The availability of a website depends, explained in the most basic way possible, on the availability of the server where your data is hosted. In the case of this website, it is a server that runs on solar energy and which is found on the balcony of its creator’s house in Barcelona.
The site in question is solar.lowtechmagazine.com, an alternative version of the digital Low-Tech Magazine, a website that specializes in exploring the potential of the knowledge and technologies of the past when combined with modern technology to design a society. sustainable. To apply what they preach, they decided to create a version of your website that consumes very, very little energy.
“This site will go offline during long periods of bad weather”
The web is a much simpler “low-tech” version of the original site, which covers all the basic needs and is governed by the principles of the original project. To reduce the energy consumption they use they opted for a basic design, it is a static website instead of a more modern website with a database-dependent content manager.
In addition to this, they use various tricks to reduce energy consumption well below that of an average website, from applying default fonts, interposing images, to offline reading options, etc. Low resource requirements and open design help keep the blog accessible to visitors with older computers and / or less reliable Internet connections.
By consuming so little power, this website can run on a minicomputer with the processing power of a mobile phone. It requires between 1 and 2.5 watts of power, supplied by a small off-grid solar photovoltaic system on the balcony of the author’s house. As is common in off-grid renewable energy systems, energy storage is limited. This means that the website will go offline during long periods of cloudy weather.
The website has a complete section intended to display live data on current energy supply, demand and storage. Basically, it is a page where you can see how much battery the server has left, a weather forecast for the next few days, the amount of time it has been online, etc. The site functions as a battery meter, designed to always show the relationship between the energy that powers the website and the visitor traffic that consumes it.
At Low-Tech Magazine they think it’s important question the blind belief in technological progress, and talk about the potential of the knowledge and technologies of the past, which are very often forgotten.
They believe that designing a more sustainable society can take advantage of many of the exciting possibilities that arise when old technologies are combined with new knowledge and materials, or when old concepts and traditional knowledge are applied to modern technology.
This website is an example of this.