K-SEC

Meeting Summary

April 3, 2017

Here is a summary of the materials we read at the K-SEC meeting on April 3, 2017.

A.  Attendees (in ABC order):

Kanzawa, Kotake, Nishimura, Nishiwaki, Sadayasu, Sekiguchi, Shirashoji,

Tomozawa, Tsurumoto, Umemura (Total of 10)

B.  Materials read:

1-a. Solar Experiment Lets Neighbors Trade Energy Among Themselves (By DIANE CARDWELL) (The New York Times, Mar. 13, 2017) - Nishiwaki

Called the Brooklyn Microgrid, the project is signing up residents and businesses to a virtual trading platform that will allow solar-energy producers to sell excess-electricity credits from their systems to buyers in the group, who may live as close as next door.

The idea is to create a kind of virtual, peer-to-peer energy trading system built on blockchain, the database technology that underlies cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.

Upstart companies like LO. 3 Energy, which is designing the Brooklyn experiment with the industrial giant Siemens, are building digital networks that offer the promise of user-driven, decentralized energy systems that can work in tandem with the traditional large-scale grid or, especially in emerging economies, avoid the need for a grid at all.

The Brooklyn microgrid is conceived to work with the conventional grid, which is in the midst of a reboot under Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s directives to make it more flexible, resilient and economically efficient while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. That effort, known as Reforming the Energy Vision, or REV, includes encouraging the development of microgrids and more active community participation.

Lawrence Orsini, LO3’s chief executive, said the state still needed to determine how to define his company and its network of participants before it could get its market up and running, a move he anticipates by June.

1-b. How Schools Are Going Solar

(By Erika Celeste) (Mar. 22, 2017)

Construction of the solar project will cost $3 million. But when finished, it will completely power the elementary, middle and high school buildings. The district has to lease the equipment from the local power company for 20 years, at a fixed rate. In 20 years, the school district will own the equipment outright, meaning it won’t pay anything for electricity. If all goes according to plan, Fremont School District’s new solar field will be up and running by mid-summer.

2. In the land of the kami

(by Michael Hoffman Mar 14, 2010) - Sadayasu

Michael Hoffman is a fiction and nonfiction writer who has lived in Hokkaido by the

sea almost as long as he can remember. He has been contributing regularly to The

Japan Times for 10 years.

This article is a very old contribution of his to The Japan Times (dated March 14,

2010), but his view of the Kami from a foreigner (westerner’s view point)

remains pretty much intact. Here is what he says:

Japanese people believe the kami (spirit, deity or God) resides in everything,

whatever it is. Many are ancestral; many more are animals (tigers, wolves, hares,

serpents), or natural phenomena (wind, rain, thunder), or natural objects (most

famously Mount Fuji). That is how the universe is built. It is the Way of Kami

or Shinto. So, what is Shinto? Who and what are the kami? Japanese people do

not have answers for these questions nor are interested in having answers to these

questions.

Shinto seems totally different from other contemporary religions like Christianity or

Muslim or Buddhism. People then ask “Is it even a religion?” One noted Shintoist

scholar says “it is more than a religious faith and it is a combination of attitudes,

ideas, and ways of doing things that have become, over many years, an integral

part of the way of the Japanese people.” It was in the air Japan breathed.

Also, Shinto is blessed with a joyously exuberant view of the world. It has no

heaven because it doesn’t need one. The Shintoist scholar cited above says “This

world (ruled by Shinto) is inherently good.” This is clearly different form Buddhism

which regards life as suffering and physical existence as basically undesirable.

In Shinto, there is no concept of “hell” or “paradise” as in Christianity.

The Shinto spirit has survived in the heart of Japanese people for hundreds of

years despite the dominance of Buddhism after it was imported into Japan

hundreds of years ago. Then, at the 1868 Meiji Imperial Restoration, Shinto was

abruptly adopted as the state cult. Shinto myths were taught in schools as

historical fact and propelled Japan first into the most intensive modernization the

world had ever seen, then headlong into the most destructive war.

In December 1945, its abolition decreed under the Occupation by the Supreme

Commander for the Allied Powers — “in order to prevent recurrence of the

perversion of Shinto theory and beliefs into militaristic and ultra-nationalistic

propaganda designed to delude the Japanese people and lead them into wars of

aggression.”

Today Shinto remains intact more or less as shrine Shinto at the heart of all

Japanese.

C. Role assignment for April 17, 2017:

Nishimura, Tsurumoto

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