Main Page

Participation

If you have any ideas, want to share cool solutions or help out developing hardware or software:

• Setup an account (top right) and create pages, fix errors, discuss on discussion tabs, all very welcome!
• Use the telegram group.

News

We are right now preparing a summary of the activities aiming to reboot the whole power stack as a green power network which happened on the CCCamp 2019. Here re the most recent activities and results...

• We have a survey online we would like you to fill in. Check it out!
• Part of the Infrastructure Review
• Our main bulletpoints summed up on a slide

Take part in the Survey!

→ Infrastructure Survey ←

TL;DR

• WE ARE EventGrid, JOIN US NOW to work on the next generation green power grid*!
• 48V / 300-400V DC Power Grid to connect remote villages which have their own local microgrids.
• 48V DC Power Outlet (2 lines + 1 token ring data bus for Outlet Load Balancing)
• Power Meters (for villages; 300-400V) for better visualization & awareness of consumption
• Power Meters (for participants; 48V) for logging 24x7, visualization & awareness of consumption
• Poll/Questionnaire-driven insights on power consumption of event/village/participant
• Gamification Concept to trigger more power input & power storage
• Public Relations activity for transparency & promotion of more green activity

WE MEET HERE

• This Wiki https://altpwr.net
• Telegram Group EventGrid
• Our Camp Sessions every day 1600 at THM Village / Lagerfeuer

What we plan to do

Following things are right now our focus and work in progress:

1. A new technical approach to bootstrap EventGrid a new DC Power Network for running power networks on events like SHA and CCCamp in an environmentally friendly way (to be developed!)
2. We want to raise awareness by making power consumption more transparent using a new power meter (to be developed!)
3. We want to make it easy for single event participants to gain insight in one's own power consumption patterns by providing a DIY power meter hardware KIT to display/visualize and log power consumption (to be developed!)
4. We want to gather research data from CCCamp participants on certain important questions setting up a poll/questionaire (to be developed!)
5. We want add gamification to incentivize green power stacks (to be developed!) on future events like SHA, EMF, CCCamp, etc.
6. We want to keep the community updated what we do and to which degree the community already reached their goal to shift the whole power stack towards a green power stack. We will do this with e.g. photos, statistics, proof-of-concept-installations and more...

Infocard for Infobeamer

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  CCCamp19 Infobeamer Eventgrid Slide

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  CCCamp19 Infobeamer Survey Eventgrid

CCCamp 2019

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  CCCamp Logo 2019

On the Chaos Communication Camp 2019 we launched a new workgroup being ignited by the already existing core group of the SHA2017. This workgroup is currently working on the shift towards a green power stack called EventGrid as a working title. Join our telegram group if you like.

Environmental Statistics (Power)

We did some number crunching on the camp's ... see CCCamp 2019 Power Statistics top learn more.

History

Things that happened before and where the latest workgroup formed.

The Alternative Power Network

How it started...

At CCCamp2015 we had the idea to build a small DC grid suitable for being used at events where normally diesel generators supply most of the power. We started designing for two years in our spare time. We wanted something safe, simple and transparent where everybody can be a supplier or a user of electric energy. For safety reasons we chose a voltage of 42V (+/- 15%), a bit below the "safe to touch" voltage maximum of 60VDC (IEC 62368-1:ES1). This way there is a bit of headroom for the over-voltage protection circuit which is needed to protect the users. Still leaving some extra volts headroom for cable losses was a thing we wanted to have just in case too. Simpleness was achieved by not doing too much complicated stuff with end-user connections. No monitoring of energy consumption or under-voltage protection was implemented. Just the basic necessities such as over-current protection (4A type C 300VDC circuit breakers) and over-voltage protection. (The last being a 600A peak capable thyristor based crowbar that shorts and isolates a node above a 52V voltage peak on the grid. The crowbar has a 0.16F 63V capacitor bank for guaranteed triggering that doubles as a smoothing capacitor for the node as well! A bonus is that it really helps keeping it ES1 as it keeps AC ripple to a minimum!) Transparency is important, the old website explained how the grid works and what users can and can't do with it. People started building nice things at home before the SHA event, connected them to the grid and all of it worked after maybe some finetuning!

At "Still Hacking Anyway 2017" the first test grid was laid out. It was running for the duration of the camp without any big issues. Solar panels were attached, tea was made with solar power, bread was toasted, lithium batteries were charged and even a 48-300V (2500W) bi-directional DC-DC converter setup was tested. TDK-Lambda was kind enough to supply us with two of those fantastic units. More about that here!

On Hackaday there is a nice article too about how the grid was used. Of course there was much to improve, battery backup would have been nice for instance, but it did work as expected and nobody got electrocuted!

Now the whole setup is dismantled again. It just was too heavy, took up too much storage space and it's just what should happen to an experiment for new and improved experiments to follow. So we'll be back!

But now what?!

First of all: Use this wiki to share bright solutions for planetary health improvement. It doesn't even to be something electric! If you have an idea to save a tiny bit of energy, or if you have a reuse, recycle, upcycle tip, or something else, post it on the tips page or make a page of your own explaining your idea! If a lot of people do small good things it makes a huge difference!

So just start editing! On the top right of any page you can create an account and become an editor.

Share this website, the more people are helping the better!

What happened to the old website?

Due to a personal error of mine, the website was not backed up properly... I didn't realize my error and took the site down. This site will be held up as long as possible. Backups will be tested for completeness too. Fortunately the Wayback Machine has backed up a good deal of pages! Still relevant data will be put on this wiki too!

THINGS

• ) We know bringing all this heavy equipment is not helping keeping down CO2 much, but the idea is mostly about giving people the opportunity to get handson experience on building green solutions. This experience will hopefully lead to more permanent green solutions in other places.