SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Appalbarry on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:46PM
I'm among those who just assumed that it wasn't practical to go off-grid without living like a 1970s hippie.
Then we started looking at some island homes near Vancouver. What we saw impressed me.
Although there are some obvious limits, it's entirely practical to live without an electric utility. What we saw included:
- Refrigeration and cooking, ran off propane.
- Everything else was powered off solar panels, or if you needed to run power tools, a small generator.
- Rainwater collection provided all water.
It did help that the house was designed from the ground up to be off-grid, including ideas like a massive concrete mass in the middle of the house, onto which backed the airtight woodstove - can you say heat sink?
Phone and Internet were via 3G cel coverage - they were close enough to the mainland to get a solid connection.
The house wasn't overly large, but there were very few sacrifices made, and none of those related to power.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:01AM
The passivhaus [wikipedia.org] design movement has done a lot for energy efficient, sometimes even net-zero, designs.
Also, what's old is new again.
That big concrete mass with the woodstove - that's how we used to build fireplaces, thermal mass completely inside the building envelope to keep the house warm long after the fire was put out.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:02AM
Why would you want to live without an electric utility? Now, instead of making yourself dependent on the electric utility, you're making yourself dependent on Joe's Propane service. And the prices for propane are astronomical; you're not saving any money by running your appliances with that (esp. your refrigerator). If you want to be independent, just get some bigger solar panels and more storage capacity and use electric appliances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2015, @12:18AM
On that island there is no electric service. But it is a very nice island.
(Score: 1) by hopp on Wednesday August 05 2015, @05:21AM
Vancouver Island is a great island! I like the sandwich shop with the goats on the roof!
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Wednesday August 05 2015, @07:14AM
From what I've read, it's now entirely possible to live off-grid by using solar energy to both power things during the day and charge batteries or a battery-powered generator for night-time. (Well, possible if you can afford the cost of the generators, solar setup, plot of land in the middle of nowhere, to build an efficient house, etc.)
I do recall that back when I took an ecology course in 1996 at a local community college, the instructor had an amazing home that supported most of his and his wife's energy needs — they had built it into the side of a hill in order to get the natural insulation effect, aligned it so certain rooms would be warm/cool at certain times of day, added solar panels, and so forth. Given solar tech 19 years ago was nowhere near as good as it is now, I have little doubt that the place would be self-supporting by now.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday August 05 2015, @03:13PM
Solar Panels seem to be the way to go currently. Assuming you can afford the cost of getting them installed, you should be able to have them pay for themselves in 10 years. Currently in our area you end up having to pay about $20k out of pocket for a $50k system. That leaves 15 years of the warranty left where you are actually getting money back from the system. Some installers will also hook up the solar panels to your electric first, so you sell excess, and buy when you aren't producing enough. As opposed to the electric company getting all of your juice and you buying everything you consume.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday August 05 2015, @01:04PM
May want to look at what the sailboat long distance cruisers do. Very few people would consider a $1M yacht to be roughing it. You'd be surprised what they do with a couple solar panels. The biggest problem is having enough fresh water for cleaning and showering. Its easy to have enough water to drink, but clean clothes and showers are usually the limiter. They have a lot of interesting ideas about doing a lot with a little energy.
(Score: 2) by panachocala on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:24PM
Even for on-grid, I wish someone would design kitchen appliances to share or exchange heat. The fridge dumps its waste heat into the house and the water heater also dumps waste heat into the house... if they could be on opposite ends of a heat-exchanger, there would be less energy used and less heat dumped into the house, which is already 90 degrees in the Summer.