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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @11:56PM
> I check the weather in San Francisco. It's 66 degrees. Must be nice. It's 85 here, just down from the 91 it was earlier
He lives in Los Angeles, not San Francisco. 93 degrees in Woodland Hills, the LA burb where I live. Humidity is only 17% so that helps a lot.
> Even then, he's really halfassing it compared to the crazy guy who lives in cardboard box who sucks drunk guys off for nourishment.
It's comments like that which make me think all the criticism of the guy is based on gut reaction rather than any sort of rational thinking.