Claud Matney Speaks at SxSW Interactive Festival

Claud Matney, founder and principal of Matney-Frantz Engineering spoke at Austin's  South by Southwest (SxSW) Interactive Festival on Tuesday, March 11th. 

SxSW Interactive Festival began bringing together digital creators, industry leaders and innovative thinkers as a technological offshoot of SxSW Music Festival in 1994.  Since then, the Interactive Festival has taken on a life of its own and become a renowned, ever-growing international event that brings together leading thinkers of the hi-tech community. 

In 2007 the SxSW Interactive festival brought together well over six thousand people from across the globe.  This year Mr. Matney spoke about  wind power as a topic of sustainability in post-industrial, post-internet world (Panel: Can Enterprise Save the World?)

Mr. Matney's discussion focused on what is perhaps the greatest challenge of wind technology today: wind capturing.  One of the greatest restraints on wind power as an independent power source is the inability to effectively capture its power.  What this breaks down to in practice is having too much power when the wind blows a lot and having none or too little when the wind doesn't blow enough. 

Although there are hopes about new battery technology that would allowed wind capturing and storage, the current problem prohibits wider use of wind generated power.  A creative solution to the wind capturing problem was the topic of Mr. Matney's discussion: intelligently connecting wind power generation to household power use. 

For example, if a household water heater could  be sensitized to how much wind was blowing, and how much power was being consumed, it could heat up in times of low power use and large production.  Similarly , at times of high consumption and low wind power, the heater would not draw power, unless the household owner decides to once notified of the relative costs at that high-consumption, high-cost time.

These types of resourceful solution, while still in the brainstorming phase, epitomize a philosophy of creative, rather than ascetic sustainability.  While reducing excess consumption on an individual basis is part of the energy solution, the promise of reducing waste systematically through intelligent designs offers more long-term and  comprehensive solutions.

To learn more about Matney-Frantz's work, or share ideas on wind power as a sustainable solution to the energy crisis explore our website, Blog, or Contact Us.

 To learn more about the SxSW festival and the Interactive Panel Can Enterprise Save the World?

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