I feel like I always think of solar punk as a macro thing where a lot has to change but there are still smaller wins we can implement, what have you been doing?
Where goblincore swamp and solarpunk forest meet, where the sacred grove is being tended, the bog creature has been up to this:
- Lots of DIY food production. This year I’m probably at 50% home grown and home raised.
- Continuous learning and improving to work low tech as well as low energy input (short transport paths, few step processes) around house and garden.
- Recycle and reuse. Got no money anyways, great chance to learn how to reuse everything. My furniture is punk as fuck, most is self-build or recovered. Sewing machine shall be my powerful ally for making new clothes out of old ones.
- Small, smaller, still smaller, and very quiet. I practice degrowth as a spiritual practice. I try to notice and to consider my many non-human neighbours and consciously try to keep a tiny footprint and to do a slow and steady work instead of big interventions.
- I used to be more active in community work, but it’s not within my means and capabilities at the moment. Seeds I helped plant in the past are growing though, so that’s not lost and I will pick it up again in the future.
- Returning to joyful creative work. My spirit of creating had been fucked over for years by the power of the algorithm and I am rediscovering my true roars and whispers.
- Remain open to new ideas out there and try to keep a bit updated about what the youngsters do and want and like, to not become a fossil.
I don’t know if I’d really call these solar punk, but here’s a few things I’ve done.
My yard is clover, not grass. I barely mow it. I know it so little the city “politely” informs me when it’s time. (Pro tip: Don’t use red clover. Use white clover.) I also leave my leaves in place, the most I do is mow them to chop 'em up. The bees love the flowers. The lightning bugs seem to love it as well, I’ve noticed more. I attribute this to the leaves.
I replaced my water heater last year because it broke. It was electric. My new one is a heat pump. It’s cheaper to run. Plus, as a free side effect, it cools off and dehumidifies the basement. I’m not sure how much cooling and dehumidifying it really accomplishes, but I generally have a dehumidifier running down there anyways to help combat humidity.
First time I have heard of a heat pump water heater. Thank you for your post.
Besides gardening? I built a low-power, right-sized server out of an ancient phone. It draws around a watt of power, less when idle.
Any DIY links that you have found are useful for this (before I start re’searching’. )
I don’t have any handy “start to finish” guides for this. I suppose I should start a blog, or something :)
Basic steps:
- get a phone that can run PostmarketOS - https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices — it does not need to run it perfectly. Camera, cell modem, even screen are completely optional. It must charge and do WiFi, only.
- flash PostmarketOS on the phone. Get SSH access - if the screen doesn’t work, use USB ethernet emulation (during pmbootstrap init, choose USB mode = “developer”), log in, then
nmtuito enter your WiFi password. - optionally, reduce maximum battery charge/voltage, to prolong battery health. https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Battery_Voltage_Reduction
- hooray, now you have a server. Proceed setting up as if it were a VPS. It’s a variant of Alpine Linux - any Alpine guide will work fine, or you could use Docker or Podman.
Now this is something I haven’t done, but you could - hook it up to a solar panel. Rely on solar during the day, and on the phone battery until it lasts. Write a shell script / cronjob / systemd unit to suspend the phone when battery level gets low. It’ll get a wakeup event from hardware, when solar comes back (hopefully).
