Angel Woods

Just to add some more things I learned since making my last post, in defense of food and more.

Vitamins were discovered in 1912. For all of the rest of human history, people would look at you weird if you said you were deficient in Vitamin A.

Moreover, RDI stands for recommended daily intake and that doesn't account for nutrients that can pile up in your body. Some RDIs might be too low.

As far as I know, at least in the US, supplements are way less regulated than food. There was a scandal about melatonin pills having way too much or no melatonin at all, for example. (Tip: you can drink tart cherry juice instead)

If you need supplements, get freeze dried foods in supplements. Freeze drying preserves most of the ingredients.

If you need a multi vitamin but hate the liver taste, you can get (or make, by getting empty pills, making the powder and filling them) freeze dried liver supplements.

If you need vitamin C and can't get it any other way, you might try freeze dried lemon powder.

One more thing to consider is sourcing of the ingredients, if they are not yours. Look for legit third party certifications, who owns the business, etc.

Packaging - Go for amber glass and metal lid. Avoid plastics and avoid clear bottles.

Eating is way more complex than just numbers. Food is not just ingredients. It's a complex organism and eating involves the experience of (hopefully) growing your own food, surely cooking it with your family and eating (chewing) together, but that concept does not drive sales because you can't market and make huge profits on beef or coconut.

To make it clear: what you are referring to as a Lithium battery is very generic. It's like calling any salad having any amount of tomato a tomato salad.

There are many, many different battery chemistries that contain lithium. The most energy dense ones are Nickel-Cobalt-Managanese (NCM) and those are usually used in electric cars.

LiFePO4 are safer and last longer. They are used in some newer electric cars.

LTO (Lithium-Titanate) are also safe and last extremely long.

Saying "lithium batteries aren't safe" is like saying "tomato salads aren't safe" because you can put poison in a tomato salad or because you ate 1000 salads in a day (a comparison with overcharging)

Have you heard of the "SureChill Technology"? It's a patented fridge marketed mostly for vaccines but also for unreliable (or off grid) electricity. The way I understand it works is it has a closed-loop water system inside which gets cooled at the top. And since water is heaviest at 4C, it goes down. While the warmer water goes up and gets cooled again because of the ice. But it's also highly insulated so that it stays cool for multiple days without power. My goal is to eliminate an electric battery for the fridge altogether. The ice at the top would be the battery.

Their off-grid marketed one claims 73 hours power free operation at 32C (89F) outside temperature with temperature range inside between 5C and 12C (41-54F). The biggest vaccine marketed one is a combined fridge-freezer and claims 283 hours (11+ days) of power free operation at 43C (109F) outside while keeping the inside 2C to 8C. Uses 2x275W solar panels at 24V, directly connected and needs about 2kWh per day so about 2 and half hours of sun per day. 14L of freezer and 58L of fridge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sure_Chill_Technology

A video from the media:



And also their website: https://surechill.com/home-small-business/off-grid/

I wonder if this is possible as a DIY solution and if such solutions exist? First because I can't see prices on the website or where it's sold and second because a top door fridge would be way way more efficient.

This is very dependent on the lifestyle you live and probably your genetics and how accurate the science is.

Science

There is conflicting evidence. There probably is conflicting evidence for most things nutrition related and you should always keep in mind that the "consensus" if there is any, changes. Remember that they were advertising kids with cigarettes and doctors were recommending them to pregnant women.

Furthermore, a lot of science is made because there are incentives for publishing studies and isn't really done to help people. Or some of it is paid for, in secret.

Do you believe cholesterol is bad or good? There have been recorded cases of people eating 20-30 eggs per day with no ill effects. It's also needed for producing testosterone in men and estrogen in women.

Do you believe carbohydrates are good? What about fats? There are essential amino acids (proteins) and essential fatty acids but no essential carbohydrates. Do you think you are able to get all the nutrients if you don't eat meat or if you don't eat any animal products?

What about the degrading soil quality (see attached picture in German for decrease in nutrients in vegetables/fruits) and also the feed that animals get? Feeding chicken carrots and chili peppers makes their egg yolks more red. Some people falsely equate Vitamin A with beta-carotene which is what is contained in carrots. It's a provitamin which means it might be converted to Vitamin A. Some people believe that's not possible for humans to convert all of it so they can't get enough Vitamin A from non-animal products. Vitamin A is also a fat-soluble vitamin so it's better absorbed with taken with fat. Feeding cows grass vs feeding them corn changes the quality of the food.

What about saturated fats? Some fats are very bad when heated above certain temperatures (olive oil).

Fasting is another interesting topic when it comes to nutrition. As far as I know, it has many benefits and is practiced by Christians (although adapted from no food for 40 days to no animal products for 40 days and other fasts), in Islam (no food/drinking from sunrise to sunset, only allowed at night for around a month) and in Judaism. I do believe it helps, regardless of religion as it lets your body rest and puts it in a little bit of stress so that it's prepared for bigger stress, if the need arises. It also eats away the bad cells in a process called autophagy.

A lot of studies are done on rats/other animals (most of the time, the same type of = same breed of) and although they might be similar to us, that still does not paint the full picture of a complex human body. You can't feed a herbivore like a rabbit meat and make the conclusion that humans (generally accepted as omnivores) will also react the same way. Mice develop faster so it's not safe to assume that feeding them something for 30 days and getting a reaction means that feeding humans something for 30 days makes the same result.

A lot of studies do not record all the data needed to make a proper conclusion. "People that ate more x food, were more likely to get cancer". Were those people also smokers, not exercising, heavy drinkers, poorly sleeping? Intentionally or maliciously, this might not be recorded. A headline like "High fat diet causes depression" does not show the full story. Were they eating highly processed fast food and candy or avocados? These are compounding variables and making the conclusion that certain ingredient by itself is good or bad is probably not a good idea. Carbohydrates raise insuling (fat storing hormone) so it's probably not good to combine it with fats in the same meal. Or maybe you think it's good. Point is, things are interconnected. (see the attached picture for interconnections between minerals)

A lot of studies might make the conclusions that because wine contains resveratrol (a phenol that was advertised for it's anti-aging effects) then wine has anti-aging effects. But the truth is that the amount contained in wine is so little that you need to drink 1000 bottles of wine per day to get the effects.

A lot of studies use self reported data with questions such as "How many times did you eat broccoli in the past 6 months?". Even if no intentional malice, it's understandable that you won't be accurate in your estimation.

A lot of the conclusions from studies end up making generic conclusions, even though they might only apply to men or women, or certain ages, certain climate, etc. Are you sweating more? Then you probably need more salt.

And more.

Genetics

Are you predisposed to some diseases? Are you lactose-intolerant? Then maybe you need calcium from elsewhere.

Like mentioned earlier, some people can more easily digest beta-carotene from carrots than others.

And a lot more.

Lifestyle

Do you live in Spain and spend most days outside? Then you probably don't need Vitamin D.

Do you live in Norway and work a desk job to which you travel with a car and only go out on weekends? Then you probably need Vitamin D, which is one of the hardest to get from food.

Are you happy?

Are you underslept? Then you might want to go for caffeine as a supplement but a better way would be to improve your sleep timing and quality.

Is the air you are breathing clean?

And more.

Conclusion

It's understandable to overwhelmed with all of that and to not want to spend 12 hours a day reading studies.

We should rely on whole foods (orange juice IS NOT the same as a whole orange) as much as possible and ones that are fed/grown in a proper way. There are (almost 100% sure) nutrients that we need that we are not aware of yet or that are not studied or discovered.

There was a scandal around this company about them false advertising and that you are not the real owner of that plot of land, just a paper. Although the gift is funny and the tree planting is cool, it's important to note it's not a real title.

Jeremy VanGelder wrote:Welcome to Permies, Angel.

Have you looked into the single board computers like the Raspberry Pi and such? My friends at Ameridroid distribute them from a number of companies and they all have a ton of computing power when compared to their electricity needs. Ordoid H3

When Low-Tech Magazine built their Solar Powered Website they used a single board computer.

Hi Jeremy,

I follow Low Tech Magazine and have read a lot of their articles. What they have for their website is a bit of a different use case, it's mostly used to deliver files (images, code) to the user, while a general purpose computer would do more.

I've looked into SBCs, in fact, the last one I posted in this thread, the Rockchip one is an SBC.

The website you linked is interesting indeed, but I am from Europe, just updated my location. And the device - ODROID - is interesting too but it uses more power overall and also the power adapter is 15V/4A which is not ideal.

Hardware

Another Mini PC I found is the Station M3 https://www.stationpc.com/product/stationm3

It uses an ARM CPU (Rockchip 3588S) that's about as powerful as a modern Android smartphone CPU (Snapdragon 888). Has WiFi, Bluetooth and Ethernet. Has HDMI 2.1 and DisplayPort 1.4.

It supports 4 to 16GB of RAM and has support for both NVMe and SATA SSDs

The interesting thing here is the power consumption.
Idle: ≈0.42W (12V/35mA)
Typical: ≈3W (12V/250mA)
Max: ≈14.4W (12V/1200mA)

The power supply is also 12V DC which is nice and 1.5A (18W) and up is recommended with 2A (24W) included in the box.

Price starts from $264 for 4GB/64GB eMMC up to $539 for 16GB/256GB eMMC + 512GB SSD at https://www.firefly.store/goods.php?id=171 (couldn't find it anywhere else but it has to be available elsewhere too)

I think for that CPU, expectations should be lower but I really like how low of a consumption it has. There are not much reviews of it online, sadly.

Hi permies,

I am looking for ideas for an energy optimized secure healthy permanent computing device(s).

General resource I've found interesting: https://permacomputing.net

Things I've thought about:

Hardware

CPU or processor

Generally, newer CPUs are more energy efficient for the performance they provide.
This chart ranks CPUs based on typical TDP reported by the manufacturer related to the performance they measured: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/power_performance.html

GPU

Whatever is integrated in the CPU, additional or external ones require a lot of energy.

Storage: HDD vs SATA SSD vs NVME SSD.

SSDs are generally regarded as better when it comes to energy and also performance. I've found conflicting evidence regarding whether SATA or M.2 NVME are more energy efficient. Those are usually rated at idle, average, peak read and peak write.

RAM or memory

There is almost no information online regarding specific usage, everybody says it's negligible. I've only found claiming around 3W peak for 1 stick of 8 GB.

Power supply

Those usually have low efficiencies under low load (as bad as 50%). I've seen picoPSU suggested.

With all components, there are idle states and not all CPUs support all idle states.

One other option is to go the prebuilt route like for example this miniPC from ASRock https://www.asrockind.com/en-gb/4X4 BOX-5800U that only consumes total 6.7W at idle and the power supply is 90W so I assume at most 80W at peak. But then I am limited by what they offer. And a fan is one more thing to fail which I would rather avoid. I would however prefer my device to repairable if I need to repair it.

One other miniPC is the one from Starlabs https://nl.starlabs.systems/pages/byte which focuses on security and they provide an open warranty. It starts at ~€800 for 8GB / 240GB / a relative new and powerful CPU. It also only has 45W TDP and a 65W charger meaning it will burn less energy than the ASRock.

There are some other projects too but they seem more like enthusiast projects and not something that has been tested for a long time or is price competitive:
This one is more focused on being open hardware and easy to repair. But it starts at €1099 for only 4GB of RAM and an extremely slow CPU (for security reasons). A laptop also means I am limited to (or paying twice, if I use other) using their screen, keyboard. It adds more batteries which decreases the efficiency of the whole system + one more thing to fail.


Or the balthazar https://balthazar.space/wiki/Balthazar which I am not sure even exists, it seems more like an idea and experimentation, correct me if I am wrong.

Screen
I believe for health reasons, it's better to use a non-backlit screen.

Electrophoretic displays or more commonly known with their brand name E-ink are the first thing that came to my mind. They look paper like and are used on e-readers if you've seen one of those. The downside is clear - most are black/white only and the refresh rate is very slow.

Big advantage they have is that they require power only when updating. Such display will continue displaying the last thing when the power is off.

One example is this one: https://www.waveshare.com/product/displays/e-paper/epaper-1/12.48inch-e-paper-module-b.htm

It's 12.5 inches, costs $180, has three colors and low power consumption. 82.5mW (0.0855W) when updating. However, it takes full 37 seconds to update. This is not suitable for general computing.

Another one from the same manufacturer is this one https://www.waveshare.com/10.3inch-e-Paper-HAT.htm

It's only 10 inches, costs $200 but updates in less than 1 second, requiring 1.2W during update. It only has gray colors.

Both are more barebones displays with no frame that require other things to connect them.

These displays, of course, require an external light whether that's the sun or artificial.

One more general purpose is the DASUNG at https://dasung-tech.myshopify.com/products/dasung-25-3-e-ink-monitor-paperlike-253

This one is more general purpose as it has 20Hz refresh rate = 20 times per second, it has a stand, connectors, it's 25 inches and so on. It requires a 12V 3A supply so 36W, it probably uses less. But the 12V is nice as it pairs good with 12V battery systems. No colors but it has a front light so it can be used somewhat in the dark. However, it's $1899 discounted.

After all that, I learned about reflective LCD.

These again require light but are colored and are suitable for a lot of refreshes unlike e-ink.

The only real product I was able to find is the SunVision https://www.sunvisiondisplay.com/reflective-lcd-monitor and the newer one https://www.sunvisiondisplay.com/rE-Monitor

It's 60Hz which is standard for displays. It's quite big at 32 inches. Consumes less than 6W which is ideal. Uses 12V/3A which matches good with a 12V battery system. Cost is $1750 and $1950. New one looks more modern and has standard mounting holes.

Other peripherals
A keyboard with lighted keys is nice to have if using it in a darker places but lights on a mouse are a waste of energy. In one other thread I saw this video
where a heated keyboard and mouse are presented. I am not sure if those are off the shelf available but even if they are I doubt that real ergonomic keyboards are sold like that.

When I say a real ergonomic keyboard I am talking about a split keyboard that does not force your hands to form a triangle by being split and one that has keys that follow your finger lengths.



Obviously, wired keyboard and mouse are preferable compared to a wireless bluetooth or WiFi connected ones that have failing batteries that have to be replaced or recharged and require the main device to have bluetooth/WiFi on.

Software

Creating an operating system from scratch would be best case scenario but that has low return on invested time especially if creating it for myself. I would like go the Linux route as that's what I am using now and am comfortable with and it offers more choices.

When it comes to the software, I feel like it's important to mention to use an adblocker because in this day and age, the internet is filled with unnecessary ads that waste energy. No ads means more security too. Disabling JavaScript and/or images/videos is a more extreme approach but also possible.

The internet itself alongside everything required for it (a router if it's normal home routed internet, cables and/or WiFi, a SIM card connection if not routed, etc.) requires a lot of energy too. I would prefer to avoid it as much as possible and stick to downloaded offline content and generally doing stuff offline. I plan on not having any signal when I settle and only going to a place that has signal or internet when I need it.

In general, graphical software would waste more resources than terminal interface programs but those require more learning to use.

There are various alternatives that could be used like curl wttr.in to get the weather in your terminal instead of visiting a heavy page.

A window manager (like sway or i3) that's mainly managed through the keyboard when learned is more energy and time efficient to use compared to a desktop environment. One exception I found is IceWM which is a lightweight desktop environment.

An IMAP/SMTP client (whether terminal or graphical) would be better than a web email client.

A locally downloaded media would be better than online one.

There is the possibility to create software made to use specific sites in a lightweight way that would be offline first. For example, a program that lets you browse recipes from that one slow website. It also downloads them so next time you don't need internet to access them. Such software would be only energy efficient if used by more people as otherwise the time and energy spent on creating it will outweigh the energy saved from not using the real heavy website. It also require maintenance.

I will update this or make a reply if I think of something else.



Let me know your thoughts and ideas, I would be really happy to see other points of view.

Eric Hanson wrote:Brian,

Very interesting.  These might make great batteries for an off grid system.  Long life, lots of charge-discharge cycles and deep cycling are all highly important to an off grid application.

Don’t try to compare these with Lithium ion batteries though as these two battery technologies are really two different beasts.  A lithium ion battery is extremely lightweight, very power/energy dense has a limited number of charge-discharge cycles and cannot be discharged past about 35% or it just dies.  A lithium ion battery excels in lightweight, mobile applications.  The lithium titanate batteries will shine in fixed applications that require lots of charges and deep discharges.  While not great for a car, lithium titanate would be great for a house or cabin.

Very exciting topic, thanks for posting.

Eric

LTO batteries are lithium ion batteries. What you are referring to are likely lithium batteries that use Graphite as the anode. Those have high weight energy density (specific energy) at 260-300Wh/kg which makes them useful for portable devices. But they don't have high power density.

Lithium Titanate batteries have lower specific energy at 80-100Wh/kg. Weight is something that rarely matters in a stationary situation so they are good for that use case.

People in this thread have made the mistake of calculating cost per kWh which does not account for cycles where LTO excels at.

These are some calculations I made for batteries I found in a website that I don't have the links for.

Unknown: $900 / 1.024 kWh / 4000 cycles = ~0.22/kWh/cycle

Expensive EU warehoused A-grade LTO from Yinlong (without VAT): $90 / 0.103 kWh / 25000 cycles = ~0.035/kWh/cycle

LFP from Elerix: $4800 / 10.4 kWh / 6000 cycles = ~0.077/kWh/cycle

From the above, you can see that LTO comes out cheaper throughout it's life time when looking specifically at price, energy and cycles. And that's a price from a European seller for their grade-A cells. The grade-B cells are significantly cheaper at around $55 (before VAT) bringing the overall cost to ~0.021/kWh/cycle. You can get the price even lower if you find a good supplier from China.

There are other metrics that one might be interested in for a comparison like:

self-discharge rate

depth of discharge/usable capacity

charge and discharge efficiency

volumetric density (if you don't have space)

general lifespan regardless of cycles also known as shelf life

operating (for charge and discharge) and storage temperature

general safety features (fire, overcharge, short-circuit, overheating, crush, penetration)

etc.

You might care about recycling it too and the initial cost which is higher with LTO.

LTO excels at safety, it can be punctured and still function, unlike phone/laptop/electric car batteries.

It can be charged and discharged extremely fast (6C to 10C) which is called power density. Meaning that with a 100Wh battery, you can technically run a 1000W load for 6 minutes. Is this relevant for off grid storage? Maybe. I can think of a microwave or an oversized solar or other electricity generation source. For example, a 600W solar producing array can charge the before-mentioned battery in 10 minutes. Of course, it's recommended to charge and discharge slower as with all batteries to achieve the advertised lifespan but the possibility is there.

Wide range of operating and storing temperature from -45 to +65 celsius. That's relevant because you can keep them in an temperature unregulated room. Again, it's better to store them at room temperature.

And lastly, it doesn't require any ventilation unlike lead acid.

One less performing LTO battery from Elerix has published a datasheet of their tests. It's important to check those when buying a battery. They rate their 30Ah LTO battery for 16,000 cycles @ 1C/1C charge/discharge @ 25 celsius to reach 80% SOH (state of health or 80% of initial capacity). Similar to solar panels, it doesn't stop working after those cycles, just has less capacity. Increase the charge/discharge rates to shorten it's lifespan. Decreasing the rates will likely prolong the lifespan. Storing it at -20 celsius will likely shorten it. They also rate it at 30 years calendar life also called operating lifespan. The battery capacity is also rated at a certain charge/discharge time. This particular one is rated for 30Ah at 0.5C/0.5C. The real energy you get in and out will likely differ based on the rate you charge and discharge it at and other real life factors.

In my opinion, LTO and LFP are the superior choices when it comes to electric (there are non-electric ways to store energy) off grid storage.

There are more experimental options and their relative pros and cons that I've seen like zinc-bromite flow battery that has 100% usable capacity and can be left at 100% state of charge with no harm, has 36000+ cycles but only has 42Wh/kg or the salt water Aqueous Hybrid Ion battery that has no heavy metals, is non-explosive and non-flammable and reacts well to no usage over time but only has 3000 cycles at 70% depth of discharge and has operating temperature from -5 to +40. But those are not readily available as the rest are and their claims are not tested as much as the popular chemistries.