• DuncanIdaho@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What we need is guerrilla solar and wind feeding the grid. Fuck the energy companies and their fossil fuels.

    I look at every lamp post here in the UK and wonder why they dont have solar like this up there. It wouldnt be too hard to install micro renewables, 100w of solar is pretty small. 200w of wind is a little bigger. But over the course of a day it would generate >1kwh of extra energy.

    Then there are what are called vampire devices. I do wonder how many people turn off their TV, microwave, computer when they’re not using it? They may be up to 10w each, and on their own it doesnt seem like a problem. But when you add every phone charger, and other device thats left on standby into the equation, from all of a country even as small as the UK we’re talking Megawatts of wasted resources. Every day. I’ve lost the link now, but a couple of newspapers did surveys and found most people left devices like this.

    • DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      Maximum standby power draw is already required to be lower than 1W for non-networked devices in the EU. My entire house has an idle consumption of ~150W (incl. fridge/freezer). I know that seems like a lot when every household uses that, but effort/reward-wise, this is not a very efficient place to optimize. Regulating industry is a much better place with significantly higher potential savings.

      • DuncanIdaho@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        No. We have to do both. Absolutely industry has to decarbonise - but its a hell of a lot easier to deal with the small contributors to atmospheric carbon, and rather negligent to avoid doing these things ourselves. We as individuals still add up to 25% of carbon across the world. Our driving, our devices, the food and things we buy and consume… And yes it is hard.

        • DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          Yes our total power consumption is up to 25%, our idle consumption is a negligible part of that 25%, and absolutely dwarfed by our active consumption. If you want to make a difference, start working on reducing your active power consumption instead, that’s where our best contributions towards lower energy usage can be done.

          By targeting the idle consumption specifically, you’re penny pinching to make yourself feel better without doing an effort.

    • credit crazy@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’d imagine animal rights activists would be pretty against the use of gorillas to make different devices solar capabilities

    • gens@programming.dev
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      1 year ago

      It’s better for them to ne on the grid instead of each having their own panel and battery. It’s more efficient material-vise, and they would still need to be connected to the grid.

      I’d put panels on all roofs, though.

      • DuncanIdaho@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’d still have them on roofing. Might just be easy to deal with a council and expand the system across a town or city. On homes people tend to have to buy the panels themselves (£8-20k for a system), then they individually have to negotiate with their energy supplier - who can deny them the option of connecting to grid.

    • lostferret@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Guerilla solar will not & cannot take off. Community solar, however, yes. A “power co-op” where communities / towns / neighborhoods can pool power gen, storage, and use. Forming a small grid of their own that sips from the larger grid if needed.

      Vampire devices are largely irrelevant, but always worth knowing which of your devices draws power. My 3d printer just sitting, but on, draws 10w. Off, it draws <1w or lower. My unplugged phone charger? Less than 0.1w. Is this larger than 0? Yep, is it enough to matter, no, not really. Being extremely pessimistic, we can say that all powered off devices plugged in vamp about 1w of power. At worst, my whole house would waste about 30wH. Over a day, that’s 720wH. A week is 5kwH, 20kwH/month, 241kwH a year. An average home for my homes size & area uses 12,632 kwh/year.

      Now, we put this a slightly more realistic scenario where most unused devices vamp between 0.4-0.1 (avg 0.2w), and 241kwH/yr -> 48kwH/year, or about 0.3% of my average household consumption.

      All that said, know what your devices pull. unplug or turn off the that are “big spenders” when idle. I turn off my printer and unplug TVs that rarely get used. Power strips help for things like stereo or home theater systems.

      • DuncanIdaho@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Point I was making is that vampire devices have a cumulative effect over a population. Yes, you personally are not much energy, but add it up over the population and its still unneeded carbon into the atmosphere. Yeah it wont save us money, but its something along the way to a bigger effort (eg mixing with walking or cycling instead of driving).