More Thoughts on Bridging the Economic Gaps...

It seems to me that contests such as the $300 house  are a good sign that the larger tides are turning and we collectively will start evolving low cost infrastructure for non industrialized parts of the world and the soon to be post industrialized parts of the world.

Low cost renewable energy powered infrastructure that still keeps us integrated into global communications seems very feasible and imminent.  Yet there are plenty of social barriers that will make it a challenge to implement in the west.  In my last post I mentioned some of the biggest barriers I see to this movement, land prices, zoning ordinances and taxes on said land. All of that makes it somewhat unlikely that even if one attains high degrees of self sufficiency with some product surplus  to sell that you'll be able to afford the mortage, unless you came in with a good chunk of cash prior to the venture.  With a deeper recession/depression imminent and most potential "homesteaders" or "unpluggers"  approaching these ventures with no savings and probably some debt to service, this economic hurdle becomes a big one.

Obviously one can try and find work outside, but depending on your choosen "unplugged" location this can be challenging and often conflicting with your unplugged job ethics.  What seems to have the most potential is figuring out a decent way to plug into the online economy.  Elance and other online markets are a start but somewhat a race to the bottom as labor markets are international.  So the open ended question I have now is whether we can build openly collaborative firms that are working in alignment with solar autonomy and also bridging the economic gap?

Solar Bellows Engine, Will this work?

I'm having trouble communicating a potentially unique and simple, stirling engine concept. I might also be missing something, but here it is...
My goal is to make a low energy dense, stirling engine (passive solar) that is also low cost on a kwhr basis. 
To do that I need a very high volume, low speed engine (reduce drag losses).  It would be expensive to build a typical metal engine with say 10" cylinders for 500watt.  However an insulated rubber expanding bellows in place of a displacer and power piston might be an answer.  Here are some sketches to the concept.

This configuration is really simple as the expansion piston and compression piston work against each other.  This is also bad as it fixes the phase angle.  There are fixes to that, the main point is to ask the question of whether or not a bellows engine could be made to work for low temp solar applications?  Without pressurizing the system the cylinders will not see more than 10psi.  Any old inner tube can hold that.  Temperature is an issue 200 deg F will be common.  I think though there is rubber that can withstand those temps.  It may also be possible to insulate the rubber on the inner sleeve to protect it. 
Feedback or criticism would be most appreciated at this point.  Want to get glaring problems out of the way before researching more or prototyping.  Thanks

Economic barriers to solar autonomy, and how we can break through

As the world moves simultaneously both down resource extractive curves (oil, rare metals, phosphate) and up population curves. We will increasingly need to seek answers from beyond current industrial economic paradigms. Centralization, and accompanying long just in time supply chains, which proved to be optimal strategies for maximizing production in a resource abundant era(minimized labor input per unit/ maximized productivity) will prove to be poor, vulnerable ways to carry vital societal infrastructure in the coming years. Long term what will be required of societal infrastructure are systems that are solar driven (whether wind/biomass), ecologically integrated (as opposed to ecologically dominating) featuring high degrees of autonomy and resiliency  from the bottom up. Current approaches towards solar economies which rely on centralized complex industries (PV's, current wind turbines), may prove to be overly dependent on the old fossil based industrial system. What is needed now are technologies that form a bridge between the resilient solar economies to come, and the existing industrial economies that currently exist.

Building these bridges is not an easy task. Once one realizes the core of the problems with industrial society it is tempting to simply opt out and build a post modern society from scratch (see OSE). Though this work is very important for our medium-long term future, we are still left with the puzzling question of how to economically integrate it now, particularly as the global economic crisis comes to a head. Building solar driven earth brick resilient communities sounds like a great solution, but who will first buy into these communities, who will first rewrite building codes, food codes, ect and even more importantly who will buy the products that are aimed exclusively towards these very communities? There is a problem of exclusivity between current economic paradigm (corporate consumer driven monopoly) and any other alternative form of economy. At the heart of this conflict are land prices, land ordinances, and land taxes. I'm speculating a bit , but I suspect that agricultural land prices (the land needed for RC development) are primarily held as high as they are because of the massive fossil fuel subsidy that conventional ag utilizes. If it weren't for this subsidy that land could not produce enough to be valued at such prices. Property use ordinances (building codes, FDA) ect further act to support the existing fossil fuel ventures, they may have evolved that way to guarantee investors that their ventures will be the only game in town? So as I see it this exclusivity of land uses needs to be tackled before we can expect to see large scale solar driven movements.

My thoughts on moving forward on this problem are two pronged. The first prong of attack is to develop a suite of resilient technology that maximizes ones odds of being autonomous from the the global economic system in which we wish to emerge from.

In order to do this a very difficult balance must be struck on multiple fronts. First for a given piece of land solar energy flows must be transformed into enough product to stay financially afloat (mortage, taxes, ect). We must come to see ourselves not as industrial consumers, but instead as solar farmers and producers, turning solar BTU's into food, fuel, fiber, and energy for manufacturing ventures. This must be done in such a way that you are not entrapped within current global industrial paradigm.

The second prong of attack is perhaps the more critical and difficult. It is the accompanying social and cultural revolution which must usher in and create broader acceptance and support for these new sets of values. What is needed here at this moment are synthetic visionaries who can grasp the complexities of our current system, where we must head and why. The challenges on this front are enormous as I suspect that there are problems, and answers that currently exceed our linguistic abilities to communicate. The tools though at hand are impressive, the information age is at hand. Small agile intelligent groups can leverage this media to produce news content, cultural narratives, and other trans formative tools that were formerly only afforded by all but the most well funded, linked in media companies.

In this blog I aim mainly to discuss the first prong of attack.

In the next post I'll begin exploring my plans on developing one core piece of infrastructure needed for solar autonomy, the home. I intend to work collaboratively and build on the open source hexayurt project , founded by Vinay Gupta.  Stay tuned....