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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: 1) by nitehawk214 on Wednesday August 05 2015, @02:46PM
So the guy wants to live without a fridge? Great, but some of us like to cook. No mention of clothes washing, but I assume he is hand washing or is just going dirty hippy unwashed style.
Anyhow, I would love to convert my internal home lighting to DC and LED. The problem is I would want to stay with wiring codes including the main box and lighting sockets.
Does anyone have any advice on doing a DC lighting home? I know a friend that had one... installed in the 70's as some kind of demo system. The problem is none of the equipment was supported anymore, and he had to convert his house to normal lighting in order to get modern lightbulbs.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh