We began the design of the DARBUS system with desk research into energy systems which helped us define our scope to understanding the impact of extreme weather events on energy access & resiliency. We learnt that Rhode Island's energy infrastructure is highly inequitable, especially in the wake of power outages.
The graph below shows the disparity in service interruption experienced within different cities in RI. When we compared these interruptions with the city & town income data, we found a negative correlation between level of income and frequency of service interruption.
Source: WPRI
We also conducted primary user research through surveys and long-form interviews to understand the human experience during a power outage.
Through our user research, we found that -
1. Uncertainty in the wake of an outage is stressful
2. Lack of communication from utility providers exacerbates anxieties
We summarized the aforementioned challenges in the current system and defined the features of an alternative system that could respond to these challenges.
Understanding Precedent
Once we defined the desired characteristics of the new system, we dived deeper into existing decentralized energy systems and community-based solutions to energy transmission. According to Nissan, EV’s manufactured on the road today combined store over 10 Gigawatt-hours of power. For context, the largest energy storage facility in the USA can only store 2.86 Gigawatt-hours. Theoretically, the EV’s on the road today can already combine to store more energy than energy storage facilities that are being built. We also studied existing efforts across the globe to repurpose batteries for bidirectional charging.
We took the aforementioned insight further and found that a bus can power a home for 28 days or 10 homes for 3 days based on the average power outage lasts 6 hours and average consumption during an outage being 1 KWh.
Our first proposal was to utilize existing public transportation such as electric buses that have large battery capacities to repurpose the battery for bidirectional charging in times of crisis as energy backup sources.
We took our proposal to experts for their feedback and received constructive and valuable feedback that helped us understand the systemic, economic, and usability limitations in our proposed system.
Feedback
Further query in the limitations of our first idea pushed us to seek out opportunities within the private sector and design the DARBUS system to be more human-centric and seamlessly integrated within current city operations.
