Sensing Solar

Decarbonising our energy systems is urgently required. While solar adoption has sharply risen, it comes with complex challenges: Solar panels cause strain on electric grids, and there is growing confusion of the financial benefits due to changes to the salderingsregeling (“net metering law”). While government and energy companies work on these challenges, citizens also have a role to play. They can adjust energy practises to match fluctuating levels of renewable energy sources and reduce energy consumption overall. But proposing such behaviour changes is infinitely complex, and public awareness has not proven effective enough to influence shifts.
In the Netherlands, and many parts of the world, homes and workplaces are physically separated from the infrastructures that provide electricity. Where energy comes from and how much there is, is therefore only abstractly understood. This separation enables high consumption of energy—as it can be difficult to fathom it as something “there” in varying amounts. But what if energy could be sensed in our environment more directly? Might this change our relationship to it?
Designers in the emerging area of solar design are asking similar questions through the design of new solar products and systems, aiming to guide citizens to experience energy as a more material and cultural thing. It is part of a “new narrative” they wish to emerge around solar that could help citizens overcome false expectations that renewables will allow the same level of energy use—and without it being felt as a loss.
The design knowledge for how to achieve this is still minimal. We therefore propose to assist solar design companies deepen their explorations of “sensing energy” as a strategy for the energy transition. This project therefore asks: How can sensing solar energy change relationships to energy, leading to changes in energy practices are experienced in positive ways?