The house has a continuous axis where you can see through the whole house and its view already in the entrance. Air and light enter from several directions. Inside the house, the architecture is well-thought-out for close interaction between houses, greenhouses, nature, views, togetherness and private rooms.
Drinking water is available from the property’s own drilled well. The principle is that nutrients and water in the wastewater are recycled and purified in the greenhouse’s plant beds, where macro and microbiota interact with the plants’ root systems. The industry is converted into fruit and vegetables, whereby the cycle ends with the return of food to the homeowner.
location: Sikhall, Vänersborg, Sweden
architecture and engineering: Niklas Dahlström & Anders Solvarm, Naturvillan
photography: Marcus Eliasson, ERA Hus & Hem
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The Gridless Solutions Initiative explores alternative technologies for the delivery of critical services like energy, sanitation and freshwater. The focus is on small-scale, decentralized and modular solutions that can be used to address a wide spectrum of complex socioeconomic challenges, making societies more resilient and prepared for the unexpected.
Photo:Allison Joyce / Getty
The Gridless Solutions initiative follows the fast development of decentralized, modular and multifunctional systems that can operate without necessarily being connected to a centralized grid. This opens for a wide range of innovations where it is possible to provide basic services such as water, sanitation and electricity even in times of crisis.
The technological shift creates many new opportunities to complement services provided through a centralized grid. People living in geographical isolation or in conflict zones can get better access to essential services like water and electricity. Gridless solutions can also help all kinds of societies become better prepared for the unexpected, for example through back-up solutions that strengthen the resilience of infrastructure in the event of extreme weather or cyberattacks.
But the introduction of new technology and business models is not always easy. Hence, the Gridless Solutions Initiative collaborates with the private sector to shed light on which system mechanisms are needed for successful deployment and upscaling. Furthermore, the initiative helps decision-makers and regulators analyze potential justice and social acceptance issues emerging along the way. The Gridless Solutions Initiative builds on a previous project on innovation and business models for decentralized and circular water solutions, sWASH&grow.
New spaces and new solutions are needed to manage competition for land and resources resulting from population and economic growth. Marine areas are receiving increasing attention from researchers and policymakers thanks to the opportunities they provide for service and goods supply.
With businesses and various other organizations shifting their focus from land to the sea, the goal of our work aims to investigate how these emerging opportunities are being seized and how the main challenges are addressed. In particular, we focus on applications aiming to co-locate many of these processes in the same spaces for more optimal marine spatial planning and increased economic attractiveness.
Three aspects are expected to characterize the new applications: multifunctionality, with multiple activities sharing the same spaces and the same infrastructure or location (e.g. renewable energy production with aquaculture and/or storage); mobility, the resistance of the (floating) platforms to lateral forces generated by wind and waves and the possibility be relocated at a low cost; and modularity, the potential of these platforms to be aggregated as individual components into a larger system. Common across all these aspects is the concept that these solutions will all be placed in marine spaces, hence the term we define for them is M4s: Marine, Multifunctional, Mobile, and Modular solutions.
We scan existing research to identify geographical and co-location patterns: where are multi-use marine projects located? Which technologies are considered? Are the solutions deployed mobile and/or modular? Are the platforms floating or fixed? What are the technologies that are most often combined? What are the benefits and drawback with different solutions? In this way, we identify research trends and point out necessary future directions in the field of M4s. The next step to take is to gather information beyond academic publications by reviewing grey literature and online resources, as well as discussing our findings with key stakeholders that are active in this field.
Gridless Work Package 3 is developing an approach to address these research questions through a combination of cutting-edge tools that take into consideration the network configuration of the entire island to identify points of intervention and zoom in into the local level to design optimal solutions delivering energy and water to vulnerable areas.
The approach to improve resilience will be implemented in Cuba, building upon an existing cooperation with SEI. The island has been subject to long and frequent summertime power and water outages. Recently, hurricane Ian caused devastating impacts on the infrastructure in the island. Even though the storm has only hit the western coast of Cuba, the entire remaining of the island suffered from shortages of energy due to cascading effects on the network.
Mini grids can play a vital role providing electricity in parts of rural sub-Saharan Africa not reached with grid electricity in the medium to long term. However, unlike grid electricity, minigrids face unique sociotechnical challenges that are often exacerbated by the weak political economy within which they operate. Work package four explores how political economy factors like politics, power and coalitions between national and international actors can affect the minigrid development in terms of innovation capacity and quality and cost of services to the electricity users. During phase one of the Gridless Initiative, we investigated how political economy factors can influence the technology innovation system of minigrid development in Kenya.
Our analysis showed that political influence and vested interests negatively influence minigrid site selection, resulting in unnecessary delays which inflate capital investment and can disrupt the system to the detriment of investors, developers and most of all, electricity users.
Nonetheless, technological innovations such as the emerging lithium and capacitor battery technologies, internet of things enabling remote management and big data for effective system sizing and planning suggest that the sector has significant growth potential. We also found that several minigrid developers are already using these innovations to enhance their service offerings to different types of users.
Cities have now crossed the threshold of hosting over half of the world population. With 4.4 billion urban populations, developing countries in Africa and Asian are experiencing rapid urban population growth, while developed countries such as Europe, North America and South America are seeing their growth rate decline. By 2050, Africa and Asia will have an additional 2 billion urban population in their current and emerging cities. This presents series of challenges for the cities to maintain vital infrastructure and services, address urban developmental needs such as poverty and health disparity, while having to facilitate economic growth and rural-urban migration.
Among the challenges that comes with rapid urbanisation, urban water security remains a prevalent issue. Not only does cities need to expand and maintain its water infrastructure network and services, it also needs to supply water to the growing population.
To ensure universal access to safe and affordable drinking water for all, urban planning for a sustainable access to safe, affordable, reliable drinking water – as opposed to improved drinking water sources – is needed.
Work Package 5 of the Gridless Initative is exploring how gridless water solutions can help deliver equitable supply of safe and reliable water in growing cities. Work Package 5 is focusing on cities in Bangalore, India and Nairobi, Kenya to understand the interconnected problems of water supply, quality, reliability, and price, against the needs of local communities and systemic barriers that undermines scalable water solutions. Work Package 5 will inform water researchers and urban planners on the challenge of engaging with the policy- and need-driven approach with local authorities and communities and identify the pathway to co-develop water solutions that equitably deliverable water to the vulnerable urban population.
Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)
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