How far is Balcombe camp a responsible alternative

Published Date 9/10/13 4:49 PM

Its interesting to be in the middle of camp life doing something that is core to the camp functioning. Am one of the crew responsible for the tech tent, we run a solar power set-up that charges the camp phones, runs the laptops and provides shaky internet for legal, media and wider camp community. This is currently working pretty well but we have a number of issues that need addressing, lets briefly look at each one:

We are completely reliant on a single source of power – solar – this as anyone knows is unsubstantial as people are finding out on dark rainy days – as we move into the autumn/winter this will stop working in a meaningful way. The is a blindness and intolerance to addressing this issue that is worrying and the wider camp is not taking on the responsibility for this issue.

The majority of people while expressing green views treat camp infrastructure as if it was normal mainstream home infrastructure. The is a tendency to get angry if they can’t plug their phone in when they wont to or use the internet after dark, or watch videos over our shaky internet connection. You can explain to them all you like but when you leave the tech tent to get a cup of tea often when you get back you will find 3 extra phones charging and the laptop left on with nobody using it etc.

The solution being pushed is HUGE increase in battery’s and solar panels and tech so you can treat natural resources power as if it was home power. This is a surprising and shocking unthinking indictment of our culture, its why fracking/dangerous energy is happening in the first place. It seems people are un-willing to move closer to nature (even though they are living on a road verge in the rain) rather they unthinkingly continue to use technology to bend nature to there convenience.

We still have individuals who are ripping apart working camp set-ups see my last post for motivations for this LINK The camp is not taking collective responsibility over damaging individuals and there actions, the camp meetings are dysfunctional and fractures, the only way most things are decided is be mob rule or attrition through boredom. Consensus is failing through a lack of trust in the shifting camp crew.

If you wont to challenge fracking and dangerous energy extraction in general you need to be at least able to offer and outline of a working alternative. How can you build a green/alternative with out looking at this issues/mind set in our own camp.

Balcombe Protection Camp has a working solar power station

Published Date 9/6/13 8:05 AM

While summer lasts we aspire to camp electrics being completely powered by solar power. Currently the kitchen, massage/meeting tent and the media/tech tent are working. We have LED lighting and can power 3 laptops and charge around 30-40 phones each day. Other structures have LED lighting running from fixed battery’s.

Hamish looking tired in the Balcombe  tech tent at the end of the day (photo Dik Ng)

Today’s observation is the tech tent has become quite boring last few days – the issue is that it simply works, the are no blown fuses, sparking wires or smocking components. The is just working laptops, phone charging and mostly working internet. This is a good thing of course, but I still have to spend my time in the space to stop people dismantling this working set-up. Here are some example bad energy’s that make this necessary:

* I would do this better, rip appart and plug to gather in a way which is likely not better and then leave everything broken and burned out

* I need this now for this very important – screening – music event – personal project – ripaprt and leave key parts missing/broken.

* Pilfering, I wont this component, its an open space, I will take it, lots of adapters and cables go missing every week.

* External saboteurs, its well documented now that most successful radical campaigns have had paid corporate spy’s, agent provocaturs and undercover police/police informers and that these roles often ambiguously overlap.

* Internal Sabotage, I hate you because you told me in public not to do something I wonted to do so, I will make something you are doing fail. Some people think these overlap with the external saboteurs…

This last one is more prevalent than you would imagine and I don’t think many people doing it actually understand that they are.

Back to a positive note, we have a working tech tent, YEHA!!! and a good crew (would like to name them here but have to ask first), Sean Peatfield

Camp tech needs for Balcombe

Published Date 9/4/13 10:11 AM

Currently we have half the solar panels we ordered working to power core camp phone, laptops and tech tent (250w) – with limited public phone charging. And a second 40w solar powered laptop, music and phone charging point in the large massage tent. In the kitchen we now have a permanent lighting set-up with 27w solar panel. The tolits also have battery lighting but no panels to trickle charge the battery.

(DRAFT) This is a list to build on what we have in our low power solar driven 12v tech tent (and wider powered spaces) at Balcombe anti-fracking camp.

3x small cheap laptops (Thinkpad X60-61) these can be sourced ex-corporate and are strongly built, only use 14-24w of power – less than a 3ed of a normal laptop)

3xcheap usb mouse for the laptops.

Big 2TB external hardrive (legal and camp media off site backup)

Small 1TB USB hardrive (on-site backup)

4 x universal 12v laptop chargers (these can be used to power most small electronics, we use them for the audio and LED projector for screenings)

Wifi booster x2

2 x solar panels 100w semi flexible for tech tent roof + charge controllers, so we can move the huge panel to camp events charging which is what its needed, configured and bought for.

4x cheap 5-10w solar panels to trickle charge the distributed lighting set-ups, they are small so we don’t need the cost and complexity of charge controllers. (NEED TO WORK OUT THE MATH TO SEE IF THIS WILL WORK WELL ANUF)

20m cable heavy duty

Box of mixed 12v electrical connectors

Cheap mobile phone/mifi to use as permanent hotspot (Sim has to be 3 network as this is the only one that works reliably, PASG data package)

6x Phone charging USB 5v adapters (these keep going missing)

20 x micro USB charging cables (these keep going missing)

5 x iphone usb charging cables (these keep going missing)

UPDATED LIST (DRAFT)

Ebuyer torch (AA bats) x4 (529074) £88

Ebuyer USB micro cable x20 (242264) £19

Ebuyer Apple connector x4 (451003) £12.60

Ebuyer single 5 volt USB adapter x6 (394741) £18.00

Ebuyer external HD 1TB x1 (396739) £55.00

Ebuyer external HD 2TB x1 (384253) £84.52

Solar shower bags 3 off £21

rechargeable AA battery 16 £20

8 cell battery re-charger 1 £20

3 network data sim card 10gb a month 6 months £90

wifi booster antenna x2 £70

small 10w solar panels + cables x4 £100

transport fund £500

big tarps x10 £180

cast iran Clark Victoria wood burning stove x1 £574

cheap RF bugging detector x1 £20

Parrot AR drone power addition x1 £320

Kitchen water filter + 5 filters x1 £80

phone mic in spliters x10 £40

Cheap small low power laptops think pad (X60) x3 £420

laptop 12v universal power supply’s x3 £90

100w solar panels semi flexible x2 £320

charge controllers PWM5 x2 £36

Heavy duty 12v cable 20m £20

solar cable connectors 10 £25

box of electrical connectors x2 £40

padlock combination x3 £60

Hiring of winter tent £500

Total £3802

Snatch Snatch Snatch

Published Date 9/3/13 6:14 PM

3 videos of police snatch’s from Balcome Protection Camp this morning. Already there have been 4 arrests today. Action began with with Nicky, a local resident, locking herself on to the gate to prevent deliveries to the fracking site. Then they started on the people slowing the trucks.

Snatch!Snatch,Snatch!Snatch,Snatch,Snatch!

Balcombe power use

Published Date 9/2/13 10:27 PM

I have been at Balcombe anti-fracking camp for two weeks now (DRAFT)

Broken inverter box of shame

We have come a long way in the tech tent in helping to change the mindset of the camp to be more environmental. The camp is moving more slowly towards being in tune with the wider natural rhythms of the seasons. Our next challenge in this is to get the camp to recognise that there are seasons and that autumn is coming. As a natural shift, power generation will start to move from sun to wind and other more experimental energy generating.

What have we achieved:

We moved peoples’ perception on to be aware that where power comes from affects when you have it. The current power is solar and it comes from the sun so any power we have is available when the sun is brightest and strongest – so we have power between 11-4 o’clock to use laptops and charge phones. Before and after this only core and emergency use is available.

We managed the transition from inefficient inverters powering 240v AC hungry household appliances to native 12v DV low powered equipment. This is a basic green issue of energy use: use less and use it better. The inverting is costing more then 40% of the power coming in when you take into account battery efficiency.

WHY? It’s about the efficiency of the battery/wire/voltage converter technology. Storing the power then retrieving it has a cost. We decide not to pay this cost. We use the power as much as possible directly from the sun. The batteries are used as floats, they buffer/moderate the power. If you use the batteries as floats and buffers you can use this power with little loss. As soon as you shift use of the power to other times you have the energy cost of charging, storing and retrieving the power – this can be as much as 40% of the total coming in. When you add to this the inverting (DC-AC-DC) of power which we were doing at the start this makes no sense at all unless you are connected to a coal or nuclear power station. The reality was that the batteries in the camp were shipped out by car each day, charged on the grid then shipped back by car, drain and repeat.

We are still working on the respect and longevity of the environmentally damaging batteries that we use and are donated. 6 have been destroyed so far and most of the rest damaged/degraded. This is a ecological cost in polluting with dangerous lead and acid. It’s a mission that we will have more time for after the basic set-up is in place.

We cleared the tech space of the mad rip-it-apart-every-night energy and replaced this with more clear and safe sorted people (well, as sorted as you get at protest camps). This led to semi-permanent working set-ups rather than the draining of energy of having to re-build everything from scratch each day. It’s interesting that it’s hard to move people beyond the black and white thinking of solving problems to the more holistic thinking of respect for diversity of strategies. This mad creative/destructive energy has a space in the camp – and we have to nurture a space for it, rather than try and use a lot of energy failing to exclude it.

We face the basic green issue of energy use, use less and use it better in the case of batteries. The core space is now working, the next challenge in power is diversity of sources. Can we move investment away from solar as the summer comes to an end and the daylight hours shorten and fade.

For any power you take out in the evening about twice as much power has to be put back in the morning, so it’s a bad way of borrowing shifting use times. It’s an education building a power station at a protest camp.

Balcombe one man stops a fracking truck for an afternoon

Published Date 9/2/13 9:11 PM

Today we had a classic bit of direct action, stop a work truck and lock your self to it which stopped lorry movement for the afternoon. Very affective illustration of what a tiny number of people can do. This will lead to much heaver policing as they will have to escort the trucks out of the site as well as in. Its good that this basic direct action has finely happened, brings a feeling that the camp might move beyond the stale tactic of slowing the trucks down for a 10 min on the way in to site.

One Man Stop from You and I Films

The disruption of the policing and the shaking of the supply chin into the site will lead to costs and disruptions that will actually affect the outcome of the campaign. This needs to happen more if we are to win.

Balcombe the missing solar Panels

Published Date 8/30/13 3:18 PM

I have been at Balcombe camp for nearly 2 weeks working in the tech tent. The campaign is a positive experience and the issue is very winnable. But the internals of the campaign and the camp that is now at its centre is like many in the past dysfunctional anufe to help undermine this likely victory. The are a lot of hidden agenda’s amongst the #Balcombe anti-fracking which can make a very dysfunctional campaigning space. I am sitting this morning in such a situation.

If my solar equipment isn’t here (which at the moment it isuant, as I though the new 450w had arrived) the camp has one 27w solar panel which on a sunny day can power a small laptop or charge 4-5 phones. This has been going on for a month or more. For a time I brought extra panels and got us up to charging 20-50 phones a day including all the legal and core camp phones. Was a happy time that was crowned by a offer of local funding and a morning on the pub wifi, £600 ordered 450w of solar panels and controllers. See post (LINK)

It was going to take 3-4 days for the gear to arrive so I left the camp with a working basic solar phone charging set-up for core camp phone’s for a few days to do some work in London. Keeping an eye on social media I noted that the process of installing the solar panels had got stuck somehow so decided to come back to the camp to finish the install.

Arriving back to a poisonous soup of clashing agenda’s the panels were stuck in a locals house and are still there now 4 days latter.

The is a sorted tech crew, but no consensus on how to move on from here. So days are spent rasherioning power and argueing over fantasy plans which are beyond the power we have and beyond the 450w of power we will have at some point.

Its interesting to experience the internal dynamics inside the tech team –

On one hand we have pragmatic realists – who recognise the lack of control, creative and destructive power at camps. They deal with this by:

  • Building set-up’s to include clear separation of different systems so if one fails the other continues.

  • Put in simple work flow to minimise the competing needs on scares resources the different groups will demand.

  • Separate the different user groups into core camp, legal, media and events so that they do not compete for the same pools of limited resources

Of course the is nothing to stop the different working groups co-operating and helping each other, what this avoids is the competition and ego-flaring that envehrtably happens in the highly stressed camp life.

On the other hand we have obdurate realists who while right in what they are saying are ignoring the circumstances of where they saying it. I can give you an example: in the last 24 hours the solar phone charging I set-up has been ripped apart and scattered, then re-built 3 times. To keep this working today I sat in the tent all day this is not a sustaining way of running a key camp technology.

This is the reality of camp life with no working consensus.

Balcombe working in the tech tent

Published Date 8/26/13 9:02 PM

Its been an interesting and educational experience working in the tech tent at the anti-fracking protest camp. 

When I arived, in the first 3 days none of the solar panles were pluged into the batterys, they were just on dispaly. 

I set out to build a working system from the bits there, I managed to beg and borrow the pieces I needed to put together and had a working 12v solar phone charging station by the evening ready to run the next day.

The problem was in the night a drunk person came and ripped it apparent and took away core parts of this. I then spend a very frustrating morning recovering the bits, but it dosent work as the battery had been some how destroyed in the night. This was the end of getting anything working for a few days, the core problem of tech space was obviously social rather than technical.

Soughting through the donated equipment, most of it was broken soon after it arrived due to “enthusiastic” use in late night party’s and events, misswiring blown fuses and then bodged fixes.

Almost all the equipment in the camp tech tent was broken, so to start things off whent home for a few days and then came back bringing my own solar panels and equipment. Here it is on the roof of the tent ready to charge phones.

Day 2 of “new tech tent order” we charged 20 phones, setup and powered a live radio station and made 2 short video reports. Here we are repairing one of the broken solar panels.

We had a priority of charging the legal observers and core camp phones. 

What I learned form this is that tech spaces at camps are chaos and one way to tame this “destructive madness” is to bring in sorted equipment and set-up a working part of the space – this then gives you influence to settle the madness in the rest of the space. If you cant make something work and keep it working you are just one mad voice in the many. And if you dont have your own equipment you can’t keep it working as some one else with equal “voice” and “need’ will pull it apart when you go to sleep or for a cup of tea.

We have a social problem to solve as part of the tecnical building of protest camp tech.

Balcombe anarchist and conservative

Published Date 8/26/13 6:55 PM

(DRAFT)

Interesting to think about the things you are involved with and the things you do. Important to understand am not talking about the sciences or polatics of fracking here, am lifting the lid to see what I can see under the hood of both camps.

I had been staying in the Balcombe Protection Camp (BPC) for a week and was walking back from spending a few hours at the climate camp (RCP) along the beautiful bridal way, this seamed to sum up my feelings about the two camps. “#Balcombe protection camp is conservative and anarchic #reclaimpower is anarchist and conservative, thoughts on #frackoff camping”.

In the BPC we had a dysfunctionally colourful collection of disparate groups with the stongist being different “conservative’ voices. But the overall process was arcnerkic in a creative way. Then at RTP we had a very functional mono-culture over all young and progressive lead by a affinity group of ex-arnercists who now largely work for NGO’s.

Why would I call both camps conservative? Looking at the ongoing power struggles of BPC it becomes easy to see that the strongest voices are thoughs who have the lest progressive agenda’s – underlining it all are the squirearchy, they have the hands and fingers on the money, media and web sites. Then the is there natural allies’s the disempowerd working class who control the welcome centre and share responsibility for the money. Added to this you have the family history of occupy who some how fill this country space…

In the climatecamp (RTP) we have a odd mixture of old school lifestay anarchists and new professionals moving up the NGO pole. The meetings are slick, and all the decisions are made before the camp starts – this works very well as a one off and with funding might continue. Though am not shore if the few remaining “anarchists” will continue with this? Excelent actions, soughted pro tredtional media team, food, power, tolits and grhate legal backup. What more do you need? yes… that is a Q. a few peopule were asking…

My second comment a few days latter “Came back from #Protest #Fracking with the feeling of a Brothel of media prostitutes and corporate (media) cock suckers. Where is the balance of the (alt) contemporary media today?” both camps are hungry for traditional media coverage, the seams to be little belief or understanding left for alt-media or even social media.

A reply from Richard Hering “Where is the alt media? You could start here and watch all the videos http://grassroots.visionon.tv/fracking and if you want the latest, embed the player in your blog or site…” is like a cry in the dark and is ignored by both camps.

So neither is very progressive, but both have space for much more progressive input, you can turn up at both camps and as long as you are not relying on centralised resources you can have a big impact so both are relatively open as progressive spaces. In this seance they are both still temporary autonomous zones in the old anarchic speak.

I would like to make alt-media really work at such spaces. Todo this you would need:

1) a sorted team of people (3 would be a start)

2) own solar power and basic equipment

3) a big tent/small markey/carport

4) a budgit for transport and expesise 

Then turn up and make things happen – we did this very successfully at Kingsnorth Climatecamp.

10 days at Balcombe Protection Camp

Published Date 8/23/13 12:29 PM

Photo: Katherine Stanley

(DRAFT)

My experience at the camp was over all positive, and came away feeling that fracking is a completely winnable campaign.

I went to the camp to spend a week making media about the people, issues and organising of the #fracking protest camp. In stead of this media/video making, which am very good at I spent 10 days living on the camp trying to sought out many core issues.

* the dysfunctional camp meetings

* the draining camp fractions/dynamics/power struggles

* the tech tent

I will start with the tech tent, when i arrived the camp had no working solar power and all battery were charged (by grid electricity – fossil fuel) offside and driven in by car each day. No care was taken for the effective life of the battery’s so they were disintegrating rapidly by being excessively discharged each day. With 12v battery’s it is much more efficient (and safer) to run the camp on native 12v then use fragile/inefficient and potently dangerous 240v inverters as was happening.

The tech space was being ripped apart and trashed (by persons unknown) every night, leading to the problem that nothing permanent could be built or sustained, this lead to all the competent people leaving this core space. Each day new equipment would arrive and by the next day it would be broken, the solution was to then order more new equipment, the tech spending was spiralling out of control.

When equipment was ordered it was always the wrong type because of the politics/opacity of shopping – this was very damaging as it lead to more equipment failer and the strong possibility of electrical fire. This repeating power politics and unspoken agenda’s was the root of many issues.

I spent much of my 10 days on this problem, and by the end of the time we were charging all legal/camp/media/visiter phones on 12v solar power and had finally ordered the equipment to run the wider camp on solar power.

This was on order when I left:

Core permanent power for the tech tent

100w 12v x2 semi-flexible solar panels permanently affixt to the roof of the south facing tent

water/shock profer controller x2

strong water prof connectors

heavy duty cabling

Then we had politics – Experimental event charging (this was a political choice rather than technical)

1x250w 24v glass facing solar panel 

Voltage regulating Controllers to bring this huge 24v panel (20KG metal and glass) down to the 12v needed

This experiment system saves around 50 in cost but is a HUGE problem as its heavey and frigile if it is mixed up with our 12v set-up as this will lead to equipment failer and possibly fires.

The camp is in a permanent state of chaos with out some one in the space to mediate this chaos, and at time the will not be, then this experimental system has to be (at a minimum) installed/looked after in a physically separate space to the core stable power set-up.

Is saveing a small amount of money worth adding to this chaos?

Because of camp politics this essential equipment was not ordered.

GOOD CAR “cigarette lighter” connector banks x2 (branded)

6x double 5v USB car adapters (branded)

3x laptop 12v power supply’s with tips (branded)