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

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, @04:17AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @04:17AM (#218339)

    > The real kicker is the Prius still has a friggen gasoline engine.

    An engine that operates much more efficiently than in the typical automobile. All the derision and righteousness directed at this guy seems to be based purely on binary thinking, that because he still has to live in modern society he's a hypocrite for trying to do better. Fucking crab mentality if I've ever seen it.