Fostering Consumers’ Solar Panel Agency: A Speculative Design Approach Using Cellular Automata and TinyML
This research explores how neighbourhood-scale energy systems might operate when households are treated as active, decision‑making participants rather than passive consumers. We developed a scalable, simulation-based model of a neighbourhood energy network inspired by conditions in the Hunter Region, NSW, Australia. Drawing on ideas from cellular automata—particularly John von Neumann’s Game of Life—each household is modelled as an autonomous “cell” within a larger system. These household nodes represent renewable energy producers, consumers, and storage units that respond to local conditions and to each other. Through this abstraction, we investigate how simple, local decision-making behaviours can give rise to emergent patterns of energy circulation, storage, and use across a neighbourhood. The project serves as a proof of concept for visualising speculative futures of distributed energy systems. Importantly, it considers both human and non‑human forms of agency, treating buildings themselves as self-directed actors within the network. By doing so, the research opens space to think differently about how energy, infrastructure, and everyday domestic environments might interact in more adaptive and resilient ways.