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Op-Ed: How I Gave Up Alternating Current

posted by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @10:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the tune-out dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Soylent [food replacement] founder Rob Rhinehart shares his thoughts on extreme sustainability.

I am electrically self-reliant. My home life runs comfortably on a single 100W solar panel, which cost $150 and was available on Amazon Prime. I tracked down a few manufacturers in China who all said it costs around $40 to make. The US for some reason leverages massive tariffs on Chinese solar panels, so they ship them through Malaysian customs. Why do the politicians even bother?

For storage a $65 lead acid automobile battery does the trick. It's 12V so can be charged directly from the solar panel, and holds 420Wh, way more than I use in a day. That's $0.15 / Wh so I don't see why everyone is so excited about Tesla charging $0.43 / Wh for the Powerwall, sans inverter and installation.

He got rid of his fridge and other kitchen implements to make it work. What are the biggest energy users in your place? Could you pare things down as much as Rob?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:20AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:20AM (#218325)

    Exactly! I think some of those Alaska / Northern Canada shows are probably the most realistic, but even then I'm sure there some important, albeit boring or truly disgusting or politically-incorrect stuff they leave out. Even with the royalties they're making from multiple seasons of "Reality" TV , the richest member of Jewel's family is Jewel herself--which is probably why she never appears in any of the episodes. You have to hate civilization enough to go back almost to the stone age in order to really do this sort of thing.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:35AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @11:35AM (#218440)

    What are you talking about? Who is Jewel?