How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website? • Hacker News Board

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#71

Post by ip26 » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:47 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #64

ip26 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As is often the case, the most obvious target for optimization (the computer, 1-2W) has already hit diminishing returns. Their biggest energy hog is the router (10W), which they aren't running on solar.

but what's the manufacturing process of router chips ? surely a router inner logic is way less than a rpi SoC so it could be trimmed down over time through simple smaller features .. ?

IMO the problem is like with cable boxes- forget about the manufacturing node, there's just little incentive for the router companies to optimize power because few people pay attention to it.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#72

Post by alex_young » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

ip26 wrote: post #24

alex_young wrote: post #5

Even with the additional upfront expense, lithium batteries would make this setup much more efficient due to the larger allowed cycles and would also reduce the environmental impact due to the low impact nature of lithium extraction.

Lead acid batteries are eminently recyclable. Something like 99% of the lead in a new car battery is from old recycled car batteries.

That's interesting, I couldn't find any reference to that statistic. I've seen estimates in the range of 60-80% recycled content for new lead batteries in the US, but that data seems pretty shaky.

I have seen statistics around a recycling rate of 99% or higher in the US, but also that much of that is done in Mexico or other places with very weak environmental and occupational regulations.

In any case, lead poisoning is a very serious problem which is exacerbated by lead recycling and production.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#73

Post by driverdan » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #50

driverdan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't want to power directly from the panels without a battery. It would cause high instability on cloudy days, possibly leading to file system corruption.

The panel voltage is pretty stable until the illuminance gets really low (unless you're drawing a lot of current). Diodes such as solar cells are roughly constant-voltage devices. You can get a pretty long way avoiding filesystem corruption by mounting things read-only, but (I've heard) some SSDs aren't really read-only even when they're read-only, because of read disturb and the attempt to compensate for it in the F…

That's a reasonable point. So long as the panel's output voltage is higher than the controller's minimum required input it would be stable.

I still wouldn't want to run a Pi directly off solar. I'd want enough warning to shut it down rather than killing the power.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#74

Post by stevenhuang » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:01 PM UTC

hannob wrote: post #26

This may sound snarky, but... I really wonder how helpful such projects are. Making the Internet greener is undoubtedly an important goal, but I feel this is perpetuating a myth that we're gonna fix the climate crisis with small-scale projects from below. Practically this is doing nothing to provide any relevant fix for the problem. What we should be doing is thinking about how we can fix the problem at scale, e.g. p…

These small-scale projects directly inspires those linked in your article to act. The more we talk about it and try to make a change--any change--the greater the impetus to make greater changes.

Large-scale projects don't magically wink into existence in a vacuum, the conversation needs to happen and the ball first needs to get rolling.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#75

Post by Polylactic_acid » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:09 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #70

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried running an rpi on a lead acid battery and a 40w panel. It seemed to be running fine for the first 2 weeks but then I think it had a few days where it drained the battery to 0 which ruined it and then it was turning off every night. I'm not sure what to do with the setup now since it seems like lead acid is not the way to go but all of the DIY solar charge controllers use lead acid.

Did you use a deep cycle battery? Letting a standard lead acid battery go to 0 is a surefire way to kill it.

It was just a standard one but the deep cycle ones are super expensive and it doesn't seem worth it for a rpi that costs about $1 a year to run.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#76

Post by alacombe » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:10 PM UTC

m_coder wrote: post #35

alacombe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

City-wide application are discussed regularly here... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19442938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782760 Also online.. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/history-and-future-o... Down the line, problems are efficiency and all the downside of working with gases.

Yes, I did read those articles and it has me very interested. What I would be more interested in is some sort of applied DIY situation. Something I could cobble together myself and it would have the potential to get the efficiency that is discussed in lowtech mag. It seems to me that with the sorts of articles they write, I would be able to follow along on a small scale if I wanted. In particular, how do you make a c…

It could be argued that DIY and pressure vessels don't work well together :-)

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#77

Post by unnouinceput » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:14 PM UTC

Quote: "The solar powered website bucks against these trends. To drop energy use far below that of the average website, we opted for a back-to-basics web design, using a static website instead of a database driven content management system. "

For a website that proud itself on being against trends, I would had more appreciation if they went against the trend to use 3rd party sites and be totally on their own. My NoScript reports for them these as 3rd party scripts: google-analytics.com, google.com, googlesyndication.com, gstatic.com, jquery.com, s3.amazonaws.com, statcounter.com, typepad.com

This reminds me of that joke with electric cars that recharge their battery using a diesel generator.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#78

Post by lowtechmagazine » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:23 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #56

The author is drastically overestimating the lifecycle emissions and embodied energy of modern solar photovoltaic modules. The article claims that it takes "3,514 MJ of energy to produce one m2 of solar panel." The source for that assertion is this article from 2017: "Energy Payback Time of a Solar Photovoltaic PoweredWaste Plastic Recyclebot System" https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/api/download/urn%3Anbn%3... Tha…

Author here. Good you mention this. I could have chosen a more elegant citation, but data on the embodied energy of PV modules is generally outdated and confusing. The number I chose is not especially high for panels produced since the 2000s. For an extensive literature summary from 2011 see 2.3 http://www.seas.columbia.edu/clca/Task12_LCI_LCA_10_21_Final...

Also keep in mind that all the panels we tested are much smaller than the ones oin those studies. This means that things like the frame, wires, connections become more important for embodied energy.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#79

Post by csours » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:26 PM UTC

unnouinceput wrote: post #77

Quote: "The solar powered website bucks against these trends. To drop energy use far below that of the average website, we opted for a back-to-basics web design, using a static website instead of a database driven content management system. " For a website that proud itself on being against trends, I would had more appreciation if they went against the trend to use 3rd party sites and be totally on their own. My NoSc…

In the distant future after humanity crumbles there will be only one website left, available for 4 hours a day, and the content won't render correctly because they didn't self host their scripts or css.

Re: How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?

#80

Post by beerandt » Wed, Jan 29, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

philipkglass wrote: post #56

The author is drastically overestimating the lifecycle emissions and embodied energy of modern solar photovoltaic modules. The article claims that it takes "3,514 MJ of energy to produce one m2 of solar panel." The source for that assertion is this article from 2017: "Energy Payback Time of a Solar Photovoltaic PoweredWaste Plastic Recyclebot System" https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/api/download/urn%3Anbn%3... Tha…

LCAs are sort of the epitome of "looks a lot easier than it is," combined with no obvious red flags for getting something drastically wrong. Mistakes like these are everywhere. And I'm afraid the average study quality is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

At least we're not making many safety critical design decisions based off of them, yet.