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.
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
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.
Economies of scale make cloud more efficient for basic sites like this. It is like using street lights vs. every house putting out a few candles.
In addition we love the grid! We want it to get greener. Put the effort into making the grid energy zero carbon, low pollution while still highly available.
Furthermore using that solar to say charge your work laptop and then hosting the site in CF would net use less energy.
Not sure that’s true due to power losses over distance. Running your appliances off your own solar panels and not having to draw from the grid is probably more efficient in terms of energy generation.
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.
> 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.
If a small website reuses an old low-power computer that would otherwise go to e-waste, it makes things more sustainable. If it's about buying the newest and greatest RPi, it doesn't.
BTW same is true for solar panels. Second-hand solar panels, with remaining efficiency of 70%-90% of the original rating, are really cheap. It's a perfect thing to reuse for a "greener hosting" hobby project.
> Serving websites is an area where capitalism’s promise of achieving efficiency of resource utilization through economic incentives probably actually works, via shared hardware.
Most of the environmental impact happens at the building of hardware, so putting even more websites in datacenter only increases environmental impact. All Capitalism has done here is completely forget that impact by telling you it's ok to do always more.
What we collectively need to do is not find a better tech, it's reduce the total amount of tech we use, and that starts with questioning our actual uses. We don't need 24/7 available websites, 90% availability is more than enough. In fact, more sites should only target 90% availability, and if we were serious about tackling this we'd look towards 1. using old computers to the death because they still can and 2. doing more offline-first. Putting your website in a datacenter is exactly what the Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) warns about. Its environmental impact keeps exploding year after year and it's not with that mindset that we'll make a dent in it.
(Remember, the environment is not a resource, so Capitalism doesn't care about it)
Agreed, that's a fair criticism. The whole mindset needs to shift to actually become sustainable, and the mindset shift is more likely to happen by self-hosting with used hardware than abstracting away hardware to a datacenter.
I think a more likely way of changing usage patterns is by actually pricing carbon cost into energy production and manufacturing via taxes. The costs of things are only so low because we are borrowing from the future. I don't think a mindset shift will happen under capitalism without the monetary cost of things increasing. And I don't think capitalism will change unless by collapsing, at which point we're too late anyway, and would come with much human suffering. I don't believe that capitalism is fundamentally broken, but I do believe that unchecked capitalism is. Regulation and taxes are required to manage its negative tendencies.
I still don't think capitalism will help in solving this issue, if only because putting a cost on the environment will always be fought against and never integrated: there is no interest in this. And I also don't think that a strong State will implement strong checks on capitalism, if only because States are inherently dominated by capitalist powers.
If we want to take it into consideration, we have to take the matter in our own hands, away from the State, away from capitalistic interests.
"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.
It reliability waves away the costs of producing hardware for this particular project.
The second-hand computer and second-hand panels have already been produced for someone else, their cost is sunk. But their value can continue with this project, or end with the hardware and panels going to a dumping ground.
Again, no it does not. When someone buys a new RPi, it was already made. The cost of making it was already sunk. Buying it gives the company that made it more money, and encourages them to make more.
If you buy a used RPi, it gives money to someone who buys new computers, and encourages them to buy more. It stimulates demand for the production of hardware, just like buying new stimulates the production of new hardware, even though the hardware you bought had already been built.
Yes, it is to a much lesser extent than buying new, but it certainly isn’t zero. And again, it only works on a small individual level.
It is a good thing to do, but it does not zero out the cost of producing (or running) the hardware.
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.
Am I missing the joke here? Clue me in. Cloudflare isn't a host to my understanding. You can't upload files to it and serve them. At least, not on the free tier.
It’s hilarious because vedmed said “ You can't upload files to it and serve them. At least, not on the free tier.” but that is EXACTLY how cloudflare pages’ free tier works lol
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-...
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.
I bet using bamboo for power generation might be more clean that coal, especially if we turn the bamboo into coke first.
Granted I doubt you could "farm" bamboo like trees or other plant. Given how fast section species of bamboo can grow, which is a big benefit in this hypothetical, you would probably need a ton of water and no matter how nutrient rich the soil is you'd probably deplete the soil after a few harvests.
Shame considering how fast growing and dense bamboo is.
The resulting ash would contain the vast majority of the extracted minerals. Throw in some kitchen scraps to replenish nitrogen and you'd probably be self sustaining at a reasonable hobbyist scale.
Cool project and I’d really like to try something similar with a 4G/5G connection so it doesn’t rely on site WiFi.
I don’t think your cost comparison is fair between the rpi and hosting. I host my website on a £1/mo shared vps and for my energy costs that equivalent to running a low power server at home, ignoring all the other benefits of it being off-site.
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 :-)
> In contrast, traditional hosting might cost around $20 USD a month
Hosting that is vastly more powerful than a RPI in the first place. And there are much cheaper VPS that costs only a dozen dollars a year, too, and can do a lot more than this rpi. No matter how you look at it this is not saving any money.
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)
No, they used a Lithium IRON battery. LiFePO₄ literally means Lithium Iron Phosphate. These batteries are safer, more thermally stable, and have a longer cycle life compared to typical Lithium-Ion (LiCoO₂) batteries. However, LiFePO₄ has a lower energy density, meaning less capacity for the same size and weight.
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?
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.
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.
> 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.
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?
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.
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?
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
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.
Yes it is not a contradiction here.
Economies of scale make cloud more efficient for basic sites like this. It is like using street lights vs. every house putting out a few candles.
In addition we love the grid! We want it to get greener. Put the effort into making the grid energy zero carbon, low pollution while still highly available.
Furthermore using that solar to say charge your work laptop and then hosting the site in CF would net use less energy.
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.
Not sure that’s true due to power losses over distance. Running your appliances off your own solar panels and not having to draw from the grid is probably more efficient in terms of energy generation.
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.
> 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.
If a small website reuses an old low-power computer that would otherwise go to e-waste, it makes things more sustainable. If it's about buying the newest and greatest RPi, it doesn't.
BTW same is true for solar panels. Second-hand solar panels, with remaining efficiency of 70%-90% of the original rating, are really cheap. It's a perfect thing to reuse for a "greener hosting" hobby project.
> Serving websites is an area where capitalism’s promise of achieving efficiency of resource utilization through economic incentives probably actually works, via shared hardware.
Most of the environmental impact happens at the building of hardware, so putting even more websites in datacenter only increases environmental impact. All Capitalism has done here is completely forget that impact by telling you it's ok to do always more.
What we collectively need to do is not find a better tech, it's reduce the total amount of tech we use, and that starts with questioning our actual uses. We don't need 24/7 available websites, 90% availability is more than enough. In fact, more sites should only target 90% availability, and if we were serious about tackling this we'd look towards 1. using old computers to the death because they still can and 2. doing more offline-first. Putting your website in a datacenter is exactly what the Jevons Paradox (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox) warns about. Its environmental impact keeps exploding year after year and it's not with that mindset that we'll make a dent in it.
(Remember, the environment is not a resource, so Capitalism doesn't care about it)
Agreed, that's a fair criticism. The whole mindset needs to shift to actually become sustainable, and the mindset shift is more likely to happen by self-hosting with used hardware than abstracting away hardware to a datacenter.
I think a more likely way of changing usage patterns is by actually pricing carbon cost into energy production and manufacturing via taxes. The costs of things are only so low because we are borrowing from the future. I don't think a mindset shift will happen under capitalism without the monetary cost of things increasing. And I don't think capitalism will change unless by collapsing, at which point we're too late anyway, and would come with much human suffering. I don't believe that capitalism is fundamentally broken, but I do believe that unchecked capitalism is. Regulation and taxes are required to manage its negative tendencies.
I still don't think capitalism will help in solving this issue, if only because putting a cost on the environment will always be fought against and never integrated: there is no interest in this. And I also don't think that a strong State will implement strong checks on capitalism, if only because States are inherently dominated by capitalist powers.
If we want to take it into consideration, we have to take the matter in our own hands, away from the State, away from capitalistic interests.
except all of this could be used hardware and panels. no need to buy new.
"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.
It reliability waves away the costs of producing hardware for this particular project.
The second-hand computer and second-hand panels have already been produced for someone else, their cost is sunk. But their value can continue with this project, or end with the hardware and panels going to a dumping ground.
Again, no it does not. When someone buys a new RPi, it was already made. The cost of making it was already sunk. Buying it gives the company that made it more money, and encourages them to make more.
If you buy a used RPi, it gives money to someone who buys new computers, and encourages them to buy more. It stimulates demand for the production of hardware, just like buying new stimulates the production of new hardware, even though the hardware you bought had already been built.
Yes, it is to a much lesser extent than buying new, but it certainly isn’t zero. And again, it only works on a small individual level.
It is a good thing to do, but it does not zero out the cost of producing (or running) the hardware.
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.
Have you heard of https://meshtastic.org/ ?
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.
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!
Is this the same page that had the background effect indicating level of the battery?
My guess is that you're thinking of https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/
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.
You wouldn't be giving cloudflare any money to host it with them.
Am I missing the joke here? Clue me in. Cloudflare isn't a host to my understanding. You can't upload files to it and serve them. At least, not on the free tier.
I think the joke was Cloudflare has a generous free tier that covers a lot of ground, sp your bill will be zero. Most hobbyists won’t hit the limit.
Yes you can.
It’s hilarious because vedmed said “ You can't upload files to it and serve them. At least, not on the free tier.” but that is EXACTLY how cloudflare pages’ free tier works lol
So they'd violate your privacy and re-centralize the web for free ? That's not exactly a rebuttal
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-...
Heavily inspired - I suppose - by the oldest (2018) solar-powered website, Low Tech Magazine https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-solar-website
This is so cool! I'm so surprised I've never heard of someone doing this before :)
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....
I did something very similar a while back: https://mbrizic.com/blog/solarhosting/
What did you use to differentiate green from (I'm guessing) blue links when it's down?
Each color is a different build running on a different server. And then a load balancer picks which server you'll end up on.
Code-wise, the only difference between the builds is the CSS setting the link color.
Great job. I was thinking about it too, but stopped on the networking.
Would be so cool, if networking could also be kinda "self-hosted" and "free", like mesh-networks, or satellites, or smth.
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.
You can get self healing solar power if you grow bamboo and use the resulting charcoal for fuel. Carbon neutral I guess.
I bet using bamboo for power generation might be more clean that coal, especially if we turn the bamboo into coke first.
Granted I doubt you could "farm" bamboo like trees or other plant. Given how fast section species of bamboo can grow, which is a big benefit in this hypothetical, you would probably need a ton of water and no matter how nutrient rich the soil is you'd probably deplete the soil after a few harvests.
Shame considering how fast growing and dense bamboo is.
The resulting ash would contain the vast majority of the extracted minerals. Throw in some kitchen scraps to replenish nitrogen and you'd probably be self sustaining at a reasonable hobbyist scale.
Cool project and I’d really like to try something similar with a 4G/5G connection so it doesn’t rely on site WiFi.
I don’t think your cost comparison is fair between the rpi and hosting. I host my website on a £1/mo shared vps and for my energy costs that equivalent to running a low power server at home, ignoring all the other benefits of it being off-site.
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 :-)
> In contrast, traditional hosting might cost around $20 USD a month
Hosting that is vastly more powerful than a RPI in the first place. And there are much cheaper VPS that costs only a dozen dollars a year, too, and can do a lot more than this rpi. No matter how you look at it this is not saving any money.
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...
How many more panels/bigger battery would your need to move the switch and other required home infra to run the site?
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.
> Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP or LiFePO4) battery
This should be "Lithium Ion Phosphate...", right?
No, they used a Lithium IRON battery. LiFePO₄ literally means Lithium Iron Phosphate. These batteries are safer, more thermally stable, and have a longer cycle life compared to typical Lithium-Ion (LiCoO₂) batteries. However, LiFePO₄ has a lower energy density, meaning less capacity for the same size and weight.
Fe is for iron here
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?
This is such an incredibly cool site. Bravo.
this is really neat.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Will the hardware last long enough to recoup the cost? Probably not.
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?