🇨🇦 tunetardis

I guess what fascinates me about solar is it seems to transcend traditional political left/right type ideology, and I think views towards it remain largely positive across the board. Am I wrong?

The same cannot be said about AI and data centres. Their domination of news cycles and public discourse likely stems from the negativity, while solar is less controversial. Doesn’t mean it’s not as important or relevant though.

I don’t think solarpunk has really coalesced into a singular movement or vision. Some may see it as a path to cleaner cities with less automobile dependence and a more community-building environment. Others may find its appeal in rural off-grid living.

I feel that at the moment, there are a few technological and policy-related obstacles which need to be overcome before any sort of solarpunk future can be realized, but once this happens, the transformation could come pretty quickly.

Looks like this paper on the topic was only released yesterday. It’s more focused on the practical issues of deploying PRC panels, where other papers I’ve read seem to discuss the tech in a lab setting that may or may not be scalable?

I’ve been fascinated by this concept of passive radiative cooling, where you have some material that radiates heat to space in an infrared window where the atmosphere is transparent. Apparently, a sheet of such material can be a fair bit cooler than the ambient temperature without any consumption of energy? It would not necessarily be an alternative to air-conditioning, but it could potentially reduce the energy costs quite a bit, while lowering the heat island effect in urban areas.

Please tell me the first guy was listening to Pink Floyd on that ride

I bought a Blutron P1500 recently after an hours long power outage left my wife and me unable to use our CPAPs. It cost about CAD$500 and has a capacity of 1.4 kwh. It has a number of 3-prong outlets and 100w usb-c and I think you can attach solar panels to it if you really want to do the off-grid thing? Since our CPAPs seem to top out at around 60w (the unit does display what your active power draw is), it should easily get us through a whole night if it comes to that.

I had looked into this sort of thing about maybe 5 years ago and the choices were either expensive or underwhelming, but was blown away how much the tech has improved since then! It can fully charge in only an hour or so off the mains, though it does sound like a microwave when it’s doing so. I guess that makes sense, since it’s drawing microwave-like amounts of power.

I’m not in California, but here in Ontario at least, they’ve largely phased out single use shopping bags. However, the recyclers don’t seem to want to deal with multi-use bags, which do eventually wear out. They just go straight to the landfill, while they are still willing to take the single-use ones. I get that less garbage volume in general is a good thing, but how could they not get this one thing right after the giant overhaul of supply chains and everything?

Your coworker is reaching out to you in his own way, and you are making his life more bearable than you may know. What seems a little bump in the road may be a mountain to him. But life’s a marathon, and he might come around yet.