James's Youtube Of The Week - Ep1 - Man vs. Toaster

Forgive me Linkedin, it has been some time since my last post. I've decided to embark on a new direction, reviewing whatever of interest I've stumbled upon on the Youtubes of late.

Bear with me while I get into a rhythm, but my focus will be on why a few minutes of internet-published, often amateurish content piques my interest and what it might mean for business and technology going forward.

With luck you might learn something new, get a laugh, or gain appreciation for a problem that in my humble opinion is pretty interesting. Your feedback is important to me - comment, share, repost, hopefully this will be fun!

Visualising Energy Equivalence

I've been in the electricity industry for decades and the recent technological advances in EVs, Solar PV and Home Storage are making people think more about what they do with their energy, where it comes from and where they can store it.

To poach an Agile term, the Minimal Viable Product (MVP) for electricity utilities is the humble Kilowatt-hour (kWh). One of those will cost you about NZ$0.20 and all houses and industries use them. But ask anyone how many they used last month and I'd wager they have no idea at all, but they would insist that they paid far too much for them!

To help you put a kWh into perspective sit back and relax while Robert F?rstemann uses one of the most efficient human-to-energy conversion devices ever devised to toast a piece of bread.

Putting energy in perspective

• Next time you are at the gym flip the display on the erg, bike or treadmill to Watts. How do you compare to Mr F?rstemann?
• Check your next power bill and note how many kWh your home or business consumed. How many loaves of bread could you toast?