[HN Gopher] My solar-powered and self-hosted website
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My solar-powered and self-hosted website
Author : lightlyused
Score : 105 points
Date : 2024-10-17 10:56 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dri.es)
(TXT) w3m dump (dri.es)
| tonetegeatinst wrote:
| Shame the solar panels can't do "self-healing".
|
| I this this is cool, I know a couple folks who got homelabs on
| reddit who mainly use solar power due to the cost and want to go
| green.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| You can get self healing solar power if you grow bamboo and use
| the resulting charcoal for fuel. Carbon neutral I guess.
| tomfly wrote:
| this is really neat.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The solar-run site is at https://solar.dri.es/ in case everyone
| wants to check it out all at once ;)
|
| Of course this got posted on a sunny, cool and breezy morning in
| Boston. Sneaky!
| punnerud wrote:
| Is this the same page that had the background effect indicating
| level of the battery?
| asoneth wrote:
| My guess is that you're thinking of
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
| Eumenes wrote:
| Pretty cool. I use one of these small panels as a battery tender
| for a generator. It only is about 30w, but keeps a small 12v
| battery from dying over the months. It also has a charge
| controller built in - https://www.amazon.com/OYMSAE-Portable-
| maintainer-Cigarette-...
| louwrentius wrote:
| Nicely done!
|
| Now, Low Tech Magazine also has instructions to convert a
| stationary exercise bike into a human powered generator, which
| you could build to add power during the winter :-)
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Solar powered sites are cool and fun, but I find it ultimately
| lacking because so much of the rest of the networking
| infrastructure is reliant on the grid. It would be more energy
| efficient to just host the static site on cloudflare or whatever,
| and use the solar panel to charge some batteries, or something
| you would normally use the grid for. I suspect overall energy
| usage would be even lower if the site was hosted on a CDN, due to
| the CDN operators keeping their machines near full utilization,
| and fewer network hops required for an average request.
| genter wrote:
| You don't like that the rest of the infrastructure is on the
| grid, so you're proposing moving the site to the grid too?
| ffsm8 wrote:
| He's looking at it from a utilitarian point of view.
|
| From that perspective, you've got a finite amount of energy
| that's being consumed at any point of time and by that logic,
| you'd be better served to use the solar energy for something
| else in your household that would've needed the grid, because
| a cloud provider will almost certainly only need a fraction
| of the electricity you'd need to keep the static files
| served.
|
| So, by doing that you've effectively reduced your absolute
| energy footprint.
|
| But these projects aren't about reducing your energy
| footprint. They're about having a local webserver that's
| running on solar energy. Or in the authors words: _At its
| heart, this project is about learning and contributing to a
| conversation on a greener, local-first future for the web_
| ericd wrote:
| Yeah, it's cool to just see what goes into it, and get a
| more intuitive understanding of the tradeoffs and what
| needs to be done to move more of this to green energy. It
| makes the (large) challenge of matching generation to
| consumption a whole lot more real. It's obviously not meant
| to be a maximized carbon reduction in any way commensurate
| to the effort.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| the grid is going to continue to get efficiency and renewable
| energy improvements that help at a much more massive scale.
|
| it's 1000x more helpful to just like only run your big
| appliances when your grid is using more renewables.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| Agreed. When I see this type of thing, I am always turned off
| by people describing it as "greener" or "more sustainable".
| Every small website having its own solar panel and hardware is
| not greener. People frequently think only of the carbon
| emissions of the energy used by the hardware once it's running,
| ignoring the carbon (and raw material) cost of building that
| hardware.
|
| Serving websites is an area where capitalism's promise of
| achieving efficiency of resource utilization through economic
| incentives probably actually works, via shared hardware.
|
| This is a hobby and aesthetic thing, which is valid and
| interesting.
|
| If anyone has some good data about carbon emissions of self-
| hosted vs shared hardware I'd love to see it.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| except all of this could be used hardware and panels. no need
| to buy new.
| Vegenoid wrote:
| "Used" doesn't magically wave away the carbon/resource cost
| of producing the hardware. Buying used hardware still
| stimulates demand for the production of new hardware,
| although to a lesser extent than buying new.
|
| Buying used also only works when not that many people are
| doing it. On an individual level, it is a good thing to do,
| but it isn't a solution. It does help foster an environment
| of maintaining and supporting hardware for longer, which is
| a better solution.
|
| I could envision a scenario where solar self-hosters
| replace hardware at a rate so much lower than than hosting
| companies that it outweighs the additional hardware it
| requires, but I don't think it is the current reality.
| cogman10 wrote:
| > People frequently think only of the carbon emissions of the
| energy used by the hardware once it's running, ignoring the
| carbon (and raw material) cost of building that hardware.
|
| The carbon is hard to account for in manufacturing. Solar,
| for example, is pretty close to being produced entirely with
| electric consumption and very little required CO2 output
| (except perhaps in the transport of silicon and other raw
| materials). The big energy draw for solar and battery is a
| kiln stage in both. Solar has to melt down the silicon which
| requires a high temperature furnace and batteries are
| basically "cooking" the raw materials onto their foil.
|
| The math for solar is something like 1 to 4 years of
| generation before it pays back the manufacturing power debt.
| Batteries tend to be much shorter as they take less energy in
| their manufacturing process (with some hopeful techniques in
| the future significantly reducing that number).
|
| Now, none of this is to contradict you, just putting the
| numbers out there. I completely agree that a server farm is
| likely to be far more efficient for hosting a website than
| home built solar powered pi. The CO2 emissions will be hard
| to beat, particularly if your cloud host resides in the PNW
| where power is nearly entirely renewable already.
| j45 wrote:
| That doesn't seem to make sense.
|
| Yeah, it's only a 50W solar panel. The solar power could be
| upgraded to a 400W no problem and the issue you have will no
| longer exist.
|
| Often people smart with a small system to get things figured
| out how they want it before adding more capacity. Seems
| reasonable, no?
|
| Networking equipment shouldn't be much power, speaking from
| personal experience.
|
| It can be on a small UPS, even one from Costco to run it all
| off battery, and then solar to refill.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| Come check out my solar site. it's hosted in my basement and I
| paid a premium to my utility company so my power comes from
| solar credits (xcel)
|
| It's be neat to have a digital ocean or equivalent that allows
| locating in data centers by energy source.
| elintknower wrote:
| This is cool, but I mean... come on. This guy lives in a $2M apt
| in a big city.
|
| The amount of energy being "saved" yearly is wasted almost every
| second.
| tomcam wrote:
| How does it help the discourse to bring this up? Would you like
| it if someone inserted this kind of (irrelevant) and
| unsubstantiated information when commenting on an article you
| wrote?
| genter wrote:
| I can't speak for his specific apartment, but apartments in
| general are more energy efficient that a suburban house. New
| York City is one of the lowest per capita CO2 emissions in the
| US.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| I can believe it either way, but some of that is because
| carbon-intensive industry will be based out of the city and
| its products imported in.
|
| I doubt there's a cement kiln, cattle farm or oil refinery
| within city limits.
| relaxing wrote:
| These figures are generally based on consumption rather
| than production for that reason. It's not helpful to credit
| emissions to the people who largely aren't driving the
| output.
|
| City living brings efficiencies from operating at scale -
| fewer miles by car, block of apartments instead of single
| family homes.
| rkwz wrote:
| The author clearly explains in the post:
|
| > When I started this solar-powered website project, I wasn't
| trying to revolutionize sustainable computing or drastically
| cut my electricity bill. I was driven by curiosity, a desire to
| have fun, and a hope that my journey might inspire others to
| explore local-first or solar-powered hosting.
|
| > The cost savings? Looking at our last electricity bill, we
| pay an average of $0.325 per kWh in Boston. This means the
| savings amount to $2.85 USD per year (8.76 kWh * $0.325/kWh =
| $2.85). Not exactly something to write home about.
| emdanielsen wrote:
| This is so cool! I'm so surprised I've never heard of someone
| doing this before :)
| mrweasel wrote:
| There was a project a while back, sadly it seems to have gone
| offline, it was a kosher news aggregator. They had the most
| interesting rules, like only charging the batteries on Tuesday.
| It was such a weird and interesting projects.
|
| Archive of the website:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20200707101320/https://jewjewjew....
| mbrizic wrote:
| I did something very similar a while back:
| https://mbrizic.com/blog/solarhosting/
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Cool project, but also a great all around tutorial - the appendix
| section is a nice idea and very helpful for many people I'm sure.
| anoth3rsmith wrote:
| How many more panels/bigger battery would your need to move the
| switch and other required home infra to run the site?
| kkfx wrote:
| I suggest a different reasoning: what's about domestic p.v. with
| storage and racks in the basement with "free" A/C in terms of WFH
| and distributed "datacenters"?
|
| How many have realized how much stuff can be hosted at home with
| availability levels not really far from most common datacenters?
| sdepablos wrote:
| Heavily inspired - I suppose - by the oldest (2018) solar-powered
| website, Low Tech Magazine
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website
| culi wrote:
| Obligatory post of the most well known solar website. Low Tech
| Magazine
|
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
|
| They do a lot of other sustainable web development[0] practices
| like letting you read offline, having incredibly small page sizes
| (always shown in the lower left corner), and dithering all their
| images[1] (which imo creates a cool effect)
|
| [0] https://sustainablewebdesign.org/
|
| [1] https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-
| website/#h...
| pluto_modadic wrote:
| controversial take: but I think it's fine to host stuff on your
| own machines, rather than the massive big-data hyperscale
| datacenters. Yes, google/cloudflare/AWS might be more efficient
| per watt, but I don't like giving them more money to continue to
| violate privacy/TOS/labor... (AI, kiwifarms, &, well, everything
| amazon does).
|
| No, it won't be the most efficient, but it's yours.
| imwillofficial wrote:
| This is such an incredibly cool site. Bravo.
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(page generated 2024-10-18 23:00 UTC)