《The Good Crash: An Oral History of the Post-Scarcity Collapse》41. THE ENERGY FARMER

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THE ENERGY FARMER

"I was a big 'sustainable living' guy before it was easy," he says. "Now, though, it's not really even a choice. If you've got a functioning brain stem and a sense of right and wrong, you gotta be able to get down to total sustainability."

So, the math is actually simple.

Regular-sized reps run at right around 1.2 kilowatts, basically the same amount of energy required to run a microwave.

Assume you run your rep for 30 minutes per day. That's about 60 rep jobs, given a 30-second print time. You'd only be using up about 600 watts, or 0.6 kilowatt-hours, of energy per day. Something like 37.2 kilowatt-hours per month. Not too bad.

Before the collapse—before the reps—the average American household was using something like 900 kilowatt-hours per month. Bumping up your usage to 940 or 950 kilowatt-hours is not a huge change, in percentage terms.

Okay, so then let's say you get your hands on a brand-new, six kilowatt, 400 square foot solar panel array. The newest and best model. Remember, now, just about everybody has at least 400 square feet on their roof. A lot more, even. And depending on the weather, a system of that size will generate somewhere between 420 and 1,020 kilowatt-hours per month. That's gonna be more than enough energy for most people, assuming they're using the rep to replace things like refrigerators and microwaves. As most people are.

The only way you absolutely need more than that is if you're in a super-hot zone and you run your air-conditioner a lot. That can cost a lot, maybe upwards of 1,500 kwh per month. Okay, in that case, you've gotta start taking up more space with solar panels. If you've got the roof space, just go ahead and cover that bad boy. Getting 800 square feet is very doable, if you get creative with the layout.

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Not everybody has the space, of course, and some communities need a lot energy per month. And that's why you need energy farmers.

THE ENERGY FARMER gestures out his window.

In the fields outside, the ground is covered in solar panels, stretching into the distance. The surrounding woods have been clear-cut—there is nothing but shining metallic ground and open sky.

If nobody else in this community had solar panels, I'd probably need to dedicate about four acres to solar farming. But since absolutely everybody has their own panels, I only need a single acre. This farm right here keeps the lights on the and the reps running in about a thousand homes.

I've even got massive energy storage units for storing overflow energy, and those kick in whenever we have a long streak of dark days. Most people are making the trek to one of the industrial size units to pick up their own backup batteries, so mine will become less necessary over time.

So, ultimately, how close are you to 100% sustainability?

Pretty goddamn close. The only thing I haven't figured out yet is the carbon emissions… everybody is still pumping out a ton of the ol' CO2. Less than we used to, of course, but we're still burning gas, coal, and logs for a lot of things...

I'm sure we'll figure that out at some point.

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