How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?(lowtechmagazine.com)
lowtechmagazine.com
How Sustainable Is a Solar Powered Website?
https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is-a-solar-powered-website.html
24 comments
Author here. Good you mention this. I could have chosen a more elegant citation, but data on the embodied energy of PV modules is generally outdated and confusing. The number I chose is not especially high for panels produced since the 2000s. For an extensive literature summary from 2011 see 2.3 http://www.seas.columbia.edu/clca/Task12_LCI_LCA_10_21_Final...
Also keep in mind that all the panels we tested are much smaller than the ones oin those studies. This means that things like the frame, wires, connections become more important for embodied energy.
Also keep in mind that all the panels we tested are much smaller than the ones oin those studies. This means that things like the frame, wires, connections become more important for embodied energy.
That study is also badly outdated. Under section 5, Life Cycle Inventory Data, it says "The authors have assembled this LCI data set to the best of their knowledge and in their opinion it gives a reliable representation of the crystalline silicon module production technology in Western-Europe in the year 2005/2006 and Balance-of-System components of the year 2006."
I would love to see a life cycle assessment using wholly up-to-date numbers. I keep reading new studies on PV LCA, energy return on investment, and/or energy payback time. People who write these sorts of papers don't seem to keep up with what industry is actually doing. You can learn a lot from data sheets and trade publications. E.g. from published glass thickness and module size and efficiency, you can calculate the quantity of glass currently needed per watt-peak. It's significantly lower than any of these studies using decade+ outdated numbers.
I think part of the problem is one of incentives. Academics writing about LCA are often comparing some hoped-to-be-up-and-coming technology against the mainstream. Like thin film PV, organic PV, or dye sensitized cells pitted against crystalline silicon PV. In that case using old numbers for silicon PV helps the newer technology look like it offers exciting improvements.
Another problem is that reviewers apparently don't care very much about these temporal effects. They don't chase the citation chains to find the really outdated measurements cited in recently submitted manuscripts.
Another problem is that the solar industry has grown large and competitive. Cutting-edge numbers about energy consumption for silicon refinement are probably retained as a competitive advantage by the biggest producers, for example.
It's possible to set tighter upper bounds on resource intensity just from teardowns of recently manufactured modules. I suppose that teardown based analysis may itself be the sort of information you only get from specialty publications like the Photovoltaics International magazine, which is expensive and not indexed by DOI or part of ordinary academic libraries. (So it's not even in sci-hub.)
It's $599 a year if you want to be able to read back issues of Photovoltaics International from their archives:
https://store.pv-tech.org/photovoltaics-international/
I am interested enough in photovoltaic technology that I have bought a couple of $100+ specialty books from academic publishers, but $599 is a bit too steep even for me.
I would love to see a life cycle assessment using wholly up-to-date numbers. I keep reading new studies on PV LCA, energy return on investment, and/or energy payback time. People who write these sorts of papers don't seem to keep up with what industry is actually doing. You can learn a lot from data sheets and trade publications. E.g. from published glass thickness and module size and efficiency, you can calculate the quantity of glass currently needed per watt-peak. It's significantly lower than any of these studies using decade+ outdated numbers.
I think part of the problem is one of incentives. Academics writing about LCA are often comparing some hoped-to-be-up-and-coming technology against the mainstream. Like thin film PV, organic PV, or dye sensitized cells pitted against crystalline silicon PV. In that case using old numbers for silicon PV helps the newer technology look like it offers exciting improvements.
Another problem is that reviewers apparently don't care very much about these temporal effects. They don't chase the citation chains to find the really outdated measurements cited in recently submitted manuscripts.
Another problem is that the solar industry has grown large and competitive. Cutting-edge numbers about energy consumption for silicon refinement are probably retained as a competitive advantage by the biggest producers, for example.
It's possible to set tighter upper bounds on resource intensity just from teardowns of recently manufactured modules. I suppose that teardown based analysis may itself be the sort of information you only get from specialty publications like the Photovoltaics International magazine, which is expensive and not indexed by DOI or part of ordinary academic libraries. (So it's not even in sci-hub.)
It's $599 a year if you want to be able to read back issues of Photovoltaics International from their archives:
https://store.pv-tech.org/photovoltaics-international/
I am interested enough in photovoltaic technology that I have bought a couple of $100+ specialty books from academic publishers, but $599 is a bit too steep even for me.
The obsolescence of life cycle analyses is a topic in itself, and the lack of accessible data is a problem for anyone who tries to investigate high-tech products.
For the solar powered website article, it's the order of magnitude that matters. You say I overestimate the energy use of solar panel production, but in our configuration it corresponds to just 1 liter of oil per year.
For the solar powered website article, it's the order of magnitude that matters. You say I overestimate the energy use of solar panel production, but in our configuration it corresponds to just 1 liter of oil per year.
You can get a reasonable estimate by taking the wholesale price of the thing you're analyzing, dividing by an average price of electricity for industrial use (like, around US$60/MWh, in the quaint non-SI units traditionally used in the trade), and multiplying that by some fudge factor like 20% to account for the fact that much of the cost of things is due to non-energy inputs like raw materials, skilled labor, and interest. This gives a result correct to within a factor of 3 for the vast majority of goods and services, while using LCA numbers from a quarter century ago did not. In this case the result is 2.3 MJ per watt (peak) of low-cost solar panels using €0.17/Wp from PVXchange and SolarServer. That's almost an order of magnitude lower than the 22 MJ/W you used in the article (assuming 16% efficiency; with 21% efficiency it's 16.7 MJ/W. I'm not sure which one your original number was for.) So I think you may have gotten within an order of magnitude, but only just.
If the numbers you were using were correct, then just the energy input for the solar panels would have cost more than the wholesale price for the modules.
If the numbers you were using were correct, then just the energy input for the solar panels would have cost more than the wholesale price for the modules.
Calculating embodied energy based on costs is an option, but I have always learned that it's the last resort, as it has many problems, too.
For example, How do you account for the fact that all production facilities for solar panels have moved to China? If you look at the price evolution of solar panels, there's a gradual decrease due to technological progress (less energy use indeed). Then, from 2009 onwards, the decline in costs accelerates sharply, the consequence of moving almost the entire PV manufacturing industry from western countries to Asian countries, where labor and energy are cheaper and where environmental restrictions are more loose.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/04/how-sustainable-is...
For example, How do you account for the fact that all production facilities for solar panels have moved to China? If you look at the price evolution of solar panels, there's a gradual decrease due to technological progress (less energy use indeed). Then, from 2009 onwards, the decline in costs accelerates sharply, the consequence of moving almost the entire PV manufacturing industry from western countries to Asian countries, where labor and energy are cheaper and where environmental restrictions are more loose.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2015/04/how-sustainable-is...
The manufacturing shift to China can account for a one-time step decrease in solar PV costs due to lower wages and a lower cost, dirtier industrial ecosystem (e.g. high-CO2 grid power supplied mostly by coal plants having minimal pollution controls).
But the costs of solar panels made in China in 2020 are much lower than those of solar panels made in China in 2010. Chinese factory wages have not fallen over the past 10 years, nor have Chinese pollution controls been further relaxed. The trend of falling costs over the last 10 years of made-in-China solar panels is due to improved techniques of production.
In 2010, Chinese producer Suntech was the largest PV manufacturer in the world. It sold 1.6 GW of panels and realized revenue of $2.9 billion:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/suntech-q4-earn...
Its panels were therefore selling for about $1.83 per watt in 2010.
Presently, Chinese high efficiency monocrystalline PERC panels are selling for no more than $0.25 per watt:
http://pvinsights.com/
This 85% drop in prices indicates that technological and manufacturing progress in the solar sector continued at a rapid clip even after its center of gravity shifted to China.
But the costs of solar panels made in China in 2020 are much lower than those of solar panels made in China in 2010. Chinese factory wages have not fallen over the past 10 years, nor have Chinese pollution controls been further relaxed. The trend of falling costs over the last 10 years of made-in-China solar panels is due to improved techniques of production.
In 2010, Chinese producer Suntech was the largest PV manufacturer in the world. It sold 1.6 GW of panels and realized revenue of $2.9 billion:
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/suntech-q4-earn...
Its panels were therefore selling for about $1.83 per watt in 2010.
Presently, Chinese high efficiency monocrystalline PERC panels are selling for no more than $0.25 per watt:
http://pvinsights.com/
This 85% drop in prices indicates that technological and manufacturing progress in the solar sector continued at a rapid clip even after its center of gravity shifted to China.
Agreed that it's a one-time step decrease, and that the progress continues. But, why 2020? The panels that have powered the server were bought between 2015 and 2019, and who knows how long they had been in storage before I bought them.
You take the solar panel that just comes out of the factory as a reference, but I could just as well argue that the reference should be the age of the average solar panel installed in the world.
Also, let's wait and see how the move to China affects the quality and life expectancy of solar panels. And what it means for other forms of pollution. I focused on energy use but there are other environmental concerns with the production of solar panels.
I will be happy to update the calculations in the future if more and better data are available.
You take the solar panel that just comes out of the factory as a reference, but I could just as well argue that the reference should be the age of the average solar panel installed in the world.
Also, let's wait and see how the move to China affects the quality and life expectancy of solar panels. And what it means for other forms of pollution. I focused on energy use but there are other environmental concerns with the production of solar panels.
I will be happy to update the calculations in the future if more and better data are available.
For an apple to apple comparison we would need to define exactly what is being compared. Should we use the exact PV module that they bought and compare that to the exact power plant that supply energy to their area? We could also compare a hypothetical PV module using the latest models and compare that to the latest models of power plants and energy grids.
Depending on incentives and purpose one can choose which facts that one want to use. A fair comparison would be quite complex and have many variables one need to define for both the solar version and the power grid version.
Depending on incentives and purpose one can choose which facts that one want to use. A fair comparison would be quite complex and have many variables one need to define for both the solar version and the power grid version.
If we are discussing the viability and sustainability of any particular thing we should be using the current industry standard numbers and a reasonable estimate of where the industry is going. There's no sense discussing whether option A is sustainable or not if nobody actually produces option A is outdated and the next decade of installations will use option B.
I can see value in both approaches. One is a test of what happens if you go right now and buy a PV module from a nearby store. This has the implication that the module has been in the store for a while and the raw material was mined and collected many years ago. Then you compare it to getting the power from the wall socket, which similar implications that the power plant that generates the power was built many years ago using old technology.
The other approach compare the state of the art PV module vs the state of the art power plant, both being built using the latest mining and construction methods.
The answer of what is more sustainable is going to depend a lot on context. Are we comparing what a person can do right now, or what we should be doing in the future? For powering websites the general answer from the industry is currently to build data centers in depopulated areas in countries with cold climates, near a hydro power plant and with plenty access to cooling water. This is however not a solution that you can apply if the requirement is that the server must be located in Spain.
The other approach compare the state of the art PV module vs the state of the art power plant, both being built using the latest mining and construction methods.
The answer of what is more sustainable is going to depend a lot on context. Are we comparing what a person can do right now, or what we should be doing in the future? For powering websites the general answer from the industry is currently to build data centers in depopulated areas in countries with cold climates, near a hydro power plant and with plenty access to cooling water. This is however not a solution that you can apply if the requirement is that the server must be located in Spain.
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LCAs are sort of the epitome of "looks a lot easier than it is," combined with no obvious red flags for getting something drastically wrong. Mistakes like these are everywhere. And I'm afraid the average study quality is going to get a lot worse before it gets better.
A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
At least we're not making many safety critical design decisions based off of them, yet.
A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.
At least we're not making many safety critical design decisions based off of them, yet.
So, yup, we need at least old common high school term paper writing standards, e.g., support every claim with good references to high quality, credible, primary sources. And, of course, as you mention, give the darned dates.
Ah, maybe a lot of media content would be seen right away of no interest if those standards had been followed. Or, about news writing, in some old movies,
"If it's not good, I'll make it good."
and
"A good reporter doesn't get great stories. A good reporter makes them great."
Now from that and not being born recently, I have learned to avoid nearly all news media.
Ah, maybe a lot of media content would be seen right away of no interest if those standards had been followed. Or, about news writing, in some old movies,
"If it's not good, I'll make it good."
and
"A good reporter doesn't get great stories. A good reporter makes them great."
Now from that and not being born recently, I have learned to avoid nearly all news media.
It's a bit more complex than that. The life cycle analysis of high-tech products takes many years. That's why most studies seem to be outdated even right after they are just published. It's not just solar panels. Try looking for a life cycle analysis of a recent laptop.
I feel like they could get almost 100% uptime with a lot less effort if they just put a second server on the other side of the world.
The antipode of Barcelona (where this is based) is pretty close to New Zealand.
If they put a second server there and then used a anycast IP, chances are one of the servers would be up at all times with no battery at all.
Edit: Changed multicast to anycast because for some reason my computer wants to auto-correct it. :(
The antipode of Barcelona (where this is based) is pretty close to New Zealand.
If they put a second server there and then used a anycast IP, chances are one of the servers would be up at all times with no battery at all.
Edit: Changed multicast to anycast because for some reason my computer wants to auto-correct it. :(
That is an excellent idea. With three or four servers they could entirely avoid batteries.
I think you mean anycast, not multicast, but a less exotic option would be to use DNS failover, or even just round-robin DNS with no explicit failover: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/10927/using-m... https://www.nber.org/sys-admin/dns-failover.html
I think you mean anycast, not multicast, but a less exotic option would be to use DNS failover, or even just round-robin DNS with no explicit failover: https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/10927/using-m... https://www.nber.org/sys-admin/dns-failover.html
You wouldn't want to power directly from the panels without a battery. It would cause high instability on cloudy days, possibly leading to file system corruption.
The panel voltage is pretty stable until the illuminance gets really low (unless you're drawing a lot of current). Diodes such as solar cells are roughly constant-voltage devices. You can get a pretty long way avoiding filesystem corruption by mounting things read-only, but (I've heard) some SSDs aren't really read-only even when they're read-only, because of read disturb and the attempt to compensate for it in the FTL. 10 seconds of 2 W at 3–6 V is about two farads, so you might be able to get acceptable stability with a supercapacitor in the 1–10 farad range instead of a battery.
"The panel voltage is pretty stable until the illuminance gets really low"
I'd like to see what panels those are, because the ones I've built while working as a PV manufacturing tech, both mono and poly (roughly 21% efficiency,) will have greatly varying voltages with even the tiniest hint of cloud cover over one cell, even with the junction box working to help separate out sections of the panel to maintain better voltages. Typical 60 cell 30-32V panel will drop to ~18-20 with just two cells on one 20-cell section of the panel covered. Sure this is still enough for the paltry voltage this specific server needs, but if they used smaller and more affordable panels like those used for cell phone chargers or similar size (within about 18"x18" form factor,) I can guarantee you those do not take to shading or even bad orientation well at all. 45 degrees off direct-exposure and you could be looking at that smaller panel producing a mere 2V or less.
I'd like to see what panels those are, because the ones I've built while working as a PV manufacturing tech, both mono and poly (roughly 21% efficiency,) will have greatly varying voltages with even the tiniest hint of cloud cover over one cell, even with the junction box working to help separate out sections of the panel to maintain better voltages. Typical 60 cell 30-32V panel will drop to ~18-20 with just two cells on one 20-cell section of the panel covered. Sure this is still enough for the paltry voltage this specific server needs, but if they used smaller and more affordable panels like those used for cell phone chargers or similar size (within about 18"x18" form factor,) I can guarantee you those do not take to shading or even bad orientation well at all. 45 degrees off direct-exposure and you could be looking at that smaller panel producing a mere 2V or less.
Is that the MPPT voltage or the open-circuit voltage? I was thinking of a near-open-circuit voltage (which is what you have if you're powering a 2-watt webserver from a 50-watt solar panel), but MPPT will vary a lot more. Also, covering 6% of your cells will drop your voltage a lot more than covering all your cells 6%.
Open circuit. This is one specific behavior we looked out for when testing panels before shipping, after the EL test, lamination, and junction box installation.
Huh, I guess I must be totally wrong, then. Thank you for the generous correction!
You're welcome. Even without MPPT inverters/chargers in the mix, you can take a 1,000V (maximum US NEC allowed IIRC) string of panels (obviously in series) fully black out one cell out of hundreds, and your entire system will do nothing (assuming your panels do not have bypass junction boxes and are straight-series.) That blacked out cell essentially acts like a full clog in a pipe - nothing will pass because of that 'dead' cell, until you remove that whole panel and replace it or bypass it.
We test by shading different cells at a known light level, and seeing how far the panel as a whole deviates from our expected baseline. Usually what we'll find is that a cell hadn't had its ribbon bars properly soldered while in the tab/string machine, so the shading of the cell dramatically reduces performance. You can't catch this kind of defect easily in an EL tester, as usually you've got enough contact between ribbon and cell to get the entirety of the cell to emit light, thus hiding defects from soldering. So we implemented that shading test to root out bad cells/bad soldering jobs. Quite proud of having thought of that testing methodology, because I've not seen any other company test panels in that manner.
We test by shading different cells at a known light level, and seeing how far the panel as a whole deviates from our expected baseline. Usually what we'll find is that a cell hadn't had its ribbon bars properly soldered while in the tab/string machine, so the shading of the cell dramatically reduces performance. You can't catch this kind of defect easily in an EL tester, as usually you've got enough contact between ribbon and cell to get the entirety of the cell to emit light, thus hiding defects from soldering. So we implemented that shading test to root out bad cells/bad soldering jobs. Quite proud of having thought of that testing methodology, because I've not seen any other company test panels in that manner.
That's a reasonable point. So long as the panel's output voltage is higher than the controller's minimum required input it would be stable.
I still wouldn't want to run a Pi directly off solar. I'd want enough warning to shut it down rather than killing the power.
I still wouldn't want to run a Pi directly off solar. I'd want enough warning to shut it down rather than killing the power.
Could you use a (big) capacitor then? Enough to smooth power out, but AFAIK doesn't degrade like batteries.
Yeah I meant anycast (fixed above). And it's true, the other options would work too, but there would be added latency.
With DNS failover there is only added latency during the time interval between when a server goes down, causing the DNS to get updated, and when the dead IP times out everywhere, which can easily be a few minutes. If the server can anticipate that it is going to go down it can remove itself, and then only people using shitty ISPs that don't respect the TTL will ever see extra latency.
> and then only people using shitty ISPs that don't respect the TTL will ever see extra latency.
In my experience running large websites, that's about 10% of the internet, if not more.
When I made a DNS change, only about 70% of the traffic dropped off in the TTL. The rest took anywhere between a few hours and a few weeks (and some never dropped off, we had to just let them fail after a while).
In my experience running large websites, that's about 10% of the internet, if not more.
When I made a DNS change, only about 70% of the traffic dropped off in the TTL. The rest took anywhere between a few hours and a few weeks (and some never dropped off, we had to just let them fail after a while).
Thanks, I didn't realize it was that large. :'(
Do you think the advent of DoH will improve that situation?
Do you think the advent of DoH will improve that situation?
I don't think so. DoH deals more with streamlining the transmission of requests and responses, but I don't recall any part of the RFC dealing with TTLs.
You'll still be talking to your local DNS server with its own caching rules.
You'll still be talking to your local DNS server with its own caching rules.
I thought part of the big deal with DoH was precisely that you don't use your local DNS server (or more importantly, your ISP's DNS server). If DoH effectively means that more people pull DNS straight from Cloudflare, then I would expect the TTL situation to improve.
Right now Cloudflare is the main provider, but it's an open standard. Anyone would be able to provide the service.
Chrome for example will only use it against your ISPs DNS servers, otherwise it will use Google's servers. So that would at least help, but if the big ISPs start supporting it, then Chrome would use that.
Chrome for example will only use it against your ISPs DNS servers, otherwise it will use Google's servers. So that would at least help, but if the big ISPs start supporting it, then Chrome would use that.
For more local purposes, solar + wind is a nice complement. Wind is strongest at night, while solar is best in the day.
Nuclear usually needs to keep running, and fewer people use electricity at night (unless you live in Philippines where it is common to only run AC at night to save on electricity).
Nuclear usually needs to keep running, and fewer people use electricity at night (unless you live in Philippines where it is common to only run AC at night to save on electricity).
> Wind is strongest at night
This depends on where you are. In many places wind is actually strongest during daytime.
This depends on where you are. In many places wind is actually strongest during daytime.
Depending on elevation, among other things.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-the-diurna...
Multicast doesn't work on the big-I Internet.
A battery system is almost certainly easier than physical servers spread across the globe, even when you account for the cost of the battery.
A battery system is almost certainly easier than physical servers spread across the globe, even when you account for the cost of the battery.
I meant anycast (fixed now). But based on this writeup, they don't seem to care about how much of their own time it takes, only to prove it is possible. It was in that vain that I suggest two servers would be better.
I have feeling that internet infrastructure material and energy costs for a anycast IP/site would dwarf the energy/material costs of hosting the site in a datacentre.
That assumes that each location receives enough sunlight to keep the server operational for at least twelve hours a day, which doesn't sound realistic for a setup with no batteries. Three servers spaced equidistant around the world might work.
If you're going down that route anyway, you could add redundant servers at different latitudes to hedge against cloudy weather.
If you're going down that route anyway, you could add redundant servers at different latitudes to hedge against cloudy weather.
> That assumes that each location receives enough sunlight to keep the server operational for at least twelve hours a day
Only one of them needs to be up at a time. By choosing the antipode, by definition one of them will be in sun when the other is not (weather notwithstanding). The equinox would be the hardest day to deal with because they would both be at low energy at sunrise/sunset.
So yes, you're right, a third server would probably make it work almost 100% of the time.
Only one of them needs to be up at a time. By choosing the antipode, by definition one of them will be in sun when the other is not (weather notwithstanding). The equinox would be the hardest day to deal with because they would both be at low energy at sunrise/sunset.
So yes, you're right, a third server would probably make it work almost 100% of the time.
I don't think the equinox is special in this regard - as the days at one point get longer, they shorten at the antipode.
As a practical matter insolation at dawn/dusk won't be able to power much, without a PV array that would be quite oversize during the day.
Lots of interesting optimisation problems in this area. But at this scale batteries and solar panels come in discrete sizes, so it's a bit academic.
As a practical matter insolation at dawn/dusk won't be able to power much, without a PV array that would be quite oversize during the day.
Lots of interesting optimisation problems in this area. But at this scale batteries and solar panels come in discrete sizes, so it's a bit academic.
Ah, I see what you mean. If they are antipodes, then dusk and dawn will happen together every day. This is a good point. I was thinking there would be more overlap on the other days, but you're right, there wouldn't be.
Getting one anycast IP really means getting a /24, which is pretty expensive. I would definitely go with a DNS solution instead, even though some users are going to be stuck behind brain dead caches that don't follow the TTL at all. Like others, I have seen traffic continue for weeks after a DNS change.
Or twice as many panels and a battery.
Problem solved.
Problem solved.
This may sound snarky, but...
I really wonder how helpful such projects are. Making the Internet greener is undoubtedly an important goal, but I feel this is perpetuating a myth that we're gonna fix the climate crisis with small-scale projects from below.
Practically this is doing nothing to provide any relevant fix for the problem. What we should be doing is thinking about how we can fix the problem at scale, e.g. pressuring large IT companies to get real about the green image they like to peddle. (i.e. care more about news like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22167858 )
I really wonder how helpful such projects are. Making the Internet greener is undoubtedly an important goal, but I feel this is perpetuating a myth that we're gonna fix the climate crisis with small-scale projects from below.
Practically this is doing nothing to provide any relevant fix for the problem. What we should be doing is thinking about how we can fix the problem at scale, e.g. pressuring large IT companies to get real about the green image they like to peddle. (i.e. care more about news like this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22167858 )
These small-scale projects directly inspires those linked in your article to act. The more we talk about it and try to make a change--any change--the greater the impetus to make greater changes.
Large-scale projects don't magically wink into existence in a vacuum, the conversation needs to happen and the ball first needs to get rolling.
Large-scale projects don't magically wink into existence in a vacuum, the conversation needs to happen and the ball first needs to get rolling.
I think that seeing things like this should serve more as a point of inspiration, not a full faceted solution.
One benefit of small projects is that they give people a sense of scale, and a better mental framework for thinking about energy use. Electrical power is something we don't (usually) see or physically interact with, this project gives an idea of what a PV panel or battery that can run a tiny computer looks and feels like.
I think it's a good way of finding and demonstrating the real-life gotchas of sustainable energy. For example, I don't think most people have a good understanding of the cost-benefit calculations that go into how much renewable energy production capacity we can build while keeping to co2 emission targets, given that new capacity needs to be built with the current energy setup. The "embodied energy" aspect of this article illustrates that.
To fix problem at scale, there is a simple and elegant solution: revenue-neutral carbon tax - https://clcouncil.org/economists-statement/
For real efficiency we'd need renewable feeding the grid, then massive and efficient server racks, with your tiddly website running in a docker container on there somewhere, hopefully this is on an edge node close to the person viewing the site. In other words economies of scale.
The nice thing about that is that you don't have to change the tech much, you can still use digital ocean or whatever, but they need to get their power from renewable, which in turn means their grid needs to.
The not so nice thing is we are not changing fast enough. I hope pure price pressure from tech advantages will get us from fossils to renewable.
The nice thing about that is that you don't have to change the tech much, you can still use digital ocean or whatever, but they need to get their power from renewable, which in turn means their grid needs to.
The not so nice thing is we are not changing fast enough. I hope pure price pressure from tech advantages will get us from fossils to renewable.
You wouldn't have posted this if this project wasn't created. You wouldn't have discussed this with other people. It's hard to fix a big problem when most people don't even understand the problem.
One use case I imagine would be for folks that live off-grid, but still want to have some home automation. Realistically these folks are using large banks of batteries, large solar panels and big inverters, but there is no harm in optimizing the load for long run time when there are periods of low sunlight and wind.
I learnt that server power usage varies a lot on load. Didn’t consider this to be so significant before.
before you'll be able to run you need to learn to walk u know....
at least this shit is inspiring
at least this shit is inspiring
This misses the elephant in the room. Every major tech company is already pushing hard towards renewable and/or zero carbon. The problem isn't tech, it's the other companies (chemical, oil, agriculture, etc).
https://sustainability.fb.com/sustainability-in-numbers/
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/
https://sustainability.google/environment/
https://news.microsoft.com/climate/
https://sustainability.fb.com/sustainability-in-numbers/
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/sustainability/
https://sustainability.google/environment/
https://news.microsoft.com/climate/
The problem is, of course, tech. As explained in the article, websites have become more energy-hungry over time. This is partly explained by the rebound effect (Jevons paradox). More efficient hardware leads to faster page load times. Unfortunately, the result was heavier pages loading roughly as fast, or even slower, than old-school websites.
Unless facebook, AWS, google and Microsoft start encouraging more efficient webiste designs (static websites, limited library usage, no more 1MB fonts, etc.), the work done by the author is absolutely relevant. Limited hardware capacity has always been the most reliable way to limit energy usage.
Unless facebook, AWS, google and Microsoft start encouraging more efficient webiste designs (static websites, limited library usage, no more 1MB fonts, etc.), the work done by the author is absolutely relevant. Limited hardware capacity has always been the most reliable way to limit energy usage.
About $100 in gear ($30 144wh battery, $20 controller, $50 50w solar panel) to offset around $2 worth of electricity (9.53kwh * 0.17 euro/kwh) per year.
The battery should be replaced about every 5 years, the solar panels 25 years, the controller every 10 years.
The battery should be replaced about every 5 years, the solar panels 25 years, the controller every 10 years.
A cost analysis remains to be done. But it's not as bad as it seems: we save $600 per year on hosting services.
Comparing a static site on a Raspberry Pi to a commercially hosted CMS is like comparing an apple to a walnut grove.
I see they're still using dithered PNGs instead of JPEGs for images.
The first time I saw it (I don't have the numbers handy now) I ran some experiments and it seemed clear to me that a JPEG would work much better, and if dithered PNGs were really a good option, more people would be doing them. This was on photographs, where JPEGs are kind of a home-run and PNGs aren't good no matter what you do to them.
This time they're doing diagrams, which would probably be best as regular PNGs - The dithering requires you compress a pattern that's almost noise, and a JPEG would add artifacts without being any smaller.
Here's some other thoughts:
- WebP does exist, but of course you have to do some negotiation to avoid blank images on browsers that won't decode it.
- The site is behind CloudFlare anyway, so if it's a static site with no auth you can probably just put the whole thing on CF / AWS / whatever and it won't use more energy in the cloud than proxying for your own server already does.
- CloudFlare probably has a button that re-compresses everything as WebP for you.
- Economies of scale always apply.
On scale: The transmission losses for the whole US grid is well under 10%. If solar is such a great idea, build a solar farm and run 1,000,000 websites. Or 1,000 houses. It'll be more efficient than putting panels on individual houses or servers. There is no power source that gets more efficient when you have a bunch of individuals running it instead of a power company. Whether the power company is trustworthy is a question of politics, not technology.
This always gets to me when I see EV chargers with VAWTs at a grocery store. If VAWTS are so great, why isn't the grid building them? The grid already has the big wind turbines which are presumably more efficient than a VAWT. So why not buy power from the grid? Because it's a PR stunt.
In short, I wish they'd be more clear about it being a cool thing and not a practical thing. Solar is practical. Wind is practical. At scale.
The first time I saw it (I don't have the numbers handy now) I ran some experiments and it seemed clear to me that a JPEG would work much better, and if dithered PNGs were really a good option, more people would be doing them. This was on photographs, where JPEGs are kind of a home-run and PNGs aren't good no matter what you do to them.
This time they're doing diagrams, which would probably be best as regular PNGs - The dithering requires you compress a pattern that's almost noise, and a JPEG would add artifacts without being any smaller.
Here's some other thoughts:
- WebP does exist, but of course you have to do some negotiation to avoid blank images on browsers that won't decode it.
- The site is behind CloudFlare anyway, so if it's a static site with no auth you can probably just put the whole thing on CF / AWS / whatever and it won't use more energy in the cloud than proxying for your own server already does.
- CloudFlare probably has a button that re-compresses everything as WebP for you.
- Economies of scale always apply.
On scale: The transmission losses for the whole US grid is well under 10%. If solar is such a great idea, build a solar farm and run 1,000,000 websites. Or 1,000 houses. It'll be more efficient than putting panels on individual houses or servers. There is no power source that gets more efficient when you have a bunch of individuals running it instead of a power company. Whether the power company is trustworthy is a question of politics, not technology.
This always gets to me when I see EV chargers with VAWTs at a grocery store. If VAWTS are so great, why isn't the grid building them? The grid already has the big wind turbines which are presumably more efficient than a VAWT. So why not buy power from the grid? Because it's a PR stunt.
In short, I wish they'd be more clear about it being a cool thing and not a practical thing. Solar is practical. Wind is practical. At scale.
“At scale” has to include several standard deviations of insufficient light/wind availability. When batteries deplete, you have no power. This gets very expensive when you’re backing up for cases that won’t happen more than one day per year (or decade).
To compare, I’m a solar powered user. All summer I work outside on a notebook writing apps, powered by several combinations of solar panels and matching batteries.
On the whole it works. Excess PV panel capacity charges battery, ensuring enough backup to run during unfavorable angle, cloud cover, weather, shadows, and night.
Most common issue is re-positioning panels every few hours to favorable angles & avoiding shadows.
Greatest concern is prolonged cloud cover, depleting batteries after a couple days of insufficient light. The cost of preparing backup against “multiple standard deviations” is substantial, buying rarely used batteries (and extra panels to charge them in reasonable time) - hundreds of $ of gear (2-4x base cost) used maybe one day a month. Winter makes this outlier the norm, magnified by its own outliers.
Also, one becomes very aware of app power consumption. Found one web page (AgileCraft logout page) pulls 30 ways for no good reason.
I’m sure solar powered web server would face comparable issues. Depleted batteries are a brick wall, waiting for not just light & time to recharge, but to run the system ASAP.
On the whole it works. Excess PV panel capacity charges battery, ensuring enough backup to run during unfavorable angle, cloud cover, weather, shadows, and night.
Most common issue is re-positioning panels every few hours to favorable angles & avoiding shadows.
Greatest concern is prolonged cloud cover, depleting batteries after a couple days of insufficient light. The cost of preparing backup against “multiple standard deviations” is substantial, buying rarely used batteries (and extra panels to charge them in reasonable time) - hundreds of $ of gear (2-4x base cost) used maybe one day a month. Winter makes this outlier the norm, magnified by its own outliers.
Also, one becomes very aware of app power consumption. Found one web page (AgileCraft logout page) pulls 30 ways for no good reason.
I’m sure solar powered web server would face comparable issues. Depleted batteries are a brick wall, waiting for not just light & time to recharge, but to run the system ASAP.
The extra batteries can be justified because they reduce the load over the entire setup so maybe you could get by with half the batteries but you would be using the batteries twice as much and they would wear out twice as fast.
Can you link to what panel/battery/supporting hardware/etc. you purchased + used?
GoalZero.com : Boulder 100 Briefcase, Nomad 20, Nomad 13, & Nomad 7 panels; Yeti 400, Yeti 100, Yeti 100AC, Yeti 50, & Guide 10+ batteries. Running a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, iPhones, & iPad Pro.
Better link to the same article: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is...
(it's on the solar powered website itself)
(it's on the solar powered website itself)
Even with the additional upfront expense, lithium batteries would make this setup much more efficient due to the larger allowed cycles and would also reduce the environmental impact due to the low impact nature of lithium extraction.
Lead acid batteries are eminently recyclable. Something like 99% of the lead in a new car battery is from old recycled car batteries.
That's interesting, I couldn't find any reference to that statistic. I've seen estimates in the range of 60-80% recycled content for new lead batteries in the US, but that data seems pretty shaky.
I have seen statistics around a recycling rate of 99% or higher in the US, but also that much of that is done in Mexico or other places with very weak environmental and occupational regulations.
In any case, lead poisoning is a very serious problem which is exacerbated by lead recycling and production.
I have seen statistics around a recycling rate of 99% or higher in the US, but also that much of that is done in Mexico or other places with very weak environmental and occupational regulations.
In any case, lead poisoning is a very serious problem which is exacerbated by lead recycling and production.
Take a look at the domestic manufacturers, such as East Penn, and you find that they have their own recycling plants and they charge their customers money when they don't receive a scrap battery on purchase of a new one. They also own most of the distributors of their batteries which run trucks to their customers.
The lead acid battery industry is incredibly competitive and prices unbelievably low due to this vertical integration and mechanized production. Pretty much the only way to beat the U.S. car battery prices is to subsidize (Korea) or pollute like hell (Mexico).
The U.S. is a net importer of lead, largely because all of the SLA batteries coming in from Asia end up in the waste stream as scrap, so there isn't very high demand for virgin (smelted lead concentrate) when all that scrap is sitting around.
The lead acid battery industry is incredibly competitive and prices unbelievably low due to this vertical integration and mechanized production. Pretty much the only way to beat the U.S. car battery prices is to subsidize (Korea) or pollute like hell (Mexico).
The U.S. is a net importer of lead, largely because all of the SLA batteries coming in from Asia end up in the waste stream as scrap, so there isn't very high demand for virgin (smelted lead concentrate) when all that scrap is sitting around.
Lithium-cobalt can be profitably recycled due to the value of the Cobalt, but nobody wants to pay the price for the batteries at that size.
Lithium batteries can explode when the lithium comes in contact for water. I'm not clear on what the waste stream is doing for all the non-cobalt chemistries (mostly manganese).
Lithium batteries can explode when the lithium comes in contact for water. I'm not clear on what the waste stream is doing for all the non-cobalt chemistries (mostly manganese).
I wonder how much more efficient this would be if the content was distributed on a p2p network?
I would love to get into distributed web tech. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for it though.
The benefit of being able to have these scuttlebutt networks of low-power, efficient devices is a lower-overall carbon footprint for the common case of serving low-fidelity content like web pages and small applications. As well as the network and content being resilient to local changes in climate events (flash floods, fires, etc). And possibly bringing access to more areas where network connectivity is slow, expensive and unreliable.
I would love to get into distributed web tech. I'm not sure how much of a market there is for it though.
The benefit of being able to have these scuttlebutt networks of low-power, efficient devices is a lower-overall carbon footprint for the common case of serving low-fidelity content like web pages and small applications. As well as the network and content being resilient to local changes in climate events (flash floods, fires, etc). And possibly bringing access to more areas where network connectivity is slow, expensive and unreliable.
> I wonder how much more efficient this would be if the content was distributed on a p2p network?
This is pure speculation on my part, but probably much less efficient. In order to make the p2p network reliable, you'd need many more copies floating around. I also suspect that "finding" your data is more energy intense compared to basic DNS lookups.
This is pure speculation on my part, but probably much less efficient. In order to make the p2p network reliable, you'd need many more copies floating around. I also suspect that "finding" your data is more energy intense compared to basic DNS lookups.
It's possible to use erasure coding to avoid needing that many more copies. With 75% erasure blocks you can lose any 75% of the nodes hosting the data without compromising availability, and that only requires the equivalent of four copies. Moreover, distributing that number of copies has negligible overhead when data is requested much more often than it's modified, as is normally the case.
It's also possible to cache lookups in the same way as DNS by having larger nodes cache the lookup data and having smaller nodes query them, so that the most common queries are satisfied using a single request to a lookup cache.
Meanwhile the advantage of a P2P network is that most of the nodes are client devices which would have been powered on regardless, instead of needing additional devices dedicated only to hosting data.
It's also possible to cache lookups in the same way as DNS by having larger nodes cache the lookup data and having smaller nodes query them, so that the most common queries are satisfied using a single request to a lookup cache.
Meanwhile the advantage of a P2P network is that most of the nodes are client devices which would have been powered on regardless, instead of needing additional devices dedicated only to hosting data.
> powered on regardless
Bad assumption: Most people use laptops, which aren't "powered on regardless", or mobile devices, where the power consumption of being active on a P2P network will kill the battery.
Bad assumption: Most people use laptops, which aren't "powered on regardless", or mobile devices, where the power consumption of being active on a P2P network will kill the battery.
The people using laptops wouldn't leave them on longer than they would be otherwise, you'd just get the data from the one that happens to be on at the time, so they'd be "powered on regardless" for the same period of time they would be otherwise.
Moreover, the average mobile device spends something like eight hours a day (while the owner is asleep) connected to the charger where battery life is irrelevant. So give the network two modes, one where the device participates fully in the network and is a preferred source for data and one where it only registers what it has with another node and is then a provider of last resort for data not otherwise available elsewhere, and operate in one mode or the other depending on whether the device is running on battery.
Notice also that the amortized number of hits over the whole network is one per object per device, i.e. the average number of times a node has to upload each thing it downloads is only once. That doesn't take an insurmountable amount of battery even if you couldn't shift most of the load to the devices that are plugged in.
Moreover, the average mobile device spends something like eight hours a day (while the owner is asleep) connected to the charger where battery life is irrelevant. So give the network two modes, one where the device participates fully in the network and is a preferred source for data and one where it only registers what it has with another node and is then a provider of last resort for data not otherwise available elsewhere, and operate in one mode or the other depending on whether the device is running on battery.
Notice also that the amortized number of hits over the whole network is one per object per device, i.e. the average number of times a node has to upload each thing it downloads is only once. That doesn't take an insurmountable amount of battery even if you couldn't shift most of the load to the devices that are plugged in.
Does it need to be always on though? Scuttlebutt-like gossip networks and caches might be more what I was thinking about. In the ideal case you find the content local to you in one request, cache it, and the solar-powered server is none the wiser.
The network might be slower overall but we're talking about optimizing for lower power consumption so I feel like that would be a lesser priority.
Now I'm starting to wonder if there is a away to simulate the power draw of such a network.
The network might be slower overall but we're talking about optimizing for lower power consumption so I feel like that would be a lesser priority.
Now I'm starting to wonder if there is a away to simulate the power draw of such a network.
There was a project I stumbled upon over a year ago that implemented a P2P Web, but I can't seem to dig it up now. There was a client that mediated the connection between your machine and the network, and you'd just browse the web normally by pointing your browser at localhost:someport. It was kind of neat, since everyone who visited a resource could act as the server for somebody else, but it looked to me like it was pretty much only used by Chinese dissidents. Good for them, I say, but not so useful for someone casually looking for a better version of the existing Web. I think until technologies like this are better than the Web for ordinary use, not just hiding from authorities for whatever reason, they'll only find use in those areas.
Of course, there's always IPFS, but that project comes with its own issues (e.g. modifying content).
Of course, there's always IPFS, but that project comes with its own issues (e.g. modifying content).
Were you thinking of i2p? I believe it's a similar project that I've always intended to look into, but never actually have.
Previous Thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20038619
>>More likely is that we eventually switch to a more poetic small-scale compressed air energy storage system (CAES).
Please do this!! I want to see that article on CAES actually worked out in real life not just theory with no howto steps .
Please do this!! I want to see that article on CAES actually worked out in real life not just theory with no howto steps .
City-wide application are discussed regularly here...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19442938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782760
Also online.. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/history-and-future-o...
Down the line, problems are efficiency and all the downside of working with gases.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19442938 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19782760
Also online.. https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2018/05/history-and-future-o...
Down the line, problems are efficiency and all the downside of working with gases.
Yes, I did read those articles and it has me very interested. What I would be more interested in is some sort of applied DIY situation. Something I could cobble together myself and it would have the potential to get the efficiency that is discussed in lowtech mag. It seems to me that with the sorts of articles they write, I would be able to follow along on a small scale if I wanted. In particular, how do you make a compressor going one way and a generator going the other?
It could be argued that DIY and pressure vessels don't work well together :-)
> However, we’re comparing apples to oranges. We have calculated our emissions based on the embodied energy of our installation. When the carbon intensity of the Spanish power grid is measured, the embodied energy of the renewable power infrastructure is taken to be zero. If we calculated our carbon intensity in the same way, of course it would be zero, too.
I don't get it. The carbon intensity of the national grid should result from a life-cycle analysis, so all emissions should be included in the figure. As far as I know, apples and apples are compared, and the home-made version is worse.
I don't get it. The carbon intensity of the national grid should result from a life-cycle analysis, so all emissions should be included in the figure. As far as I know, apples and apples are compared, and the home-made version is worse.
The carbon intensity of the national grid is calculated as follows: carbon emissions of burning coal and gas in power plants (say 600 g/kWh) + carbon emissions of wind turbines, solar panels and the like (0 g/kWh). Embodied energy is not taken into account.
Is it particular to spain ?
No, it's not just Spain. I only looked at European power grids, but their carbon intensity is all calculated in the same way.
I'm pretty sure these numbers are LCAs : https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&rem...
Hydro, nuclear, wind turbines would all be 0g/kWh if it was only about fuel.
Hydro, nuclear, wind turbines would all be 0g/kWh if it was only about fuel.
It's an interesting exercise. In some ways it's similar to what we were doing at Satellogic: a Satellogic satellite is solar-powered, runs on batteries, and contains computers running Linux. (All of that is public; I'm not revealing anything unpublished here.)
They seem to be running on a Raspberry Pi that uses two watts, so they can run Linux. But a website wouldn't have to run Linux. Contiki includes a webserver and can run on an STM32F103. (I'm not sure if the Contiki webserver fits on an STM32F103, though; Contiki is pretty customizable.) They say they have 865,000 yearly visitors, but unfortunately don't explain how many hits that is; if we assume it's 1000 hits per visitor, that's 865 million hits a year, which is 27 hits a second, in the ballpark of what you could do on a 486. So it ought to be within the capacity of a 72MHz 32-bit STM32F103, which uses 50 mA going full tilt — 165 mW if you're running on 3.3 volts. That's better than an order of magnitude less power.
This is probably an interesting experiment to do for resiliency purposes, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense for reducing resource usage in this case. If we assume "Kris De Decker" is the name of a human body that dedicates most of its time to writing this magazine, well, that body dissipates about 100 watts. You could run the magazine on 102 watts by using a 2-watt webserver, or 100.17 watts by using a 165 milliwatt webserver. But if they eat beef once a week, well, beef wastes about 96% of its energy input, converting it to cow poop instead of food; that's 4.8 watts of beef produced from 119 watts of soybeans and corn. By replacing one of those beef meals per year with a vegetarian meal — eating beef 51 times a year instead of 52 — they could reduce their energy consumption by more than the entire web server power budget.
Or, to look at it another way, eating beef once a year uses as much power as the web server: 72 MJ/year, 2.3 W.
(I'm ignoring the embodied-energy calculation because the article shows that it's small compared to the ongoing power use.)
Average marketed energy consumption in the rich world is about 10 kilowatts per person, although typically that figure doesn't include things like corn and beef. Interestingly, in another article https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/05/how-to-go-off-grid-i... the author explains that their laptop uses 20 watts of power, and their external monitor uses 16.5 watts, together 18 times the power used by the web server. If they could manage to do their writing with a USB keyboard plugged into an Android cellphone with an OTG cable, they could probably reduce that to 3 watts, a reduction of 11 times the web server's entire power (although maybe they only write 8 hours a day, so maybe it's only 4 times.) If they could use an incrementally updated e-ink screen, an option I explored in some detail in Dercuano, they could use another order of magnitude less still.
I feel like sustainability is a bigger question than resource use, though. I can't sustain the laptop I'm writing this on because it contains parts I don't know how to fix, even if I could supply it all the energy it needs with like a bicycle generator or something. In fact, nobody in my country knows how to build a laptop like this; a lot of the knowhow only exists in China, and other parts only exist in Korea. Exploiting its CPU backdoors requires knowledge that is presumably only available in certain companies in the US. These seem like much bigger sustainability concerns to me than the really quite minimal power usage of the machine, which is a tiny fraction of the power usage of, for example, a candle (≈80 watts).
They seem to be running on a Raspberry Pi that uses two watts, so they can run Linux. But a website wouldn't have to run Linux. Contiki includes a webserver and can run on an STM32F103. (I'm not sure if the Contiki webserver fits on an STM32F103, though; Contiki is pretty customizable.) They say they have 865,000 yearly visitors, but unfortunately don't explain how many hits that is; if we assume it's 1000 hits per visitor, that's 865 million hits a year, which is 27 hits a second, in the ballpark of what you could do on a 486. So it ought to be within the capacity of a 72MHz 32-bit STM32F103, which uses 50 mA going full tilt — 165 mW if you're running on 3.3 volts. That's better than an order of magnitude less power.
This is probably an interesting experiment to do for resiliency purposes, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense for reducing resource usage in this case. If we assume "Kris De Decker" is the name of a human body that dedicates most of its time to writing this magazine, well, that body dissipates about 100 watts. You could run the magazine on 102 watts by using a 2-watt webserver, or 100.17 watts by using a 165 milliwatt webserver. But if they eat beef once a week, well, beef wastes about 96% of its energy input, converting it to cow poop instead of food; that's 4.8 watts of beef produced from 119 watts of soybeans and corn. By replacing one of those beef meals per year with a vegetarian meal — eating beef 51 times a year instead of 52 — they could reduce their energy consumption by more than the entire web server power budget.
Or, to look at it another way, eating beef once a year uses as much power as the web server: 72 MJ/year, 2.3 W.
(I'm ignoring the embodied-energy calculation because the article shows that it's small compared to the ongoing power use.)
Average marketed energy consumption in the rich world is about 10 kilowatts per person, although typically that figure doesn't include things like corn and beef. Interestingly, in another article https://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/05/how-to-go-off-grid-i... the author explains that their laptop uses 20 watts of power, and their external monitor uses 16.5 watts, together 18 times the power used by the web server. If they could manage to do their writing with a USB keyboard plugged into an Android cellphone with an OTG cable, they could probably reduce that to 3 watts, a reduction of 11 times the web server's entire power (although maybe they only write 8 hours a day, so maybe it's only 4 times.) If they could use an incrementally updated e-ink screen, an option I explored in some detail in Dercuano, they could use another order of magnitude less still.
I feel like sustainability is a bigger question than resource use, though. I can't sustain the laptop I'm writing this on because it contains parts I don't know how to fix, even if I could supply it all the energy it needs with like a bicycle generator or something. In fact, nobody in my country knows how to build a laptop like this; a lot of the knowhow only exists in China, and other parts only exist in Korea. Exploiting its CPU backdoors requires knowledge that is presumably only available in certain companies in the US. These seem like much bigger sustainability concerns to me than the really quite minimal power usage of the machine, which is a tiny fraction of the power usage of, for example, a candle (≈80 watts).
Also, sustainability of a web server doesn't mean that much if you don't consider the net impact in the world. It seems to me that you could have a web server require substantially more power and still be a net benefit if it actually influences many users to consume less in their daily lives.
What is the marginal cost of the web traffic it creates and replaces? Would tuning the software and data payloads be more impactful than worrying about the server wattage?
What is the marginal cost of other user activities which it influences? Not just the website operator, but the user behaviors happening as a result of their relationship with the service? Do they stop using other less efficient services or just increase their overall footprint? Could it reduce their consumption of energy and material goods? Change their diet or travel habits...?
What is the marginal cost of the web traffic it creates and replaces? Would tuning the software and data payloads be more impactful than worrying about the server wattage?
What is the marginal cost of other user activities which it influences? Not just the website operator, but the user behaviors happening as a result of their relationship with the service? Do they stop using other less efficient services or just increase their overall footprint? Could it reduce their consumption of energy and material goods? Change their diet or travel habits...?
The posts on low tech magazine are interesting but I feel that the solar power idea doesn't make much sense. Why are we running an entire OS and device for a single static site? This could easily sit on a data center and use virtually no power and actually no power while its not being requested unlike a rpi that has to sit online constantly waiting for requests.
Quote: "The solar powered website bucks against these trends. To drop energy use far below that of the average website, we opted for a back-to-basics web design, using a static website instead of a database driven content management system. "
For a website that proud itself on being against trends, I would had more appreciation if they went against the trend to use 3rd party sites and be totally on their own. My NoScript reports for them these as 3rd party scripts: google-analytics.com, google.com, googlesyndication.com, gstatic.com, jquery.com, s3.amazonaws.com, statcounter.com, typepad.com
This reminds me of that joke with electric cars that recharge their battery using a diesel generator.
For a website that proud itself on being against trends, I would had more appreciation if they went against the trend to use 3rd party sites and be totally on their own. My NoScript reports for them these as 3rd party scripts: google-analytics.com, google.com, googlesyndication.com, gstatic.com, jquery.com, s3.amazonaws.com, statcounter.com, typepad.com
This reminds me of that joke with electric cars that recharge their battery using a diesel generator.
That's because you're not on the solar powered website.
Hackernews is linking to the old site.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is...
In the distant future after humanity crumbles there will be only one website left, available for 4 hours a day, and the content won't render correctly because they didn't self host their scripts or css.
>The owner of this website (www.lowtechmagazine.com) has banned your IP address ([redacted])
Anyone else seeing this? Looks like they allow me to access it via https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is..., but if they actually banned my IP specifically I don't really want to violate their wishes, I just wonder why I'm banned :/
Anyone else seeing this? Looks like they allow me to access it via https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/01/how-sustainable-is..., but if they actually banned my IP specifically I don't really want to violate their wishes, I just wonder why I'm banned :/
Seeing as how their website is run from a low-power device, maybe your IP (range?) was submitting too many requests and they decided to ban it.
Does anyone know of any good sources of information about which web hosts are the most sustainable?
I had a quick look and didn't find an obvious resource online to study. I messaged a couple of popular web hosts and each said they don't have any specific policies on sustainability or any energy usage stats to share.
I had a quick look and didn't find an obvious resource online to study. I messaged a couple of popular web hosts and each said they don't have any specific policies on sustainability or any energy usage stats to share.
This would be a useful thing to lobby hosting companies on. All it would take would be to convince a dozen or two of the largest, most visible hosting companies to put sustainability/power efficiency/consumption stats front and centre on the website and the rest of the horde would be more-or-less obliged to follow suit.
You'd need a legislated standard, I fear. There are so many ways you could lie statistically and still appear to be giving good info.
There are a handful of reasons I’ve been farting around with SBCs, but one of them is an informational website for an outdoor attraction with no good spot to string power.
Not quite how this article meant solar-powered, but still some useful food for thought.
Not quite how this article meant solar-powered, but still some useful food for thought.
If that is not good enough for some folks, there is also the print version of the site. A big 700+ page thing that really need to get my chops into. Been on my bookshelf for about 6 months just calling me to delve into its full glory.
> Solar PV power has high embodied energy compared to alternatives such as wind, water, or human power.
Did they calculate the energy required to construct a human that is capable of powering this server?
Did they calculate the energy required to construct a human that is capable of powering this server?
side note: with potential sub 7nm semiconductor processes, a wide amount of sophisticated chips could run on small ~solar (say 1W)
You can run a fair bit of web traffic off of something like a Raspberry Pi, and you don't need a ton of battery to keep that running overnight. Heavy database driven websites probably won't be an option, but the bottleneck for static sites would likely be the Ethernet interface.
In fact that's pretty much exactly what they did. 168Wh battery pack is a small Deep Cycle SLA. A 50w Solar Panel and associated charge controllers and the like is like $80 at Harbor Freight. The whole thing is quite achievable on a budget.
In fact that's pretty much exactly what they did. 168Wh battery pack is a small Deep Cycle SLA. A 50w Solar Panel and associated charge controllers and the like is like $80 at Harbor Freight. The whole thing is quite achievable on a budget.
I tried running an rpi on a lead acid battery and a 40w panel. It seemed to be running fine for the first 2 weeks but then I think it had a few days where it drained the battery to 0 which ruined it and then it was turning off every night. I'm not sure what to do with the setup now since it seems like lead acid is not the way to go but all of the DIY solar charge controllers use lead acid.
Did you use a deep cycle battery? Letting a standard lead acid battery go to 0 is a surefire way to kill it.
It was just a standard one but the deep cycle ones are super expensive and it doesn't seem worth it for a rpi that costs about $1 a year to run.
As is often the case, the most obvious target for optimization (the computer, 1-2W) has already hit diminishing returns. Their biggest energy hog is the router (10W), which they aren't running on solar.
but what's the manufacturing process of router chips ? surely a router inner logic is way less than a rpi SoC so it could be trimmed down over time through simple smaller features .. ?
Home routers are just a general purpose CPU (ARM or MIPS) running a trimmed down OS. Thats why you can install openWRT on a lot of them and run arbitrary code.
IMO the problem is like with cable boxes- forget about the manufacturing node, there's just little incentive for the router companies to optimize power because few people pay attention to it.
It may be worth repeating what the article already states: this project is based in Barcelona, where there is considerable sunlight. Other locations may be unsuitable for this sort of thing. I do like the idea, though, and its implementation is impressive.
I wonder if hosting images elsewhere helps out with reducing load?
The article claims that it takes "3,514 MJ of energy to produce one m2 of solar panel."
The source for that assertion is this article from 2017:
"Energy Payback Time of a Solar Photovoltaic PoweredWaste Plastic Recyclebot System"
https://www.e-helvetica.nb.admin.ch/api/download/urn%3Anbn%3...
That article cites this article from 2006 as its source for energy intensity of solar manufacturing:
"Embodied energy analysis of photovoltaic (PV) system based on macro- and micro-level"
https://sci-hub.tw/10.1016/j.enpol.2005.06.018
That publication finds that silicon purification and processing accounts for the lion's share of embodied energy in solar PV.
But if you read section 6 of the paper, "Embodied energy of silicon purification and processing", you see that those authors are using material production energy intensity numbers from 2004 and 1998. They are also assuming the use of electronic grade silicon for solar manufacturing, and a silicon requirement of 12 grams per watt-peak of solar module. Cheaper and less energy intensive solar grade silicon has entirely replaced electronic grade silicon in PV since the early 2000s. Modern solar module silicon use is about 3 grams per watt-peak, not 12; see Table 1 in https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2020/ee/c9ee0245....
What first appears to be a reasonably recent citation for PV embodied energy is actually a chain of painfully outdated assumptions going all the way back to the 1990s.