Solarpunk technology

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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.

Airships and hydroponic farms...

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Kuza Freezers has been running for three years and has delivered more than 350 machines to customers, including fish traders, poultry and milk vendors and ice salespeople.

Each freezer comes with a battery that can be charged using a solar panel.

A two-hour charge means up to 7 hours of operating time

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This week on Electrek’s Wheel-E podcast, we discuss the most popular news stories from the world of electric bikes and other nontraditional...

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Colani is pretty interesting from a design standpoint. The biomimicry in his designs can be a sister to art nouveau and very reminiscent of Moebius. I think Colani is definitely a touch point for Solarpunk art.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/6839374

Fad or relevant?

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Thought of you fine folks when I came across this article on aussie.zone

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Southern Nevada is in the grip of one of the worst droughts it has experienced in recorded history, leading to water shortages and restrictions on use. So, in water-stressed areas such as this, the prospect of wringing water from thin air is an appealing prospect. And it is exactly what Cody Friesen is trying to do.

Friesen, an associate professor of materials science at Arizona State University, has developed a solar-powered hydropanel that can absorb water vapour at high volumes when exposed to sunlight.

It is a modern-day twist on an approach been used for centuries to pull water from the atmosphere, such as using trees or nets to "catch" fog in Peru, a practice that dates back to the 1500s and is still being used today.

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Solar panels have traditionally been made with silicon, over which China has had majority market control. Eager to limit China's stranglehold over the solar market, countries have been searching for a different way to harness the sun. Now, Japanese engineers "believe they have found one in a type of solar cell that looks and feels like camera film," according to The Wall Street Journal. The new cell uses perovskite, a crystalline structure formed by minerals that convert sunlight into electricity. The perovskite cell was invented by Japanese scientist and Toin University of Yokohama professor Tsutomu Miyasaka. Iodine is the key element used to manufacture the solar film, of which Japan is the world's second largest producer.

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There are two priorities I keep in mind, when thinking about collapse-time technologies.

  • Maintenance complexity, especially in long-run context.
  • Shortening the supply chain.

When it comes to electric power generation and various types of generators, I am very reluctant to accept generators based on rare-earth magnets. First, they are "bloody metals" indeed, mined and refined with extreme hurt to the planet and people. Second, their delivery chain is long and quite centralised which makes them possibly unavailable in case of disruption of the logistic system. While we wait for the US-sponsored program to develop alternative materials, still we can explore two avenues of research:

  • magnets recycling
  • generator constructions that does not need such magnets.

The recycling topic deserves separate consideration, in respect to a hypothesis of the "scavengers civilisation" as the next stage of human history. Meanwhile, we can have a closer look at constructions, using much more sustainable ceramic (aka ferrite) magnets, or no magnets at all.

If we can develop a "DIY" technology to make ceramic magnets, we can combine it with designs from 19th and early 20th Century and create alter-futurist line of more collapse-friendly electricity generators.

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/6192905

Amybo is a non-profit open source community project working on protein fermentation in an effort to reduce the carbon intensity of food production, as well as improve climate resilience as things like crop failures become more common.

The project is currently focussed on the low-cost distributed science aspect, but their website says they want biotechnologists, chefs, coders, creatives, engineers, enthusiasts, environmentalists, makers, medics, microbiologists, and nutritionists. So basically... Just lots of people.

They're still in the early stages but looks like a fun project to get involved in.

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Anyone into pattern language, to be applied to increase community resilience and preparedness?

There is a multitude of sources, providing technical knowledge and solutions to various needs in the spirit of low-tech, appropriate technology and resilience. Appropedia is surely the most renowned of them, accumulating information from many valuable collections.

However, typically for a wiki, the structure of this vault is more suitable for studying, than for direct implementation.

Let us assume the following scenario:

We plan to build technical infrastructure for a small settlement, located on a particular patch of land. We are moderately tech-capable. We can read and understand a documentation; we can implement it, with some adjustments. But we have no knowledge nor experience broad enough to deep-dive into a wiki and find solutions suitable for our specific situation.

We need a tool to help us somehow connect our context with searching criteria, and to select matching solutions, or at least to shortlist them.

First step toward this goal is to build a structure - a pattern language - starting from various needs to fulfill, and showing logical combinations of technical solutions to be applied.

Based upon such structure, we can try to build guidelines helping to make the whole process of selection semi-automated, with enough space for human consideration and variety of contexts. Using such a guide would lower the threshold both for selection and decision-taking process, and for education, allowing users to grow their knowledge and competences.

Do you know any such initiative being in progress? Or abandoned, that could be revived? Or maybe you would like to co-develop it?

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I've really enjoyed reading about people's ideas for solarpunk cities over the last few months, and even making some designs of my own while working on my photobashes.

I really like how pedestrianized streets look, and I enjoy the art of streets that have been reclaimed by forests, bike paths, and gardens, etc.

One thing I keep wondering about, and which has kept me from doing more extreme designs of my own, is firefighting and other emergency services.

Where I am, firefighters and ambulance crews are heavily dependent on their specialized vehicles, and the ability to drive directly to the site of the emergency, whether that's so they can quickly carry someone out on a stretcher and immediately start treatment, or so they can deploy ladder trucks for rescue, or spray down the fire.

A lot of the scenes I've seen, and honestly probably my own most recent one, would probably interfere with modern day firefighters at the very least.

So basically I'm wondering, are there solutions to this I don't know about? Are these tasks already done differently in some other parts of the world? I know people can cary ladders and hoses can probably be hooked to hydrants, but they added the trucks for a reason right? Or are there future solutions for city buildings that aren't very accessible by vehicle? (I'm from a rural area where if your house wasn't accessible enough the plan was basically to just watch it burn down while getting scolded by a firefighter, if they could even find it in the first place).

Or would solarpunk cities just have to require a certain amount of vehicle-capable street access per building, not just for emergency services but so disabled and elderly people can get around, or for transporting heavy items?

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Ancient technology, but not so different from modern capsule hotels 😅

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I guess we all kinda knew that, but it's always nice to have a study backing your opinions.

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According to MIT, this technology works even at small scale, with one the size of a suitcase able to desalinate 6 litres per hour, and only needing to be serviced every few years.

Here's a video detailing how it works.

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