The Bullet with Butterfly Wings: Electrical Grids and YOU
Talk
Duration: 1h
Sunday, 25 October 2026 | 17:25 > 18:252026-10-25T17:25:00.000Z | Lectures
Power plants are weird. What YOU need to know!
The electrical grid is one of the largest and most complex systems on the planet. What manages it? Software. Yikes.
In this workshop you’ll learn how Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) combine thousands of distributed energy devices—including rooftop solar, home batteries, heat pumps, and EV chargers—into a single coordinated system.
This is not an electrical engineering overview, it’s about how root level planet wide support systems function from the perspective of modern software development.
You may learn about distributed systems, IoT devices, cloud architecture, event-driven design, and the markets that make Virtual Power Plants economically viable, but nothing is certain in these chaotic times.
Participants will:
Simulate an electrical grid using physical tokens and role-playing
Build a simple software model of a Virtual Power Plant
Respond to "grid emergencies" like clouds, heat waves, and football matches
Experiment with the concepts of batteries, EV charging, and solar production
Discover why distributed systems are similar to distributed energy
No prior knowledge of energy systems or programming is required.
Laptop recommended for following along with demonstrations.
The electrical grid is one of the largest and most complex systems on the planet. What manages it? Software. Yikes.
In this workshop you’ll learn how Virtual Power Plants (VPPs) combine thousands of distributed energy devices—including rooftop solar, home batteries, heat pumps, and EV chargers—into a single coordinated system.
This is not an electrical engineering overview, it’s about how root level planet wide support systems function from the perspective of modern software development.
You may learn about distributed systems, IoT devices, cloud architecture, event-driven design, and the markets that make Virtual Power Plants economically viable, but nothing is certain in these chaotic times.
Participants will:
Simulate an electrical grid using physical tokens and role-playing
Build a simple software model of a Virtual Power Plant
Respond to "grid emergencies" like clouds, heat waves, and football matches
Experiment with the concepts of batteries, EV charging, and solar production
Discover why distributed systems are similar to distributed energy
No prior knowledge of energy systems or programming is required.
Laptop recommended for following along with demonstrations.
Gallery
The Bullet with Butterfly Wings: Electrical Grids and YOU
Author
Eric Medine is a Berlin-based experiential producer working in multimedia and video art. He has given numerous lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and presentations on topics such as curating electronic art, hacking video game hardware, and software programming for live video exhibitions.
In the early 200's he ran Drivethru Studios, a not-for-profit, independent gallery dedicated to emerging artists working in painting, video, and sculpture in Chicago
In 2004 he closed down the Drivethru Studios and relocated to Los Angeles...