SMART USE OF ENERGY

In September 2009, Danish Design Centre in collaboration with The Danish Energy Association launched the exhibition “Smart Use of Energy” focusing on innovations, which could make Denmark a leading nation within green transportation. The exhibition presents perspectives on how design can play a crucial role in the transition from the use of fossil fuels to electricity. An important point is the concept of utilising the batteries of electrical cars as reservoirs for wind power when production exceeds daily usage.

Kollision designed and implemented a RFID-based user system for the exhibition in which the ticket of each visitor serves as a battery that slowly discharges when users interact with the different content in a series of exhibition installations. Consequently the visitor experiences the relation between wind power and electrical car batteries first-hand, based on a ‘show it, don’t tell it’ principle.

Kollision designed four different applications installed on 14 installations in the exhibition. At the charging station visitors could charge their ticket/battery by blowing on a model of a wind turbine, generating energy assigned to the specific ticket. At the video stations visitors could place their ticket and watch videos along with an indicator of the video length and the remaining amount of energy on the ticket/battery – when tickets run out of energy, the installation stops working. The third application was a touch-based questionnaire, investigating visitors’ considerations when buying an electrical car. A database gathered the visitors’ answers and compared them to the answers of other visitors. The data was used in the fourth application – a dynamic statement generator, visualising a number of aspects regarding different groups of users’ opinions towards electrical cars.