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Harshad Sharma

Been 5 years I haven't had a mains line for electricity. Living off the sun in a location where it is cloudy most of the year is feasible if you can turn off power hungry devices when not needed or when it's been very overcast. This has become a habit now and I have no regrets.

Grateful for this exercise in being always aware of my power demands and what my environment can afford me.

Wow this really resonated with many!

For anyone considering this path, it's possible to provision enough panels and battery backup to not be constantly reminded of being off-grid, if your budget and geography allows, but I've come to appreciate the awareness towards weather that being completely dependent on the sun shining has brought into my daily life.

Thank you for the boosts and faves. I didn't think my posts could go this far. Fediverse rocks because you do!

Just got back from a lovely night ride to town (6pm to 11pm) and I'm probably too tired to compose thought-through, good enough replies. Will get around to that in the morning.

@hiway I keep thinking if we could see the cost of casual AI use, we’d be more careful—if we could become aware of the power demands, as you put it.

@kate it affords just enough convenience and novelty that I don't know if/when people with even consider it a problem.

And our compute tools that have been designed to be increasingly complex will only drive the demand for some semblance of assistance higher. Sigh.

@hiway Very much the same, here. I am dependent on a wind turbine in winter and on solar panels in summer; I have (rare) days when I have to turn everything off and use candles.

I don't regret it either; it feels real, and I feel in control.

@simon_brooke *hi5* on the realness of the experience! I can waste electricity if I want, but then I also have to bear the brunt of dead batteries :welp:

@hiway exactly. I enjoy playing computer games, but at this time of year running the big computer for an hour is about the same amount of electricity as I generate in twelve average hours, so really I can only play during storms.

And that's fine. When the weather isn't stormy, there's things I ought to be doing outside.

@hiway would be a lot harder here in the UK, but it's a good idea.

@UkeleleEric @hiway Not as hard as you might think. I'm in Shropshire and running off-grid for power. Things get a little tight at this time of year and I occasionally have to top-up the batteries off a generator.

In the summer I have more power than I know what to do with, the aircon keeps me nice and cool. In the cross seasons the aircon keeps me warm and in winter I run up the log burner.

I really agree that it "feels real", you have to adapt to power availability and that is good :)

@X31Andy @UkeleleEric I live in a place the British loved because the weather reminded them of home X-) it's always overcast and/or raining. Yet the panels capture enough power to keep me rolling.

@hiway @UkeleleEric Yeah, solar is an absolute game changer in so many ways but you have to be flexible in your use. Brings you closer to the real world.

I'm about 53 degrees north and with the seasonal weather see a seasonal variation of 7:1 in solar generation. Far more extreme than India. There are days I see less than 100WH per KW of solar array.

I'm not so sure about liking overcast and rain so much. We are currently in a third consecutive day of fog :(

@X31Andy @UkeleleEric I kinda like this (except for the solar power):

@X31Andy @hiway You're about the same amount north as us, so must have more panels. I agree fog is not useful, we have had the merest smidgen, not enough to carry our minimal base load the last few days.

@hiway @X31Andy yes, but your amount of solar, and angle, even on a cloudy day, will be better, because you're nearer to the equator. I'm in the North-east midlands, not London, and even that makes a difference.

@X31Andy @hiway living in urban Mansfield (so further North than many) with a moderate amount of panels (maximising one of the two possible roofs), a smallish storage battery and not much spare space, and still with a gas boiler, I can be self-sufficient on electricity for about half the year, and my daily-varying electric tariff means I am aware of the real cost of my grid usage. I also can switch the gas off earlier in the spring than I used to, as a sunny day means free electric heat.

@UkeleleEric Interesting, because we’re considering getting solar panels here (Derby). May I ask how many panels you have please? And what size battery? 🙏

@hiway what voltage is your normal way of distributing

@hiway Sounds great. We checked if we could use solar, there is really enough sun, even in winter, but as we are living in a basement appartment we have no space where to put the solar cells. Roof is no option, it is open to every one in the house and we cannot use parts of it just for our private use. I wanted at least one of these appliances for warm water by sun energy - don't ask me about the correct term - but, same problem. No space. City life!

@SusanneDoering when it is an option, it's a pretty neat one. Else we make do with what we have :D

@hiway Just completed our first year running a two-panel system.

I do love it, but admit a lot of mixed feelings.

Doing this 'right' is quite expensive, and especially in our lack of safety cutoffs, Im doing it very wrong.
Got the cheap charge controller that beats up our inverter on partly cloudy days.
Lead-acid batteries suck, but that's what we can get our hands on..

Don't get me wrong, it's all been worth it, but Ill probably be spending 2-3 times as much trying to double our capacity

@BlurryBitsPhoto true true, I feel the same some days - like today, after two days of very overcast weather, I had to shut down my home server etc :-P (I got the wiring done by a professional because I'm aware enough of what a bunch of batteries and DC voltage are capable of)

@hiway I presume this also requires battery storage?

@acm_redfox yes! Solar-only without batteries would be untenable because I often get to coding hobby software at night!

@hiway yeah, we have a net-metered solar setup, hooked into the city grid, and I sometimes wish we had batteries instead, especially when the local grid goes down.

@hiway that sounds awesome.. and scary. How much, if any, battery storage do you have?

@ab I have enough batteries (8x24v, total 4KVa divided into two redundant solar systems each powering one half of the house, with manual switchover if either fails) to help me through a couple very overcast days, provided I don't burn through the batteries with all devices on :-P

@hiway how far do you live from town? No worries, i'm mainly jealous. Just moved to Spain to live off grid. Been here about 3 months, but only had 1 day or riding.

@duncan71m I'm about 35km from town. It's a beautiful hill road.

How is Spain for motorcycling? Also, I got my bike here after I was here for 4 years X-) Should have done it sooner!

@hiway oh I got my bike here, but I got too much to do making the current house livable. We got 4 panels going, but the battery doesn't seem to charge enough. So we're still studying that. Working on the water supply and storage. Isolation, heating.
Bike is stored in a garage im renting in town. Im only 5 km from town. A gravel road gets me there. The road on my terrain is too unpleasant to ride by bike.
After the gravel road, it fantastic to ride here in Spain. Most places are quite enough.

@hiway roads are nicely smooth and curvy. Only thing I need to get used to that blocking a passage seems normal here.
I can choose straight highways and go up to 120km per hour or select the windey mountain roads. Both a great pleasure.

@duncan71m blocking passage - sounds familiar, it's a thing here as well X-) Highways sound awesome, we have 80kmph speed limits here, and it's okay because my old 350cc doesn't like higher speeds (vibrates a lot beyond 90).

The gravel last mile seems dodgy, mine is a kilometer of rutted dirt track, but I kinda like that now. Used to be a bit stressed getting out and then back to farm.

Hope you find time to ride out soon!

@TimWardCam @hiway
More than twice what I generated today. Not a great time of year...

@hiway that’s just awesome! We installed solar with that goal. But then my wife got a job that involves a 100 mile commute every day on our electric car 😬 That became a strain on our existing set of panels. Don’t have space on my roof for more. In Jan her company is moving to a new location which is more public transport-friendly and hopefully then… I can say the same next year 🤞🏾

@ram ah! All the best towards making the most out of the panels you have! Solar power and water heating was among the best decisions so far.