Huy Nguyen, Author at Living Off the Grid: Free Yourself

Bitcoin Mining Off The Grid: Is Solar Power The Answer?

Some of the first big server farms devoted to bitcoin were located in the frozen wastes of Finland. Why? Because cooling costs are minimised when the servers are packed into below ground containers. But in general, the biggest thing holding back eco-enthusiasts who want to buy BTC, is how much
energy the mining uses. It is very environmentally unfriendly to get involved with crypto as it relies largely on fossil fuels.
However, that seems poised to change as the price of bitcoin has opened up the possibility to use renewables. With the value of Bitcoin soaring above $20,000 at the moment it means that there can be alternatives to mining. Solar power is not the most consistent in areas where the servers currency operate but that might not be enough to hold it back at this point. Even though we don’t love solar farms, this might provide a solution.

Let’s be honest. The driving force in bitcoin mining is not going to be trying to find a smaller carbon footprint, it will be the cost to mine the coins. Right now, since the computing power required to verify the transactions, also known as mining, is so great it costs a lot to operate.
The only way that switching to solar is going to be viable is if the price is right. There are two things that are working in favor of solar at the moment. One is the value of bitcoin these days. Well above $20,000 in value, it can absorb some higher energy costs and
still be worth mining.

This means that if they had to go somewhere like California to take over the mining energy required then it could still make sense. And farms could be constructed just for the mining operations so it is not going to add to the grid. It would be the same as installing a solar panel on your home to provide you with the energy that you need without needing to be part of the grid.
The other aspect is that solar energy is finally very inexpensive. If you wanted to mine bitcoin and invest in some of the computers you could do so with a good solar power set up if you live in the right part of the world.

Where it makes sense
There are a lot of sunny areas in the world where mining could theoretically take place. However, there are many logistical challenges and this is what is holding back the implementing of solar as the preferred way to power mining. One of which is the infrastructure required to provide the energy is generally lacking in many areas. Many countries in the equatorial region are developing and not ready to
provide a stable energy source.
The other issue is the heat itself. It uses almost as much energy to cool the servers as it does to mine …

January 18, 2019 No Comments

Land

Island mansion for sale

Engels and Volkers are featuring this amazing off-grid home on a private island near Vancouver, British Columbia. If the US $15 million price tag is a little out of your reach – search landbuddy.com for people and places where you can pool resources and go off-grid.

The 3,600-square-foot house sits on a 120 acre spread, and has three bedrooms and four full bathroom. There is a separate 3,300-square-foot guesthouse with three bedrooms. The nearest town is the logging town community, Campbell River.

Accessories on the private island include a boathouse, 94-foot dock and a private helipad. Goose Landing Lodge has an assortment of fresh water spots including creeks, ponds and a small private lake. There are meandering trails, service roads and groomed pathways through the property.

It is located on Stuart Island, one of the Discovery Islands, which lie between northern Vancouver Island and the British Columbia coast. It is privately owned, with no ferry access. Most visitors arrive by float plane, private boat or helicopter.

The parcel of land is lined with temperate old growth rainforest , along a kilometer of shoreline.

All of the materials were brought by barge to the property, except for the on-site rock that was used as part of the construction of the house.

“All of the timber framing in the house was from one massive tree on Malcolm Island” in British Columbia, said and Engels and Volkers spokesman.

“It’s all off the grid,” he added. “It’s fully self-sustainable,” with underground plumbing and wiring, a generator building, professional sized greenhouses and raised garden beds for year-round cultivation.

The main house, known as Goose Landing Lodge,is the only house on the private island, and has a wraparound deck and offers water and forest views from nearly every room. It has an open floor plan with exposed cedar beams, vaulted ceilings and a rich array of stonework.

The chef’s kitchen is bright and modern, with stainless steel appliances and granite counters. The adjacent dining room opens to the great room, which shares a striking stone-encased dual-sided fireplace with the family room.

…

September 25, 2018 No Comments

Energy

River mobile battery

Backup batteries? Got ’em. Mobile charging stations? Check. But I need a mobile battery that will keep my beer cold and charge my phone and laptop all day when I am in the field — my off-grid field that is.

River, by EcoFlow, checks all the boxes.

It’s not what you’d call practical, at least not in the sense that you can stow it in a pocket or backpack. After all, it’s about the size of a car battery and tips the scales at a whopping 11 pounds. But there’s no denying its utility. A single top-up takes about six hours via wall charger (or nine hours by car charger) and lasts a year. Once charged, River can supply a total of up to 500 watts to 11 devices simultaneously.

This mobile battery has a ridiculous number of ports. You’ll find two USB 2.0 Quick charge ports, two regular USB ports, two USB-C ports, two AC outlets, two DC outlets, and one 12V car port. The 114,000mAH battery is also smart enough to regulate voltage, giving each device precisely what it needs without going all Note 7 on us.

For the outdoorsman, there’s even a River foldable solar panel ($299) capable of fully charging the power supply in 10 to 15 hours (dependent on weather). It’s also water resistant with an IP63 certification. That’s not quite up to modern smartphone standards, but it can handle the occasional splash.

With a battery this reliable and any top quality solar panel I really can go for days without needing a Utility supply. I still need to be careful not to waste power – turn the laptop and phone off when not in use, but its a case of swings and roundabouts. The freedom is worth the extra hassle.…

January 29, 2018 No Comments

Energy

Never leave full batteries

I planned to install batteries to backup to the rooftop PV system and for years have had misleading advice from many sources. I always thought I could simply add a whole heap of batteries and then if there was a power outage I could switch to the batteries. But there are two reasons why this is not so. One is that in the event of an outage the system has to protect power workers who are fixing the lines.

another reason was explained by an electrician (Tom) from Caloundra who phoned and educated me on batteries for home use:

There are two types of systems, full off the grid where the mains power is cut from the home or a hybrid system where you remain connected to mains powers with batteries that charge from PV panels, and, when fully loaded the surplus is fed back into the mains grid.

The batteries then supply your night needs, if not enough DC to AC from batteries then I suppose the mains kick in.

Most suitable for those homes not supplied with reliable mains power like most regional rural properties.

Based on this information provided by a sparky on the Coast my idea of backup with crossover switching when power is off/on is not available but could be rigged, it is not an off the shelf system.

However, the advice is that maintaining a fully-charged battery that may not be used for months or over a year is not economical as all batteries require cycling.

Discharge then charge to get the maximum life from the battery.

Let’s say it cost $5000 to install a backup battery system that is not used for 18 months the battery by that time may have collapsed or does not hold its max capacity.

So my idea of auto-switching to the battery when grid power ceases and back when supply is resumed is doable, it is not recommended.

The alternative suggested to me is to have a crossover system for a 240v AC generator of about two or five kVa output that will allow me to use all appliances that I do not have.

So please keep in mind that batteries with PV are not recommended for suburban installation. Use a generator, it is cheaper and less hassle.

I hope this helps others who have been thinking of an outage backup battery system.…

July 6, 2017 No Comments

Energy

Govt warned must transform UK national grid

A new report from think tank Green Alliance warns that the UK Government needs to help the country’s power system catch up with the growth of electric vehicles and solar by transforming the UK national grid.

At present, the UK national grid is woefully prepared to meet the demand on the system by increasing solar power systems and electric vehicle takeup.

More consumers are choosing to buy small-scale renewable energy technologies according to the report, which warns that consequences of not upgrading the grid urgently could be disastrous. If no action is taken, just six electric cars charging in close proximity at peak time could overload the grid and disrupt the local power supply.

This in turn would provide ample ammunition for critics of renewable energy that want to see clean energy growth stopped in its tracks. At present, one in five of the UK’s local grids are unable to accept more distributed energy like rooftop solar. However, if the Government designs a smarter power system now, electric car batteries could store enough power to keep the UK’s lights on for 7 hours at a time by 2025, virtually eliminating blackouts, and distributed energy could save customers over £1.6 billion per year. Growth in clean energy development is moving increasingly fast.

By 2020 IKEA will be a net exporter of its own solar and wind energy, and the falling price of battery storage could soon allow UK households to operate off the UK national grid for months at a time.

The report predicts that the UK will reach a tipping point as soon as 2020, when government will lose the ability to control the speed of small scale energy deployment. Similar tipping points outside the UK have seen mixed responses: In Nevada, attempts to clampdown on rooftop solar’s effect on the local power system were met with ferocious consumer backlash, ultimately leading to a reversal of new less favourable tariffs and the grid administration being sacked. This should be a warning to the UK Government, but how much notice will it actually take? In California, smart EV charging infrastructure has been used to keep the lights on at peak times and given that 40 per cent of drivers would consider buying an EV, the UK should follow California’s lead.

Intervention needed

The report says four main government interventions are necessary to get the benefits of small scale energy:

*A new independent system designer should be employed to ensure small scale energy is well integrated.

*Distribution network operators (DNOs) should be transformed into distribution system operators to actively integrate EVs and solar in a smart network.

*Small scale technologies should be enabled to provide system flexibility, for instance through smart charging of EVs.

*Automation and aggregators should be adopted to make more flexible ‘time of use’ tariffs attractive to customers.

“The energy transition is unstoppable and will in part be …

April 18, 2017 No Comments

Water

Water from thin air

Scientists have created a device that can literally extract water from the air using solar power. Solar Water could revolutionise off-grid living which currently requires a natural water source to be viable – even if its just rain. This device could one day provide personalized water to those in areas affected by chronic drought.

Researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of California Berkeley published their findings in the journal Science on Thursday.

The invention can harvest water from the atmosphere in conditions where relative humidity is as low as 20 percent, which makes it potentially usable in many of the planet`s driest regions.

This is a major breakthrough in the long-standing challenge of harvesting water from the air at low humidity,said Omar Yaghi from Berkeley, who along with colleague Evelyn Wang from MIT created the revolutionary tech.

In order to harvest water, the system uses a specially designed material, a metal organic framework (MOF) designed by Yaghi over 20 years ago. By combining metals like magnesium or aluminium with organic molecules the MOF creates rigid, porous structures ideal for storing liquids and gases.

Essentially the system absorbs and traps air in nanometer sized pores. When sunlight is added, water molecules inside the trapped air get released and condensed into drinkable H2O. Using just 2.2 pounds (997g) of MOF the device can harvest 2.8 litres of water over a 12 hour period.

One vision for the future is to have a solar water device at home running on ambient solar for delivering water that satisfies the needs of a household, Yaghi told Berkeley news.

The ingenious device is not yet ready for commercial production but the scientists have big plans for their technology.

There is a lot of potential for scaling up the amount of water that is being harvested. It is just a matter of further engineering now, expressed Yaghi.

To have solar water running all the time, you could design a system that absorbs the humidity during the night and evolves it during the day, he said. Or design the solar collector to allow for this at a much faster rate, where more air is pushed in. We wanted to demonstrate that if you are cut off somewhere in the desert, you could survive because of this device. A person needs about a Coke can of water per day. That is something one could collect in less than an hour with this system.

There is no other way to do that right now, except by using extra energy. Your electric dehumidifier at home produces very expensive water, he added.

Wang echoed these statements; This solar water device offers a new way to harvest water from air that does not require high relative humidity conditions and is much more energy efficient than other existing technologies, the mechanical engineer said.

With an estimated 1 in 10 people …

April 18, 2017 No Comments

Solar

Solar sheds for sale

UNITY, Maine – 11 April – For Joas Hochstetler, manager of the Amish-owned Backyard Buildings, the idea of manufacturing a solar shed equipped with solar panels was always in the back of his mind.

After all, as part of their mission Hochstetler’s family and others in the Amish community that has settled in Unity use solar power technology in a variety of ways, from powering lights on their carriages to charging power tool batteries.

“Solar is pretty passive, there’s no moving parts, you don’t have to feed it, it doesn’t take gas,” Hochstetler said. “We’ve already made the decision to not be on the grid […] so the benefits of solar for us are just endless.”

Despite perceptions of Amish communities being wary of technology, off-grid solar power technology offers a way for those in the community to stay off of the mainstream power grid in a way that is minimally intrusive to their lifestyle. Hochstetler said that Amish people were some of the early adopters of solar.

So when Matt Wagner of Insource Renewables approached him in January about teaming up to produce a shed that was equipped with the same solar technology found on traditional roof-mounted systems, Hochstetler was sold. After all, the sheds he makes were already solar powered – in the sense that solar is his only power source.

“We’ve talked about it before but didn’t have a reputable company to collaborate with, or the solar expertise,” Hochstetler said. “I like the principle of solar, so I would gladly do work in a field that will generate more solar power for the state.”

For the last six years, Backyard Buildings has been manufacturing a wide range of portable structures including storage sheds of varying sizes, animal shelters and even small cabins. In some instances, Insource Renewables was contracted by customers of Hochstetler’s to install heat pumps in large sheds they’d purchased with the intention of using them as off-grid camps.

Wagner initially proposed the idea of just collaborating on installing heat pumps in some of the buildings before they were sold, and the idea quickly morphed into making storage-type structures with solar panels mounted on the roof.

For both parties, the opportunity to work with another local company to bring a new solar energy option to their customers was a boon. “What we found is we can basically deliver the same size solar array we would put on someone’s roof onto this solar [shed] building for about the same cost, and you get this great shed. It’s sort of a no brainer,” Wagner said.

With Insource Renewables bringing the solar expertise and Backyard Buildings bringing the construction know-how, prospective customers are able buy a shed that is outfitted with a solar array that can capture enough energy to power their entire home, as well as a soundly constructed shed that can serve a range of …

April 10, 2017 No Comments