this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Solarpunk technology

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Technology for a Solar-Punk future.

Airships and hydroponic farms...

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are ways of doing this passively that have been used for thousands of years already..

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A fact he mentions and compares against.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That's great, I never read the article I was being instinctively critical about capitalising ancient methods of free resources..

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago

A completely reasonable default response to this sort of thing, to be fair. This is just one of the few such things that aren't just "we've reinvented the standard dehumidifier for water collection purposes".

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (3 children)

20,000 Volts at what current? At some point, desalination becomes cheaper. Alsogetting electricity at dawn is hard because solar panels don't work.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

getting electricity at dawn is hard because solar panels don't work.

I suspect the fog might be an issue as well.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

i mean if you know anything about electicity it should be pretty clear that he's not putting that kind of power into this, desalination is REALLY energy intensive.

also it's kinda irrelevant since you can't desalinate water you don't have..

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago

I watched the video yesterday and it looks like he’s using wires that are no more than 18 gauge.

18 gauge wire can handle about a maximum of 14 amps, but I don’t think he was coming close to that. He was generating 35kV (I think - he had a few prototypes he gave stats for) off a battery pack.
I don’t really know the math, but it’s an inverse relationship if your power level is fixed. The battery pack can only deliver so much constant power, so it’s either high amps and low volts, or high volts and low amps. (Unless you put capacitors into the mix, but then it’s not constant power.)