This website has 81% battery power remaining (solar.lowtechmagazine.com)

Article summary

The website Low-tech Magazine runs on a solar-powered server located in Barcelona, which will go offline during periods of bad weather. The website displays live data on power supply, demand, and energy storage, and its background color changes based on the battery's voltage. The server uses a 30W solar panel and a 168Wh lead-acid battery, and its power consumption is relatively low. The website's power usage and sustainability are closely monitored and reported.

Main themes

• sustainable hosting
• power efficiency
• Linux vs Apple
• solar power
• web server software
• energy storage
• green technology

What commenters say

• The website's power consumption is impressive, especially considering it is handling a large amount of traffic from being on the front page of Hacker News.
• Some commenters are skeptical about the claim that Apple's CI process would prevent a 25% increase in power usage, and would like to see evidence to support this claim.
• The discussion highlights the inefficiency of modern website hosting, with many servers using significantly more power than necessary.
• There are differing opinions on whether Linux is behind Apple in terms of power efficiency, with some arguing that Linux has to support a much wider range of hardware configurations.
• Some commenters suggest that the website's use of a solar-powered server is a great example of sustainable hosting, and that more websites should consider using similar setups.
• The choice of web server software, such as nginx or redbean, may have an impact on power consumption, but it is unlikely to make a significant difference.
• The Linux kernel's power usage has increased over time due to various changes, including Spectre/Meltdown mitigations and scheduler changes.