<story><title>We are now Solar Powered</title><url>https://www.andrewjvpowell.com/articles/we-are-solar-powered</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>Not directly related to solar-powered-servers, but rather power-involved-in-computing ... I have a solar powered van (not the engine, alas), and it has been amazing to understand how a day of my kind of computing (edit&amp;#x2F;compile&amp;#x2F;debug cycle with C++) uses more power than the 12VDC refridgerator in the van. The computer is a small custom built direct-to-12VDC miniITX with an i5 processor.&lt;p&gt;The refridgerator literally has directly observable physical effects on the world - chilled wine! - and yet it uses less power than a device doing symbolic operations all day.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nostrademons</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve got a PowerWall and the Tesla app (which shows up-to-the-second readouts of your home&amp;#x27;s production &amp;amp; consumption), and it was shocking how little energy refrigerators and freezers use.  Apparently it&amp;#x27;s because they&amp;#x27;re extremely well insulated; the compressor only needs to go on to adjust to &lt;i&gt;changes&lt;/i&gt; in temperature, and if you don&amp;#x27;t open the door the temperature won&amp;#x27;t change much.&lt;p&gt;There were a bunch of other surprises as well.  The baseline load of my house is only about 200W (which seemed shockingly low to me, since I was raised in the era of 100W light bulbs), and it includes every laptop, tablet, phone, and battery charger that&amp;#x27;s plugged in; refrigerator and chest freezer; TVs and home entertainment on standby; nightlights and other small lamps we leave on; clocks &amp;amp; alarms; and everything else that&amp;#x27;s running continuously.  Our gas heating system, however, uses 500W when on; apparently the blower is electric, and twice as much of a current draw as the rest of the baseline load.  During the winter this is our biggest electricity expense, despite being &amp;quot;gas&amp;quot;. 
 Dishwashers and washing machines are basically rounding error.  Household appliances like vacuum cleaners are also surprisingly low-current.  Anything with a heating element is a huge draw though (1-2kW), and that includes clothes dryers, electric thermos, Instapot, microwave, oven, and toaster oven.  I can tell when my wife is preparing lunch by looking at the Tesla app.&lt;p&gt;If there&amp;#x27;s one thing you can do to save energy, it&amp;#x27;s probably to dry your clothes on a rack outside rather than the clothes dryer.  We&amp;#x27;ve got young kids so we do a lot of laundry, but in summertime probably 2&amp;#x2F;3 of our total energy usage goes to the clothes dryer, and in winter it&amp;#x27;s split between that and the gas heating.</text></comment>
<story><title>We are now Solar Powered</title><url>https://www.andrewjvpowell.com/articles/we-are-solar-powered</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>PaulDavisThe1st</author><text>Not directly related to solar-powered-servers, but rather power-involved-in-computing ... I have a solar powered van (not the engine, alas), and it has been amazing to understand how a day of my kind of computing (edit&amp;#x2F;compile&amp;#x2F;debug cycle with C++) uses more power than the 12VDC refridgerator in the van. The computer is a small custom built direct-to-12VDC miniITX with an i5 processor.&lt;p&gt;The refridgerator literally has directly observable physical effects on the world - chilled wine! - and yet it uses less power than a device doing symbolic operations all day.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>forty</author><text>Your computer heats air, which is a observable physical effect, though an unintended one ;)</text></comment>