Which is better — a simple solution to a complicated problem? Or a complex solution to a simple problem? Does the fact that a technology is new mean that it is necessarily better?

To get even more philosophical about it, just because we can do something, does that mean that we should?

You’ve probably had that experience of working really hard on something or solving a difficult problem, only to find out that there was a simple shortcut.

There’s always something appealing about a clean, simple, and elegant solution. We live in a natural world that interfaces with the things that humans have built and the technologies that we’ve invented. It’s just human nature that we often make things more difficult than we need to.

Throughout our history, the inventions that seemed so logical at the time turn out to have unintended consequences that we have to deal with later. Energy is a big one. Early on we figured out how to tame fire so that we could stay warm and cook things. Twigs, trees, even cow dung helped us get the job done.

Then along came coal, and with it, we harnessed the power of steam, giving rise to what became known as the Industrial Revolution. As you well know, we humans like to get from place to place. The railroads made for massive expansion, but the advent of the automobile changed everything. Did you know that many of the earliest cars were electric?

Nonetheless, oil and gasoline quickly became the fuel of choice, and there just happened to be plenty of it, sitting right under our feet. Little did we know at the onset of the age of the automobile that burning enough of it would boil our planet. What seemed like a simple solution a hundred years ago now gives us a very complex problem to sort out. Weaning our world off of fossil fuels proves to be challenging indeed.

Which brings us to the rapidly growing era of renewables like wind and solar. They provide volts for less money than burning oil from the ground, but they have some issues to work out as well. Mainly, what happens when we need the juice, but the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining?

That brings me to the big dance society is grappling with at the moment. The common answer is that we need sophisticated banks of high-tech batteries that require rare metals and minerals and even more mining and environmental problems. On the surface, the battery problem seems quite complex.

Thankfully, thanks to some clever folks among us, there’s good news coming out about simple ways to deal with this. I recently spotted a couple of brilliant examples of simplicity in action.

The first item that caught my eye is about an ingenious way of storing electricity that is currently coming online in the deep water off of the California coast.

A German company is making huge hollow spheres out of concrete with a system of valves, turbines, and electric pumps. They sink the whole thing to the bottom of the ocean where it stays put. During the day when the wind or solar is generating excess electricity, the pumps push all the water out of the sphere. Then at night, the pressure of the water spins turbines that generate electricity as the sphere fills back up.

In Finland, the world‘s largest “sand battery“ recently went online. The thing looks like a big water tank, except it’s full of sand. During the hours of excess energy production, water pipes circulating through the sand heat it up. Then at night when the energy is needed, that heat is used either directly for heating or to generate electricity again. The whole thing looks like a big metal water tank except it’s simply a pile of sand with pipes running through it.

I find both of these ideas very inspiring. They are simple, low-tech solutions to seemingly complex problems. They both should prove simple to scale up, without the massive complexity of data centers or rare earth mineral mining.

As we humans dance with an ever growing array of technologies, it’s a rare note of reassurance that something so simple can be a solution for something that seems so complex.

Sharing these with you today in the spirit of optimism, reminding us all that the key to raising consciousness is to not always complicate things. Elegance, indeed!

Much love and simple solutions till next week!

Merci et à bientôt!

M+

ML #650

Mark Metz
Monday Love Movement Calendar