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?
So far I’ve mostly changed how I do stuff, rather than what i do. Electric car instead of ICE Bike and train for commuting Solarpanels and 20kWh batteries for mist of my summer time energy needs.
At work I have more possibility to make a difference, though. So far I’ve had batteries introduced (solar was already norm) as an accessory to “our” buildings, I’ve gotten 2 thermal batteries (sand) built and are currently investigating building mounted small scale wind power. Among other things.
Could you please talk a little about the sand battery? What is that?
It is basically an isolated heat trap for excess electricity/heat during the summer to be used during winter. It is rather like ground heat except for a few notable differences:
The cons are obvious:
- Higher investment,
- More complicated
The pros:
- Doesn’t need as much power (higher heat output during winter),
- The community has a goal of using 100% of produced electricity on site (as that is most economical), but this allow us to utilize the entire roof for solar energy, which will be more economical in autumn/spring.
Cost wise, for the tenants, it’s no difference, as the lower running costs of the battery is predicted to out weight the extra cost of capital, but in an emergency the house will be much easier to keep light and warm. The plan is to fit the house with batterier and V2G EV-chargers.
I compost and dumpster dive to the point of weirdness at work. I’m trying to garden. I’ve got a bunch of chickens and a few goats. I take people in when they’re in bad situations. I’m trying to get solar and an EV. Sold my diesel pickup. (I really did need it for my last job. But not anymore.) Now I’m carless except for a work truck I’m not allowed to use for personal business. I do have an ebike. My career is in renewable energy.
Thank you for being a good person!
Let’s see…
- Ive got a bunch of small devices powered off USB battery banks that are solar rechargeable
- indoor and outdoor gardens, with sensors also powered by those little battery banks
- My kids do a bunch of sports throughout the year now, I bring my bike toolkit so I can help fixing bikes for the kids in their school that show up
- Sharing what we get from gardening with neighbors. Except potato. Potato is mine (seriously though, we go through them quick)
Nothing else I can think of off the top of my head
I like your mini bike repair service!
Its fun! And I show the kids and parents what I’m doing, which tools I need to do it, etc. Its mostly simple stuff too, like adjusting tension on a brake, set screw for the limit on the derailleur, or patching a tube and pointing out to not forget to check the tire before you put the tube back in. More annoying tubes (or if I’m out of patches) I pop into a small bin to patch later, I have a couple spares for 20" (kid size), including the ones I patched up since the last time.
I also really like that everyone kind of learns that these tubes are for everyone, you won’t necessarily get the same one back, and it really doesn’t matter because you’ve still got a working tire again. Good for the kids to learn that it doesn’t matter, and honestly good for some of the parents to learn that too.
Since I started doing it another dad has been learning too, and started doing the same thing. Though anything he’s not sure about he tells them to ask me.
Plus a really good way to meet a lot of the people in the area, I like doing it
Whatt it even inspired a copy-cat? That’s some wholesome community building and a good use of little league hours too
We were at the playground and one of the other parents asked me about my bike because my wife told her how much I liked bikes.
He said he’d need to ask me some questions because of a problem, I told him it was easy and described it and said I could bring my tools by (the playground is like two blocks from me, his house is like 4), and he got excited and asked if I knew what sizes he needed and that he would do it.
He just kind of got into it after fixing his son’s bike, bought a set of on the go tools to take with him when they all went for a ride, and he just… Kept going with it lol
So if I’m there doing my thing and another kid needs help he gets his tools out and helps too.
This community has always been really friendly, and I think things like the portable bike repair just adds onto it! I’m hoping to see more stuff like this happen, though I’m not sure what just yet.
We did see a few little libraries put in around town at the parks recently, and I’ve been chatting with others about natural lawns, so we’ll see where it goes next!
Potato IS Life! LoL
I do a lot more food related DIY stuff, like balcony gardening, food preservation (bought from local farmers directly), planning to grow mushrooms etc.
I bought a mushroom log last year that was sprouting so I harvested it. I haven’t got anything else from it since last spring. I’m bummed because I love mushrooms
Some mushrooms can be shocked into fruiting by dropping the log into a bucket of cold water for a few hours. Probably worth having a search to see if that’s relevant for the mushrooms you have.
Good idea!! I they grow in colder weather so I will have to wait. I think the log dried out maybe
Oh mushrooms, I wish I had time to get back to those!
Electrification is a big topic. But you can always start with little things like changing to an electric mower instead of a gasoline powered one. Community work is also important, but I honestly don’t know where to start…
May I share a post recently from our own slrpnk.net? @Pencilnoob shared a bunch of info about volunteering with local fire squads that I found really insightful! Turns out it’s not all about running into burning buildings c: https://slrpnk.net/post/40223075
I already had a professionally installed solar system on my roof, but the capacity isn’t great (12 years old) and adding to it isn’t feasible. I do have a pergola over my backyard patio, so I bought 4 new (and large) panels, an off-grid inverter, and 5kWh battery. I put the panels on the pergola, ran wiring into the garage, and hooked up the inverter and battery in there. I then wired one of my level 1 chargers to the inverter. I use it to help charge my cars. I try to plug the charger in during the day as much as we can to charge the cars directly, but the 5 kWh server rack battery is there to soak up electrons when the cars are in use.
I thought about skipping the server rack battery for a cheaper setup, but it’s been worth it considering how often a car isn’t available to charge directly. It’s not integrated into the house circuits, so no permit needed.
My wife’s family has property out in the forest (Navajo reservation) with a house that doesn’t have running water or power, so we’re going to start fixing it up for her mom to live there (she recently retired) and will be setting up an off-grid power solution and water system soon. We’ll have to haul water from the nearest chapter house, but there’s a program to provide and install a 1200 gallon storage tank underground that we’ll use. Probably augment that with a rainwater catchment setup. Maybe even start raising sheep again, no one in her family has used their grazing rights for years, since her grandmother passed away. My wife spent many summers at that property. Used to be summer only due to the snow and dirt roads, but thanks to global warming, it’s a viable year-round housing site now.
I already had a professionally installed solar system on my roof, but the capacity isn’t great (12 years old) and adding to it isn’t feasible. I do have a pergola over my backyard patio, so I bought 4 new (and large) panels, an off-grid inverter, and 5kWh battery. I put the panels on the pergola, ran wiring into the garage, and hooked up the inverter and battery in there. I then wired one of my level 1 chargers to the inverter. I use it to help charge my cars. I try to plug the charger in during the day as much as we can to charge the cars directly, but the 5 kWh server rack battery is there to soak up electrons when the cars are in use.
I thought about skipping the server rack battery for a cheaper setup, but it’s been worth it considering how often a car isn’t available to charge directly. It’s not integrated into the house circuits, so no permit needed.
My wife’s family has property out in the forest (Navajo reservation) with a house that doesn’t have running water or power, so we’re going to start fixing it up for her mom to live there (she recently retired) and will be setting up an off-grid power solution and water system soon. We’ll have to haul water from the nearest chapter house, but there’s a program to provide and install a 1200 gallon storage tank underground that we’ll use. Probably augment that with a rainwater catchment setup. Maybe even start raising sheep again, no one in her family has used their grazing rights for years, since her grandmother passed away. My wife spent many summers at that property. Used to be summer only due to the snow and dirt roads, but thanks to global warming, it’s a viable year-round housing site now.
I purchase as much of my produce as possible from a farm co-op
I try to walk for errands as much as possible rather than drive
I’m slowly learning basic electronics repair
I have a small hydroponic garden that just about meets my salad needs
Organic gardening including composting
Shop the Co-Op and Farmer’s Market - diet is mostly organic vegetarian
Ride Bikes
Drive an EV when needed + solar panels on the roof - It’s like riding on sunshine!
I avoid un-neccessary travel.
Enjoy “The Great Outdoors”
Connect with my like minded community (getting off corporate social media is a piece of this)
I’ve just come across the term Solar Punk in the past year or so. A lot of SP has been what I’ve felt was the best way to live harmoniously on the Earth. I’m still learning, and hope to continue.
All of this sounds great, especially +1 for avoiding unnecessary travel! A lot of people start to drive more once they get an EV, as it’s “more eco-friendly”, in the worst case creating a rebound-effect. It takes willpower and thoughtfulness not to fall into that behaviour
An EV is never going to be more efficient than a bike or walking. My EV’s mass is enormous compared to my bike or a pair of sneakers. I don’t know about willpower, for me, as bikes are so fun to ride.
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.
Love ALL of this! LoL, just starting to make friends in the GoblinCore. <3
I hear you on the joyful creative work. I am only recently starting to write again after all the energy and joy was sapped out of me by survival. Here’s to finding ourselves again <3
I ride a bike to work, compost, recycle, repair wherever possible, have a small solar panel array and battery bank with plans to expand, and grow some food. I also have a semi-wild yard (there’s some grass, but mostly it’s clovers and edible stuff) and am pretty big on nature in general.
- utility biking
- repairing stuff instead of throwing it out
- using stuff found on the curb that other people threw out (my wife rescued a $500 Kitchen Aid stand mixer the other day – it’s wild what people throw out around here!)
- DIY renovations with careful deconstruction so materials can be reused
Who throws out a kitchen aid mixer? That shit is expensive and fancy
It doesn’t run, but I haven’t dug into it yet to figure out what’s actually wrong with it. (First world problems: we’ve already got a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, so getting it working isn’t particularly urgent. This bowl-lift one would be a slight upgrade from our Artisan, though.)
Still, I’m pretty sure these things are a holdover from back when things were designed for repairability instead of planned obsolescence, so I have little doubt that it’s fixable for a lot less than the cost to replace it.
I know the motors are supposedly super high quality. I wouldn’t know how to fix one but I am sure it’s going to be worth the effort. Especially if you sell it as used afterwards
I was thinking of custom-painting it (like Alton Brown did to his mixer) and keeping it.
Even better
I looooove curb shopping. Ninety percent of my house is furnished with curb finds (the rest is thrifting finds)
About ten years ago, when I built my house, I decided that solar power would suffice. It did not - got a grid connection last year - but solar power is giving me the biggest part, so my grid connection is a laughable 3 x 6 amps. :)
Around 2009 or so, a fellow anarchist linked an ecological footprint calculator in a forum. I ran it, and found out that 60% of my footprint came from driving a lot (I don’t fly, except for flying drones), and most of that from buying fuel. So I built an electric moped-car. But I built it wrong and had to dismantle it, sell the metal for scrap and build another. It lasted a few years, then I was forced to switch to a temporary gas-powered microvan. When the microvan broke down, I spotted an auction: someone was selling an electric microcar which the social ministry had crashed. So I got it, managed to fix it, and finally I could produce my own fuel for driving. The road here has obviously been steep and littered with failed projects, but now I can even support other folks who drive that kind of stupidly made microcars, while I bide my time to build a proper electric moped-car.
I am working on the part of communications - not being a passive consumer but giving some and getting some in return. Found out that some folks have started experimenting with MeshCore and MeshTastic in my town, so I intend to join those nets and see if they’re usable for chatting with a friend.
I am also working on other kinds of communications (agile ultra wideband frequency hopping with SDR) but sadly, this is less solarpunk and more like miltech.
MeshCore and MeshTastic
Also check out Reticulum, while there.
I picked up an old used SFF (Small Form Factor) office PC a couple years ago to use as my daily driver instead of my gaming PC. Based on a Kill-o-watt power usage meter, my gaming PC would idle at around 40w, while the office PC (with a fairly power efficient i7-7700 and integrated graphics) idles at 10w, so 3x more efficient. Now I only ever boot up the gaming PC when I actually need its performance. As a side bonus, the DDR3 RAM it uses is still very affordable on the used market. It browses the web and plays videos really well, and even plays most games I’m interested in nowadays :)
I reduced power usage significantly by running a small e-ink monitor for reading/writing and office tasks. It uses so little energy that I can’t even notice a difference in the power meter.
Also, for the people that keep the pc on most of the time, you’re probably going to have the same overall experience if you activate auto suspend
Never thought to use an e-ink display as a monitor, great idea!
Also 100% worth using auto suspend :D
I was thinking I haven’t made much progress but writing it down, I have a few going right now.
- Purchased a used eletric car (With a new baby we couldn’t get by without one, but we are considering an e-cargo bike)
- Continue gardening and urban foraging skills
- Planted a large native garden in my front yard (Over 400 sq ft.)
- Continuing my herbalism practice for my own healthy and family (my lotions and salves are working great)
- Continue to purchase the majority of my child clothes used or second hand. Getting lots of things free
- Continue my practice to try to give things away instead of throwing them away
- Volunteer with a native lead oprganization doing prairie restoration. (I went to one of their interesting hands on demo on three sisters gardens and learned tons about drying food).
So I am making some progress but plently to go. I want to try to reduce my food waste but I haven’t gotten in the practice of saving or drying things when getting low.
Do you have any resources for the herbalism practice? That sounds extremely cool
Of course. I have done most of my learning via books and trial and error. The first book I got was The Healing Garden which is written by an herbalists who does an online classes which I haven’t done except the free ones. The book is beautiful and totally worth owning and will go over everything from organic herbal hardening, wildcrafting best practices, creating medicines and species highlights. Most books have the same categories as well.
I also recommend anything and everything by Rosemary Gladstar. She is a giant in the field and has lots of small densely packed books. I have her Medicinal Herbs and Herbal Healing for me both of which are great. Her herbal healing for men is the only men specific herbalism book I’ve seen.
If you need to buy herbs see if you have a local shop. They are usually listed as metaphysical stores which contains Tarot decks, crystals etc. some are good for herbs and some are bad. You will have to check them out yourself. Online Mountain Rose Herbs is amazing. Be careful elsewhere because some online shops are sketchy and are not giving you good herbs or worst of all something completely different. The best is growing it yourself or buying high quality culinary herbs. (A lot of culinary herbs have medicinal qualities usually at higher doses but can still be part of a dish).
All the books have more resources and there’s tons of ways to go. All the books are modern Western herbalists which combine multiple historical traditions which is typical. But you can deep dive into specific traditions as well (Chinese medicine, ayurvedic, traditional European herbs, indigenous etc.). Follow the references.
The only watch out I will give you is this. A herbalist should never use only essential oils for treatments. That is a scam and usually a MLM. Full plants are preferred and essential oils are usually just used for smells. Second, they should be a supplement to standard Western medicine and not a replacement. It covers gaps within that system (chronic issues, preventative medicine, quality of life, etc.) and should still be used. Most herbalists think of that as hero medicine for the big things while herbs do the rest.
Have fun!!!
If you’ve got a young’n:
- Go cloth diapers over disposable most the time. We went woth a diaper servce to start, then bought our own once we had it figured out.
- For the ebike: we waited until kiddo was old enough for a bike seat (10 mo in our case, but ~12 mo) for the ebike. This let us get a longtail that is cheaper, mechanically simpler, and we can store inside instead of a bucket style bike
It takes something like 500 years for a store bought disposable diaper to decompose in a landfill, and we use billions of them every year.
If one can use cloth, I say one should.
We did use some disposables throughout (mostly for logistical reasons) but we still saved 5,000+ diapers fron landfill.
Our daughter is 10 months so we’re just starting looking for bikes. I was thinking about getting a long tail because that’s what people around us seem to be using.
I know cloth diapers are better for the environment I just can’t.
Cloth diapers can definitely be hard if you dont have on-site laundry. We were lucky enough to live somewhere with a diaper service when we didn’t have laundry.
We have on site laundry but I already do so much laundry.
I’d like to tell you it gets better…
With laundry? Or everything? Let me keep the surprise
