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How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

lowtechmagazine.com

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Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#121

Post by bmgxyz »

ValueNull wrote: post #110
bmgxyz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a project I stumbled upon over a year ago that implemented a P2P Web, but I can't seem to dig it up now. There was a client that mediated the connection between your machine and the network, and you'd just browse the web normally by pointing your browser at localhost:someport. It was kind of neat, since everyone who visited a resource could act as the server for somebody else, but it looked to me like it wa…

Zeronet?

Indeed, it was Zeronet. Thank you for reminding me!

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#122

Post by bmgxyz »

fwip wrote: post #43
bmgxyz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a project I stumbled upon over a year ago that implemented a P2P Web, but I can't seem to dig it up now. There was a client that mediated the connection between your machine and the network, and you'd just browse the web normally by pointing your browser at localhost:someport. It was kind of neat, since everyone who visited a resource could act as the server for somebody else, but it looked to me like it wa…

Check out Beaker Browser!

That looks neat. I'll put it on my list of things to play with eventually.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#123

Post by lowtechmagazine »

kragen wrote: post #120
lowtechmagazine wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The obsolescence of life cycle analyses is a topic in itself, and the lack of accessible data is a problem for anyone who tries to investigate high-tech products. For the solar powered website article, it's the order of magnitude that matters. You say I overestimate the energy use of solar panel production, but in our configuration it corresponds to just 1 liter of oil per year.

You can get a reasonable estimate by taking the wholesale price of the thing you're analyzing, dividing by an average price of electricity for industrial use (like, around US$60/MWh, in the quaint non-SI units traditionally used in the trade), and multiplying that by some fudge factor like 20% to account for the fact that much of the cost of things is due to non-energy inputs like raw materials, skilled labor, and in…

Calculating embodied energy based on costs is an option, but I have always learned that it's the last resort, as it has many problems, too.

For example, How do you account for the fact that all production facilities for solar panels have moved to China? If you look at the price evolution of solar panels, there's a gradual decrease due to technological progress (less energy use indeed). Then, from 2009 onwards, the decline in costs accelerates sharply, the consequence of moving almost the entire PV manufacturing industry from western countries to Asian countries, where labor and energy are cheaper and where environmental restrictions are more loose.

https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/04/how-sustainable-is...

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#124

Post by labawi »

jedberg wrote: post #21
jandrese wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Multicast doesn't work on the big-I Internet. A battery system is almost certainly easier than physical servers spread across the globe, even when you account for the cost of the battery.

I meant anycast (fixed now). But based on this writeup, they don't seem to care about how much of their own time it takes, only to prove it is possible. It was in that vain that I suggest two servers would be better.

I have feeling that internet infrastructure material and energy costs for a anycast IP/site would dwarf the energy/material costs of hosting the site in a datacentre.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#125

Post by philipkglass »

lowtechmagazine wrote: post #123
kragen wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get a reasonable estimate by taking the wholesale price of the thing you're analyzing, dividing by an average price of electricity for industrial use (like, around US$60/MWh, in the quaint non-SI units traditionally used in the trade), and multiplying that by some fudge factor like 20% to account for the fact that much of the cost of things is due to non-energy inputs like raw materials, skilled labor, and in…

Calculating embodied energy based on costs is an option, but I have always learned that it's the last resort, as it has many problems, too. For example, How do you account for the fact that all production facilities for solar panels have moved to China? If you look at the price evolution of solar panels, there's a gradual decrease due to technological progress (less energy use indeed). Then, from 2009 onwards, the de…

The manufacturing shift to China can account for a one-time step decrease in solar PV costs due to lower wages and a lower cost, dirtier industrial ecosystem (e.g. high-CO2 grid power supplied mostly by coal plants having minimal pollution controls).

But the costs of solar panels made in China in 2020 are much lower than those of solar panels made in China in 2010. Chinese factory wages have not fallen over the past 10 years, nor have Chinese pollution controls been further relaxed. The trend of falling costs over the last 10 years of made-in-China solar panels is due to improved techniques of production.

In 2010, Chinese producer Suntech was the largest PV manufacturer in the world. It sold 1.6 GW of panels and realized revenue of $2.9 billion:

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/suntech-q4-earn...

Its panels were therefore selling for about $1.83 per watt in 2010.

Presently, Chinese high efficiency monocrystalline PERC panels are selling for no more than $0.25 per watt:

http://pvinsights.com/

This 85% drop in prices indicates that technological and manufacturing progress in the solar sector continued at a rapid clip even after its center of gravity shifted to China.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#126

Post by lowtechmagazine »

philipkglass wrote: post #125
lowtechmagazine wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculating embodied energy based on costs is an option, but I have always learned that it's the last resort, as it has many problems, too. For example, How do you account for the fact that all production facilities for solar panels have moved to China? If you look at the price evolution of solar panels, there's a gradual decrease due to technological progress (less energy use indeed). Then, from 2009 onwards, the de…

The manufacturing shift to China can account for a one-time step decrease in solar PV costs due to lower wages and a lower cost, dirtier industrial ecosystem (e.g. high-CO2 grid power supplied mostly by coal plants having minimal pollution controls). But the costs of solar panels made in China in 2020 are much lower than those of solar panels made in China in 2010. Chinese factory wages have not fallen over the past…

Agreed that it's a one-time step decrease, and that the progress continues. But, why 2020? The panels that have powered the server were bought between 2015 and 2019, and who knows how long they had been in storage before I bought them.

You take the solar panel that just comes out of the factory as a reference, but I could just as well argue that the reference should be the age of the average solar panel installed in the world.

Also, let's wait and see how the move to China affects the quality and life expectancy of solar panels. And what it means for other forms of pollution. I focused on energy use but there are other environmental concerns with the production of solar panels.

I will be happy to update the calculations in the future if more and better data are available.

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