Why is this project important? Economy is always based on free goods like oil or coal. It's just there. Years ago companies just started to collect oil which was available on the surface of our planet and sold it. They built their business on free available goods, given by mother nature. Whatever product you touch, the very first ingredients of that product have been free and given by nature. Businesses "just" added energy and design. It is important to understand that everything started with free goods.

If you think about hacking you need some parts to build your project (i.e. plastics or gears) and energy to transform it. You can use (free) scrap parts. The maker scene is already capable of creating high tech devices more or less for free. Only energy costs money and is expensive to our environment. We still use coal, nuclear material or oil for producing electrical energy. That's kind of silly because the daily sun is there, day by day.

"Wasteland Energy" wants you to open your eyes to identify not used areas where you could put solar panels. Future batches of solar panels will be cheaper and more efficient than today. Knowing that every windows ledge can create electricity is an important step into design and new paradigms according to hacking. At my home there is a huge box which I use to collect wall plug transformers. Some of them are broken, some of them I don't use anymore. Nearly every electronic device is packed containing one of these wall plug transformers. I hate these transformers. Why should I always transform 230V down to 12V if I could have a 12V socket in my home? It's time for a separate energy bus at home. Using a solar panel instead of a windowsill (wich looks ugly in most cases) makes it look better and creates electricity for you. The battery is my 12V source. I don't use these ugly transformers anymore. There is one powerful 12V source in my flat which provides enough energy for all my small devices. While I am at work the sun is delivering the power at day time for free. You can attach solar panels everywhere without drilling holes or changing the structure of the building.

Think different. Think 12V, 24V, 48V, 60V

Think solar.