?

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Yeah, it was you know I I I I had a feeling at that moment that it was serendipitous.

SPEAKER_03 15:16

And so I want to go back to two things. One, how does a musician find themselves in Silicon Valley and then make that transition? Because you were you were gigging at the time, if I recall, but I don't know if I know how that transition into and maybe it was just playing around with your buddies who were um who were also in tech in in the valley. But how how did you decide to go from the Netherlands because you were in conservatory there, and then end up in the valley?

SPEAKER_02 15:56

Yeah, so uh what happened was I I went to conservatory, I studied there. After a while in the UK, they had these summer arts academy camps and these beautiful school campuses. I attended one of them as a as a student, actually picking up, you know, just for the summer, picking up an acting class given by a comedian named Omi Jalili. And the next year they asked me back to be one of the one of the people accompanying their music track. So I went there as a guest, you know, with a bunch of people playing music and accompanying young musicians to try and write songs and do cool stuff together. There was another guest musician there who came from the US. He came to me, we talked together, he said, I'm doing a gig tonight. Do you want to join? Just jamming. And I said, sure, we jammed. A couple months later, I got a letter, it was a written letter. Um, if I come over to the US and tour with him. So I toured with him for about two years. So that's how I ended up in Silicon Valley, amongst other places. We we you know, we we were touring, so I was never somewhere for a long time, but but there's a bunch of experiences. I mean, this has been for me, it's been a formative and life-changing experience. Traveling in a car, going coast to coast, making music every night, uh meeting people, shaking so many hands, seeing all these sceneries, but also witnessing the cultural differences, you know, traveling through the US, all the way from east to west and from west to east back again over the south. So yeah, so that's so there was a um I'm forever grateful for that experience. One of the beautiful experiences I've had there was that we were invited to to spend a couple nights in a ba in a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, for example, which was I felt so honored to to to be a first-hand witness of of of the dynamics and the culture there. And amongst that, we also got to meet the techies in in in in the Bay Area and and who were doing cool stuff. I came back to the Netherlands. I was already nerding at that time, you know. I was already involved with computers and do some HTML and with two friends we got together and said, okay, let's do it. Go to the Chamber of Commerce, uh, register. So we were at that time we were called e-waves. You're gonna surf, we'll make you waves. It was and funniest thing. Um the company still exists, by the way. I left Does it? I left in 2002, they completely pivoted, but they're doing beautiful things, and we're still buddies. So the the the co-founders and I we're still but we're even still in the same building, but they're international now. They're they're all over the place, they're in South Africa and and and and Latin America, some other places. They're called Soul.com. And uh Soul.com is about organizational change and and and really helping leaders to find the soul, their own, and and and the soul of the company. They're doing beautiful, beautiful things. So, you know, I'm I'm I I still feel somewhat I think proud that we did the first tinkering and and you know, finding out stuff and making mistakes with those guys who who I very, very highly value.

unknown 19:25

So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 19:26

There's so many things that I love about that story. Um one, to stay friends with co-founders even after you've departed. I mean, it's so rare for me to hear that. So I I always love and cherish when when co-founders are able to have those conversations and uh and split and be amicable about it. That's um I I wish I wish more folks would have those hard conversations instead of trying to struggle along. The other piece that I really love about that story is I find that when you get out into uh cultures, into cities, you know, into varying areas, you really get to understand how folks tick. And um, and I I mean, I I had that from my own experience as an opera singer, but also when I started as a researcher, I was in a veggivan going across the US. I love that you've uh you've had a similar journey, uh, but you know, a very different, different one as well. I want to bring it back, Arash, to um so you were in tech, ended up getting this call while you were camping from a headhunter to head into energy. And that has sort of set your trajectory for you know where you've been spending your time since. In researching, um, in researching you, I had come across this term, and I was hoping that you can explain it in your own words. Can you explain

Energy Buddhism And Flat Fee Power

SPEAKER_03 21:05

to the audience what energy Buddhism means in its essence?

SPEAKER_02 21:10

Yeah, so it's one of the metaphors that have grown very close to my heart, and it stems from a by now deeply rooted belief system that has grown over the past 20 years. I've been active in the field of energy, energy Buddhism. The thing is, when I started, so this was this was in 2006, I started with this energy company. It was a utility in the Netherlands, and they asked me, you know, so apparently I was a guy that understood the first two chapters of of digital tech 101, you know, it's uh for dummies. But the thing was at that time, still, you know, if if you'd had if you'd read the first two chapters of that Internet for Dummies book, you were a guru, you know. So corporate land, that was it was amazing. And um I never got further than those two first chapters by the way. But the thing is, I I started with this energy company. I I I knew, I mean my gut feeling in every way possible told me so much is wrong with this industry. It has to be redesigned. But that also is the perfect opportunity to be in a place where you can actually make a change. And I I wanted to ask questions and I and I did, you know, and I I learned so much in those years after. So I stayed with that company for four years after before founding another company. For one, for example, the fundamentals of energy business I think are wrong wrongly designed. Because in nature all energy is about effectivity. And it's about distributing this. And it's essence and it's about you know it's based from abundance of solar energy hitting the surface of a leaf of a plant, for example. And then converting that energy into a usable form for that particular plant and then transporting it through its branches and to the root system and then becoming part of the soil and then being redistributed by uh mycelium. And you know, it's this whole diversity-based self-balancing system. Whereas in energy we chose deliberately to go for we need to have one controllable resource which is ultimately a resource that somebody can plant their flag on you know which is like an oil field or gas field or something like that. And then we burn stuff and then we distribute it in one-way traffic to uh users and then we invoice them for it. It was like you know it just cannot work that way. It's it's by design it's unsustainable. We know that by now but not only that it's also it's divisive by design and it's extractive and it's intrusive and it's exploitative. So there was this point where I went to the one of the directors of that company and I basically dropped an idea there and I said why don't we go for flat fee energy? Because when we started with the internet we had to pay a volume based fee for our internet access. You know so the number of kilobytes that you upload or download they were actually counted by somebody at telco and then you were billed for that. And I thought well so basically we're still in the 1980s for and for energy and we have to go to a flat fee because it's not about the volume it's about the value and it's about the level of service that you provide. And I could see at that time already the prediction that more and more people would be enabled to more and more cheaply and easily produce energy, generate energy, uh share energy, transport energy, store energy, convert energy from one firm into another so I came with this concept of flat-free energy and you know it was basically what thrown away was a horrible idea never do it. And uh but I thought you know that the marginalities in energy business are so much under pressure. Basically an energy company in this day and age a traditional energy company can only turn a profit if there's a war. That's basically it. Oh wow I didn't know that well it's okay I'm dropping I'm it's everybody do your own research but over the past 100 years over 90% of all international conflicts have been more or less rooted on energy conflicts on conflicts over energy resources. I myself am a product of an energy conflict I'm half Persian Iranian and half Dutch the reason that my parents could meet each other had to do with the regime in Iran that exists because of oil concessions. There's a huge book by Daniel Jurgen called the New Map which is which goes into this topic also like how the stride for access to finite energy resources has been shaping how we draw our borders and maps and how conflicts are there and how some fragile balance in the world that is actually always based on inequality is being upheld. And in the meantime this sh the sun is owned by nobody shines on our heads for free every day and you know the wind blows through your hair and water flows and birds chirp and whatever. You know it's it's it's all and it's all free and I thought okay yes so this has become really deeply ingrained in my my own belief system as as this is this is one of the fundamentals of the energy system. The more I looked at it the more I came to the conclusion just like in nature and in every universal system everything is connected to everything else which means that's that's how energy Buddhism came into into my heart it was like we'll have to regard this as Buddhism there's no owner there's no boss there's no central authority everything's connected and the more people we can actually enable to be a an active and contributing part to the system other than only being a consumer the better because in the end I believe that access to energy is fundamental. There's no form of value creation that you can imagine without energy being part of it which means that we'll have to rewrite the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights because it does not include energy but it does include a bunch of things that require energy education healthcare the roof over your head will require energy. So why is energy not what not a human right? And I I really believe it should be considered to be a human right.

SPEAKER_03 27:45

For our our our audience members now we understand why it's being uh being podcast is being called that you know I I never really considered the role that conflict plays or that excuse me the role that energy plays when it comes to conflict so that's I will definitely have to dig in more so you had mentioned is it Daniel Junger Jorgen okay I want to make sure that uh we'll put we'll put some links in the show notes for for folks so I'm very curious is it energy Buddhism that really prompted you to come up with your benefits all um stakeholders model and can you also explain to um explain to the viewers what that model looks like how you mechanize that in in the work that you do because I I found that model to be really interesting and something that I think a lot of people would be uh would also be interested in my God you've done your research benefits all stakeholders yes absolutely I so for me that model is an old friend that needs reviving so thank you for bringing it up my pleasure it's actually the other way around energy Buddhism has been a term that I've been wandering around with for the past few years.

Benefits All Stakeholders Decision Checklist

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Benefits all stakeholders is a model that I designed in 2009 2009 so it's that's 16 years ago now. The thing is as long as we think that we have to create value by disadvantaging any stakeholder we're always going to be unsustainable by design. So I very simply at that time at that time I was preparing to launch my previous business an energy company that I did believe you know that wanted to go to the flat fee model and that I had all kinds of adventures with and that is actually on the verge of revival. Beneficial stakeholders is is or beneficial to all stakeholders is basically a list of the stakeholders that we can imagine as a business and everybody can make it for themselves. We had seven at that time I could imagine seven types of actors that would be influenced by the decisions that we made as a company one of them being shareholders which is obvious one of them being our customers which is also obvious one of them being our employees you don't want to make a decision that has a negative effect on your employees then the employees' families that was one so it's second tier but just as important if we say that we're good for our employees but we deprive them of having good a good amount of time with their families then we're depriving families so we shouldn't then they're suppliers so many people in business think that they have to take advantage of a supplier because then you know they're gonna be off cheaper no you have to treat your suppliers as as your friends as part of your system um so we're at five now there's two left one of them is society so your decisions as a company have to positively impact society and the seventh is the environment so basically what I tried to do with the beneficial to all stakeholders model was to have a strategic tool that would allow us before making a decision a strategic decision in our business to tick seven boxes. Does it have a positive impact on us as shareholders does it have a positive impact on employees on their families on our suppliers on our customers on society and on the environment and if you can say yes seven times everybody's going to be happy with the fact that you made that decision. So that makes for sustainable business.

SPEAKER_03 31:53

I love that that model I wish I I knew about it when we were writing super shifts because within the book one of the things again I find one of the reasons why I love our conversations I find you and I have a lot of similarities in our thinking just very different approaches but within there it's all about positive sum outcomes how do you consider all shareholders or stakeholders rather including nature um is how I framed it up um because of the fact that we live in symbiosis in in in my uh at least in in in my opinion and our models to your point uh and something that I've seen as well is that these are just unsustainable models all around. And it's really it what I love particularly about talking to you is I you know I don't know enough about about energy for um for me to even speak well about it in uh in at dinner conversations. So it's just even knowing some of the business modeling around it, the um the power dynamics that occur it's uh it's pretty fascinating.

SPEAKER_02 33:12

Let's

Biodiversity Beats Silver Bullet Energy Tech

SPEAKER_02 33:13

talk um I want to pull on that thread of natural ecosystems a little bit more and at least from your perspective what do you think that we can learn from uh these natural ecosystems when we're designing future um future proof energy solutions I love the question I think this is right at the heart of what I'm dedicating myself to we are very much conditioned to think in terms of silver bullet solutions so you know whether you're talking about health or living environments or or energy people have a tendency to to be very hopeful and put a lot of trust in oh this and this particular technology is gonna solve it all for us. And I don't believe that and in energy I've heard so many people oh yeah it's gonna be nuclear fusion oh yeah yeah it's gonna be I don't know what you know thorium oh yeah it's gonna be the sun it's gonna be all it's it's all gonna be photovoltaic panels or oh yeah no no by now it's batteries you know everybody's talking storage these days or one of them one one one that I've heard a lot yes the next generation the kids now they're so smart they're gonna solve it all which basically says well I made a mess my kids will clean it up if you go into nature the natural tendency of every natural system of every ecosystem is diversification if you have a lawn you'll have to take all kinds of measures to keep it a lawn you know with with one type of grass growing there that has to be perfectly green just a little bit greener than the neighbors um and it's horrible I mean ecologically you're looking at a desert you know it's it provides no food it provides no shelter it provides nothing it's it's poor and if you forget to mow your lawn and maintain it and throw kinds of fertilizers on it and you're gonna look at it in a few weeks' time you're already you're gonna see diversification and after a year it's gonna be you know all kinds of bushes and and it's gonna be a rather rich ecosystem and after eight years it's gonna be a forest and I love that it basically tells us that if you go to nature it tells you that if there'd be a silver bullet it would be called diversity. So the better we design our systems and this is not only for energy but the better we design our systems to accommodate the highest form of diversity that we can imagine the more resilient and self-balancing they will be.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

Yeah it's really interesting to know I mean I live here in the US where um my neighbors all love to have their lawns precisely manicured I I will say what's what I've been really pondering has been I am wondering if there's ecological memory that we have knowing that our ancestors were farmers and there's a need to want at least here and and again this is just a this is just something that I've been thinking about there's a need to want to tend or you know like there almost that pull to tend to something but in a way that is almost destructive uh but it's almost like you can't let go of it and I just wonder if that's one of the reasons why besides really good marketing when the agricultural blueprint was really uh solidified I'll say in the early 1900s here in the United States well even late 1800s when it came to fertilizers and and pesticides but I feel like there's this need to still want to tend to the earth but it's almost like we've forgotten how to do it and almost like a robot that needs to be rebooted or a computer that needs to be rebooted it's just cycling through and I almost view lawn care in in that that way I know I'm going to get a lot of slack for that from um from listeners but that is that is okay talk to me a little bit about so as we think about biodiversity within um within nature the fact that nature will naturally start to create biodiversity um if left to its own devices what lessons can we learn in infrastructure not only just in energy systems um but are there lessons and are there ways in which we can model say a distributed energy system that isn't like crazy expensive or or super complex um but that can really be modeled after a natural system.

Permaculture Lessons From Lawns And Pests

SPEAKER_02 38:39

Another beautiful question so thank you thank you so much and also for the comparisons that you that you make because yes and and you know let me let me let me actually receive a good chunk of the the the slap that you're gonna get from your listeners or for the comments that you made on the lawns because because or on lawn care because I I I'm of the same school by now I got really interested in permaculture and in agroforestry um I have a tiny garden here in Rotterdam which I counted last year I think I had 107 different types of plants. Did you really? Yeah and it's amazing because it provides and it's self-balancing by now and it's become an oasis which also means that it created its own tiny aquifer underneath which means that if there's a heat wave and we have some of them by now due to global warming you're gonna see that the neighbors gardens are dead and extremely hot and this is actually a nice place. It really is and I learn a lot from that you know and and and by a lot of it has to do with improving the ability to trust nature because what's gonna happen if you're gonna turn a lawn into a forest is that at first it's gonna bug you literally you know and it's gonna irritate you and it's and and you're gonna yeah but now this and this particular plant is growing there and I don't want it there because it's you know it because it's going all over the place and it's making life miserable for me or oh I have snails or I have this pest or I have this right the thing is if the soil is that poor what we consider to be irritating or a pest is actually the medicine for the soil. You'll have to let that happen. I had terrible amounts of snails in the first two years of um transforming my garden into permaculture I hardly have any now I do have some but they're not a nuisance and of course they eat some stuff but never all of it because it's a self-balancing system so and that's that's so beautiful and I only started this transformation five years ago so prior to that my garden was mostly tiles rock you know it was it was nothing it was a desert and I so I literally started and and the thing is we want to till so much you know we want to we want to stick our shovel into the into the soil and and and change things and and I tried so much with so many different kinds of plants and sometimes and at some point I had to learn okay so the soil that I have is not ready or not willing to accept this in this plant. So yes of course in my mind I would have loved to have it but it's not going to thrive here. So why enforce that onto that little bit of land why not see what the soil itself wants to give and there was this one point that I found that really funny because I have this this pile of compost we threw all kinds of stuff there you know all the all the the veggie cuttings and and and and stuff that we had in our kitchen and I was composting from there onto my garden and at some point something started to grow there. I thought what is it what is it you know and I I had this app which is like you know kind of a Shazam like app for plants where you take a picture of a plant and it will recognize it. And it was lilies how did I end up I never planted lilies and they literally came out of the compost because apparently we threw flowers on it also you know when when you get a bouquet for for somebody's birthday or whatever. So I so suddenly the soil started to get lilies and now it's thriving with lilies. It's beautiful.

SPEAKER_03 42:40

So yeah that's amazing I I would love a photo of your of your garden because it's yeah I mean it sounds like I think you know I don't want to speak for anyone else I know that at least for me I've started to dabble in permaculture and there has to be a commitment in the family and there has to be a com almost a commitment within the area and I only say that because uh we used to have bees and you know our sometimes our bees would last sometimes they would not but depending on what um what neighbors have on their yards I mean that you know bees can travel I believe up to three miles three or four miles. And so some of that just ends up back within your ecosystem. So it's um yeah no it's it's really interesting and I'm always fascinated how people end up getting into permaculture and it sounds like you you have uh you have something magical growing uh in your in your backyard which I'm not surprised about by the way um so yes it is magical but it's not mine you know it is its own and that's what makes it magical Well said. Well said.

Internet Of Energy And Local Resilience

SPEAKER_03 44:03

You know, I want to ask, I want to move to the future a little bit and just ask you brought up the concept of uh Internet of Energy. And I would love for you to not only define that, but also share with listeners when you came up with that concept, what did you first envision? And what were some of those assumptions that you had? And what are some of your um of those assumptions? You know, are there ones that have really stood the test of time? Others that you've had to revisit? Just walk us through that a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 44:42

Yeah, so of course it started with a hypothesis. So the Internet of Energy, the IOE, I started with that term in 2015. And I just quit my previous company at that time. And I so I had worked on foundational layers for distributed energy systems and also, but and more fundamentally, I think, is an attempt to shift the economics of energy. Because, you know, if as long as we have a volume-based model, somebody's going to be incentivized to sell you as much as they can, while we'll have to have a value-based model where you're going to seek not a maximum but an optimum. And um and one of the one of the movements that I witnessed at that time, start starting at that time, actually, uh, that really reinforced that belief that I had was the rise of renewable energy technologies so early on. I mean, photovoltaic panels have been around for since the 80s, something like that. But they really picked up around, what is it, 15, 18 years ago, something like that. And so I witnessed that and I thought, if this is gonna enable to for regular users like you and me to generate at least the part of the energy that we need on our own rooftops, why would we require to send that amount of energy through a meter to a grid onto a national grid where somebody's gonna put a price on it and then sell it back to me? Why? Why? You know, if if if if I'd have a garden and I want to eat, I don't know what, uh, lettuce, you know, and I I I I take it out of my garden, I bring it to my kitchen, I chop it up, I eat it. But with energy, the rule seems to be, you know, you're gonna bring that lettuce via the kitchen, through the front door, through a meter, then it's gonna go on to some national distribution system, then somebody's gonna price it, somebody's gonna tax you for it, somebody's gonna look at it and say, oh yeah, this is a good bit of lettuce or not, you know, and then they're gonna send it back to you, and then it's gonna come through your front door, you'll have paid for it, and then you can put it on your own fountain uh kitchen top and and and and eat it. Why? It makes no sense. And what I saw was in the internet, we had this concept of components moving to the edge. Everything became more and more decentralized, computing power became more and more decentralized, storage became more and more decentralized. That allowed us as internet users to become prosumers rather than consumers. And I thought, so with energy, we're gonna have the same thing at that time. And indeed we do. If you look at storage being widely available now for everybody, energy generation being widely available, technologies expanding, um, changing, shifting, uh, new flavors and tastes coming on the market, uh, it's good. I love that. Um the only thing that did not happen was an actual underpinning design for the energy system to allow for all these edge components to function together. Which literally means if there's gonna be a blackout in some region and I'm there with my solar panels, I'm gonna be in the blackout.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

Right?

SPEAKER_02 48:08

No power for me. I have my own. I have a 75 kilowatt hour battery in front of my house with wheels under it. Why am I not allowed to use it? It's a buffer. Um, I have the ability to collect heat on my rooftop and turn that into hot water and feed my central heating system with that. Why am I not allowed to do that? So I really thought the essence of the internet of energy is not so much that everything is digitalized. The essence of the internet of energy is that everything that can function on the edge actually is allowed to function on the edge. Which means that my solar panels, my heat pump, my heating system, my batteries, my whatever, are allowed to function together with the intent to create a partial balance, which means that I'll still be on grid. But I'm gonna use the grid not as the default setting, I'm gonna use it as the backup. So if there's a deficit, either a plus or a minus, you know, I generate more than than I need, or I need more than I generate, that's where the grid comes in. And so you get this self-balancing system, and it it it it basically function functions like you know, some old people still remember BitTorrent. Um, you know, if if if you if you download a video clip there or a song or a movie or whatever, it would never be one peer to one peer changing the entire file. Actually, the the file that you're gonna download is chopped up into all these little bits, and you download bits and pieces from all kinds of different peers at the same time, and then they're compiled back together as that one movie that you wanted to watch. With energy, we can do the same thing, it's packetization. So you pacetize basically the needs that you have in the moment and you get them from anywhere. And what is anywhere? What anywhere is the optimum. So closer by is easier, cheaper, better. Choose for that. So basically, what I'm involved in right now is designing the fundamental rules, the fundamental algorithms that allow local energy assets to optimally function with each other, so that if there's a blackout, it's probably gonna hit you for 20%, not for 100. And still, you as neighbors can exchange all kinds of stuff together, which means that you you create local resilience, local ownership. So, so yeah, so there's there's on a conceptual level, there's been a lot of work and a lot of thought being put into the IoE. And by now we're actually organizing hackathons and bringing people together that are building this stuff and starting to set up this open source repository for standards and protocols and knowledge and insights and data and all kinds of stuff. And yeah, it's starting to grow, it's becoming a thing.

SPEAKER_03 51:05

That's amazing. When I think about just the vulnerability of um infrastructure around energy, particularly here in the US, it would be devastating to the entire entire country, the way that it's uh the way that it's structured right now. So I love the work that you and your colleagues have been doing and have been following it since we met in March. So it's been really fun to uh to see some of uh some of the things that you guys are starting to pull together as you're moving towards this model or helping us, I should say, move towards this model. Because I really uh, at least for me, I'm a I'm a firm believer in communal resilience and getting um getting us moving in that direction, not only just around energy infrastructure, but in other other ways as well. So,

A 2035 Energy Mindset Vision

SPEAKER_03 51:59

all right, we're as we're wrapping up, I you know, I was trying to think about as we head into the future, like if you had a rush, if you had to forecast, it's uh let's say 10 years from now, so it's it's 2035. You had to forecast an energy mindset that you would want humanity to have in 10 years, in one sentence.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_03 52:27

What would it be? All right, if you need two sentences, that's fine.

SPEAKER_02 52:32

2035, one sentence, what I would want the mindset of humanity to be with regards to energy.

SPEAKER_03 52:38

Did I stump you?

SPEAKER_02 52:40

No, because you did send me the question in advance. Is that a spoiler?

SPEAKER_03 52:49

No, no.

SPEAKER_02 52:50

I mean So in 2035, we all deeply know and understand that energy is everywhere, that it is not for someone to own or take, and that the essence of energy is flow, and flow comes through access, and flow brings potential, potential for value creation. So if we can get together to ameliorate the flow of energy among all of us and all our assets, all our devices, and regard that as one mycelial ecosystem of billions of exchange points trying to achieve balance with with one another on a moment-to-moment basis, then that would be the optimal energy system. And we have 13 and a half billion years of history with that system that we can draw from.

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Rosh, that's beautiful. Thank you for that, and thank you for being

Where To Find Arash Online

SPEAKER_03 53:56

on the show. Where can people find you, by the way?

SPEAKER_02 53:59

Um, mostly in the Netherlands. Um and sometimes not. You can find me on uh unify.energy, and you can find our events at synergyhack.org. So that's where we do the synergy hackathon. Synergy means together being more than the sum of our parts, which is the essence. Uh, we're hosting a hackathon in a week and a half, and uh we're doing a few more in the coming year, and we're doing them together with music festivals, which is awesome because a festival is a pop-up city. You know, it you build it up for a weekend and then you break it down again. But but but everything that is in that festival actually has to have the functionality of a city. There has to be energy, there has to be data, there has to be security, safety, culture, sense of belonging, all these other things. And uh and that provides such an excellent ground for rapid prototyping and and for applying new ideas and models and technologies in a safe environment uh where you wouldn't be allowed to do that at that level in an in a in a in a built environment like a city or so. So that's why we work with festivals and and also because festivals are fun. So synergyhack.org, you're um and it's you know it's it's such amazing work because we work with inspiring people, with people that are involved in music, with people that are involved with artists, so so it's this whole renaissance kind of vibe, everything connected to everything, and and just doing cool stuff together. So you're all invited.

SPEAKER_03 55:36

Well, thank you. And if you ever want to bring um bring that that renaissance energy over to Boston or Providence, let's uh let's find a way to do it together because that would be amazing, and I feel like it's needed.

SPEAKER_02 55:52

Absolutely. So Synergy is probably gonna be going international and coming, and actually it's gonna be in a few continents, so yeah.

SPEAKER_03 55:58

Love it. Rush, thanks so much for the time.

SPEAKER_02 56:01

Thank you so much, Janae. Thank you. And see you.

SPEAKER_03 56:05

See you.

SPEAKER_00 56:06

Thanks for listening to the podcast. You can find us on all the major podcast platforms under www.gov.io, as well as on YouTube under Jan Lane. See you next time.