Dean Kamen Unplugged
Millionaire inventor Dean Kamen takes his private island off the electrical grid
Segway inventor Dean Kamen- that's Lord Dumpling to you-has taken his private island off the grid. He replaced every light bulb on the island with LEDs as part of a larger effort to advertise zero net energy living. He and his lighting guru, on loan from Philips Color Kinetics, took Spectrum's Sally Adee on a tour of the nuts and bolts of the operation, including the solar and wind energy generation, the Stirling engine backup generator, and the systems engineering that makes it all work together.
Sally Adee, formerly an associate editor at IEEE Spectrum, is now a technology features editor at New Scientist, in London. She says it was an honor to write her last feature for Spectrum about the European Space Agency’s Loredana Bessone, a woman she considers a role model. “One day, I’m going to hit her up at ESA to start training me as an astronaut,” she says with a wink. “Right after I get sick of playing roller derby in London.”