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The Internet

This Solar-Powered, 'Low Tech' Website Goes Offline When It's Cloudy (vice.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Every website and product connected to the internet would not be able to exist without a vast network of wireless routers, fiber optic cables running underground and underwater, and data centers that house the servers which bring the internet to life. Data centers in the U.S. alone eat up 70 billion kilowatts of energy per year, according to a 2016 estimate from the Department of Energy -- that's 1.8 percent of all energy use across the country.

The internet is not ethereal, and a new project from the blog Low-Tech Magazine aims to make that issue more tangible. Low-Tech Magazine -- a blog operated by Kris De Decker that has run on Wordpress since 2007 -- launched a "Low-Tech," solar version of the site that's designed from the ground-up to use as little energy as possible. (Check out the solar version of the site here.) In a Skype call with Motherboard, De Decker said that he doesn't think people don't care about how much energy it takes they use the internet, they just don't understand the extent of the problem. "There's this idea that the internet is immaterial, it's somewhere floating in clouds," he said. "Of course, it's a very material thing that uses resources, materials, energy -- and quite a lot actually."
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This Solar-Powered, 'Low Tech' Website Goes Offline When It's Cloudy More

This Solar-Powered, 'Low Tech' Website Goes Offline When It's Cloudy

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  • Why turn it on at all? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dlleigh ( 313922 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @01:49PM (#57412072)

    Wouldn't leaving it off truly use as little energy as possible?

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by urusan ( 1755332 )

      Well, then how are you going to tell the Internet about how much energy they're using?

    • That's not the argument, although they're not very bright: these are off-grid types of folks who don't understand things like storage overhead versus transmission overhead for overgeneration.

      They've got an article about going off-grid with CAES [lowtechmagazine.com] that both assumes off-grid is a great idea and claims CAES is only 50% efficient (adiabatic systems are above 75% and predicted to mature to above 90%, even though theoretical limit is 100%).

      These are preppers.

      • claims CAES is only 50% efficient (adiabatic systems are above 75% and predicted to mature to above 90%, even though theoretical limit is 100%).

        A home-brew CAES rig is not going to be adiabatic. Adiabatic compression over a daily cycle requires scale (and insulation).

        50% is about the best that Bubba is going to get. He should stick with batteries.

        • Yeah but here's the quote:

          Unfortunately, large-scale CAES plants are very energy inefficient. Compressing and decompressing air introduces energy losses, resulting in an electric-to-electric efficiency of only 40-52%, compared to 70-85% for pumped hydropower plants, and 70-90% for chemical batteries.

          They claim large-scale CAES is inefficient.

          Then: they heavily advocate small-scale CAES for being way more efficient than batteries.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jzanu ( 668651 )
        Good catch. The submission attempts to use this against renewable energy, but the truth is what you point out here: the operation is amateur and intentionally omits crucial components of a reliable renewable energy system.
    • Yes. Optimizing one variable is always tremendously easy. But that's not what they were trying to do. The article is worth a read.

    • Wouldn't leaving it off truly use as little energy as possible?

      Why not add a battery and keep it running all the time? Solar panels are cheap, so are batteries these days.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      Use it or lose it!

  • 70 billion kilowatts is not an amount of energy (Score:3)

    by FeelGood314 ( 2516288 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @02:03PM (#57412168)
    It's power.

    Did you mean 70 billion kilowatt hours?
  • As backup. Or have wind mill's to also contribute to the power used. Dumb as dirt, both as an article. And the idiots that tried designing something like this.

  • This can be very real... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Strider- ( 39683 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @02:11PM (#57412212)

    So I work with a non-profit that is off the grid. As with any organization in the modern era, we have become extremely dependent on IT systems to conduct our day to day business. For our system, which is a campus network spread out over about 20 buildings, the electrical load is approximately 3.5 kilowatts or so. The trouble is that we're off grid, with our own private hydro-electric power plant. In the winter months, the output of our plant can drop as low as 30 to 40kw, meaning that the IT infrastructure is consuming upwards of 10% of the total output of our electrical system.

    Now, we look at that power as an investment of sorts, as it allows us to use some pretty sophisticated load management systems to better make use of our limited resources. We've also put the gear into spaces that need to be kept from freezing in the winter, so the waste heat contributes to that, rather than running heaters.

    But yes, the internet isn't free (electrically).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ichijo ( 607641 )
      That's pretty neat. Another example of making the same energy do two things at once is using a heat pump to heat something and cool something else at the same time, like this [techcrunch.com] or this [google.com].

      • It's far more efficient to make hot water "on demand" with a tankless heater, rather than have a hot tank of water sitting somewhere (and gradually releasing its heat back into your cool home).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Ichijo ( 607641 )

          Except that heat pump water heaters are two to three times as energy-efficient as resistive heaters, and if you can run a refrigerator or air conditioner on the waste cold, you'll save energy that way also.

          But you're partially right, in a very cold climate, a tankless heater can be more efficient.

  • Energy versus Power (Score:4, Insightful)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @02:12PM (#57412220) Journal

    Data centers in the U.S. alone eat up 70 billion kilowatts of energy per year, according to a 2016 estimate from the Department of Energy -- that's 1.8 percent of all energy use across the country

    Goddammit! I see this conflation of energy in power in the mainstream press all the feakin' time. Kilowatts is not a unit of energy! It's a unit of power (energy consumption over time). If a reporter doesn't know the difference, and doesn't realize that the different is really important, then I can't trust that any of the rest of their reporting is worth my time.

    However, since they couldn't be bothered to do even a modicum of technical checking, I will help fill in the blanks. There are two ways to interpret this statement:

    1. They are actually talking about power, in which case "energy per year" is not logical

      Data centers in the U.S. alone eat up 70 billion kilowatts of power, according to a 2016 estimate from the Department of Energy -- that's 1.8 percent of all power use across the country

    2. or, they are actually talking about energy, in which case the unit should be kilowatt-hours

      Data centers in the U.S. alone eat up 70 billion kilowatt-hours of energy per year, according to a 2016 estimate from the Department of Energy -- that's 1.8 percent of all energy use across the country

    In the first case, they would be talking about 70 terawatts of power, and that being 1.8% of the US consumption. This is absurd: the average energy consumption of the U.S. is only a few terawatts.

    In the second case, they would be talking about 70 terawatt-hours of energy, implying a total consumption in the U.S.of about 3888 TWh. This is in line with recent statistics for U.S. [wikipedia.org] electricity consumption. However, electricity consumption is not the same as total energy consumption, where one also has to consider energy for heating, transportation, industrial processes, etc.

    So, the reporter is talking about energy, not power. He or she doesn't know the correct units, and conflates electrical consumption with total energy consumption. In short, the reporter is sloppy as all get out with their information. No wonder we can't have a proper debate about energy in this country - no one knows what the hell they're talking about.

    • You can complain all you want, but that won't change rule zero of journalism school:

      Rule 0: When you discuss energy, power or electric potential, you WILL NOT use the correct physical dimensions.

      Ever.

      Violation of this rule will result in automatic expulsion.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by asylumx ( 881307 )
      Sorry I don't have any mod points but thank you for the extra information, it's very helpful.
    • yep, people are dumb. it is like people saying something weighs 30 Kilograms. No, it has a weight, but it MASSES 30 Kilograms because a kilogram is a unit of mass, not weight.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Falos ( 2905315 )

      I was upset after two words.

      It's not my fault that every site, service, and app (entities independent to form factor, browser, or OS) out there has a (arguably rational) motive to track and log every button, icon, and link you even look at. It's also not my fault the planet is riddled with streamers.

      Take that bullshit away, and the energy cost of "the internet" as a backbone, an infrastructure, is a less sensational topic.

      To be explicit: Don't conflate that other crap as what it takes to keep my internets o

    • It makes it really easy to pick out the people who have no clue what they're talking about, and have based their conclusions on idealized beliefs rather than solid engineering data. I concentrate on educating listeners about the difference between power and energy, so they can pick these people out and ignore them like I do. Don't correct the shills and snake oil salesmen - let them continue to make the error.

  • Strange design, not per CEI specs (Score:3)

    by WillAffleckUW ( 858324 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @02:22PM (#57412276) Homepage Journal

    Look, if you just used Clean Energy Institute (CEI) specs, you'd have a fully powered green energy website, entirely powered by solar, and excess solar energy stored either in modern batteries (70-80 pct) or compressed air storage (80-90 pct).

    No reason for it to go offline during a cloudy day. Heck, the CEI is literally located in a fairly cloudy and rainy city, Seattle, and we get 70-80 percent energy from our solar arrays on cloudy/rainy days, so you must be doing something wrong.

  • What's funny is, they could save even more power by simply using tinypng.com! :) I was able to reduce the file size of the png by 2k

  • "Welcome to Live Eclipse Watch online. The event will start in 3...2...1... ^ ~#m ` [NO CARRIER]

  • If more websites went offline once in a while.

  • But if they really want low-tech, why aren't they using VAWT? If you have the tech to build a bycycle and generator, you have VAWT, which is a hell of a lot more than you can say fr solar....

  • These guys are so so stupid.

    ~800Mhz dual core Android, 512Mb RAM, Busybox. Apache, PHP, MySQL, FTP).

    ~£150 waterproof outdoor solar charger + £70 residual backup battery, will last you days if the panels get broke or it rains.

    A few USB charging cables. Need never go down unless the infrastucture does (and if it's powered when the infrastructure dies, mute point - mains wouldn't help at that point.

    Throw a Samsung Galaxy Tab S in there as a development workstation and bookshelf, and you

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