thesolarpunkworkshop

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Told him this was commented. It was the most flattered I'd ever seen him.

Visiting my dad in st louis, he's doing some odd projects with windows on houses he's fixing up.

#st louis #solarpunkartists #solarpunk art #solarpunk #diy #stain glass #upcycle #stl

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

For my dad's birthday, he's been hinting he wants a windturbine. I went ahead and got him one, and reading that painting them will reduce bird colisions, stencil spray painted it to look like the st louis flag (city he's repairing). I have a feeling he'll like it.

#solarpunk #solarpunkdiy #diy #electronics #wind power #stl #st louis #vexillology #spray paint #stencil

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Day 5 or 6 of working on the solar bike. The main bike is effectivaly finished. Decided to go lightweight on everything and it was definantly the way to go. On the back is a 24qt milk crate big enough to hold another few bike batteries. That has a thin as possible sheet of hobby plywood above it that is ziptied to the 50w flexible solar panel. And mounted to the milkcrate with hobby screws. The panel recharges the bike through a mppt step up charge controller. The front panel charges just a simple 5v battery pack for my phone. All in all, I think it turned out well.

#solarpunk #solarpunkdiy #ebikes #diy #electric vehicles #electronics #paint job #solar power #bikes #ebike

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Had it once before, slightly different recipie. It tastes like what bees dream of. Increadibly floral and pleasent, like being in the album days of future past, what I listened to when making it the first time. Easily the best homebrew I've ever had.

Making dandelion mead with my Gf. She's trying to win a local contest for brewing. Since we had plently of dandelions in the yard, it was an obvious pick. You can use any dandelions in this as long as they're still yellow and they havent been sprayed with pestacides. Other ingedants are black tea, honey (2lbs per gallon), Lemon juice, and champagne yeast. Really easy to do, the secret is to seperate the yellows from the greens when gathering dandelions though.

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Making dandelion mead with my Gf. She's trying to win a local contest for brewing. Since we had plently of dandelions in the yard, it was an obvious pick. You can use any dandelions in this as long as they're still yellow and they havent been sprayed with pestacides. Other ingedants are black tea, honey (2lbs per gallon), Lemon juice, and champagne yeast. Really easy to do, the secret is to seperate the yellows from the greens when gathering dandelions though.

#solarpunk #gardening #permaculture #meadow #homebrew #mead #dandelion #foraging #solarpunkdiy #honey

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Decided to make my own permaculture map for everything that I'm growing around my house and workshop. It wasn't too difficult, let me know if it's difficult to read for anyone or if anyone wants advice making their own.

This map includes:

Apples Trees x4

Peach Trees x2

Cherry Trees x4

Japanese Plum Trees x2

Blue Damson Plum Tree x1

Fig Tree x1

Pecan Tree x1

Hazelnut Tree x1

Mulberry Tree x2

x8 Different Types of Berry Bushes

x9 Different types of Herbs

One Greenhouse made out of scavenged windows.

A Duckhouse that looks like a rabbit for legal reasons.

Two plots for perennial vegetables such as, horseradish, asparagus, and rhubarb.

And Seven Plots of Annual Vegetables that somehow take up the most of my time.

USDA Zone is 6B in South Kansas City.

#solarpunk #solarpunkdiy #permaculture #permaculture map #gardening #garden #maps #homesteading #farming #agriculture

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Added a stencil to the solarbike. Turned out pretty good for $3 spray paint

#solarpunk #solarpunkdiy #diy #ebikes #electric vehicles #solarpunkartists #paint job #spray paint #how to

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Making a master list for all the great Hopepunk Solarpunk posts ive seen (IT UPDATES!!)

you don’t have to read all of this! you can scroll and find ones that interest you, id bold the ones that i want you to see but then all the links would be bold lmao

giving this to my future self

recipes under 45 minutes, 5 or less ingredients

What is conformity?

What is Solarpunk? (reddit masterpost)

Hattie Carthan- A 60 year old black women who paved the way (website)

Rules of Guerrilla Gardening (youtube)

When to do Guerrilla Gardening (and when not to

Easy way to do Guerrila Gardening (no seed bombs needed) (youtube)

Hope is not mindless optimism

Solar punks are against a shitty future

Deeeefinitely don’t look at the native plants and plant them alongside sidewalks to make the world greener and prettier

How to really make a difference

It is the cohabitation that makes all things beautiful.

Buy Nothing group; becoming a community

Fixing clothes- how to do it

Know your local communities

What if we stop an apocalypse?

Individual action into collective action

Wallgardens- More accessible and less space needed

Gardening for a climate resistance

Social Ecology

Actual solarpunk vs misconception

How to help with little energy/effort

An actual ecovillage!!

Attracting native birds

Amazing Ecovillage (tiktok vid)

Reconstructed Railway Bridge (tiktok vid)

What is Solarpunk? (youtube(

How can we make Solarpunk a reality? (youtube)

A cool guerrilla gardening group (youtube)

How radical gardeners took back centeral city (yourube)

Trees bring rain

Minimalism vs Solarpunk

The first guerrilla gardener (website)

More about Hattie Carthan (website)

Project of homes for homeless

Recommended youruber for Solarpunk

The problem with individualism

California has passed a food law! (Website)

How to be a Druid

How to make Biomass sustainable again

Indigenous Climate Plan!!! (Website)

What is Solarpunk? (website)

Permaculture

Conventional vs Unconventional Permaculture

Independent Gardening is NOT Inaccessible!

Role of Poor Soil

Example of a Guerilla Gardening Community

Seed Companies

How to Start a Garden (for FREE!!)

Affective Mousetrap (no rat poison needed)

How to get started with a new climate project (Instagram)

A district in Japan which works together with fish

How to start medicinal garden

Solar panels work

Ideas to improve bus stop

Kinetic energy power sources

Solar farms

Solarpunk Poetry

Food map :0 (where wild fruit/owned fruit trees are)

How to choose hope

How to turn your neighbourhood into a village

Creating a liberating society this sets off my warning sirens but idk look into it

Creating a Solarpunk city

Ableism, Cottagecire, and Solarpunk

Increasing soil capacity for water

Sourdough Recipe :3

Anarchists Calisthetics (anarcht every day!)

Guerilla gardening tutorial

#solarpunk #hopepunk #solarpunkartists #solarpunk art #fiction #diy #solarpunkdiy

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Guys I know Climate Change is super scary in the news. I know it's terrifying and seems like the end of the world. And it could be! But it isn't going to be.

I want to take this time to remind all of you how far we've come in the past twenty-ish years since "An Inconvenient Truth"

Fossil Fuels

We use less fossil fuels now proportionally than we did in 2009. Coal used to be 50% of the United States's energy production, but now is down to less than a quarter, and is expected to continue to drop in the upcoming years. This is including in traditionally anti-renewable areas that rely on coal heavily, like Wyoming's shift to wind and solar and Kentucky and West Virginia's shift to hydroelectric.

Most remaining coal plants are either shutting down or using filtration systems to reduce the carbon, methane, and heavy metals put into the air. Coal mines are shutting down - the era of King Coal is over.

Yes, many states are shifting to natural gas, but the carbon density of natural gas is lower than both oil and coal. Extraction of it is less dangerous. It's not better than renewables, but is a great alternative for developing countries that don't have the money for renewables - at least for the time being.

Oil and diesel are gradually being phased out as well. Desires to be economically independent from oil rich countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia have driven policy makers away from it. Areas like Alaska that rely heavily on diesel for heating are switching to renewable energy and less energy intensive heat pumps.

Fossil fuel companies are continuing to do their lobby thing, but it doesn't matter. Climate change isn't even the driving factor right now - it should be, but the increasing cost of fossil fuel extraction is slowly breaking the industry. In the US, it's just not as profitable as it was thirty years ago.

Nuclear

Nuclear energy is fast-growing. While it's somewhat stagnated in the US, countries like France, Russia, South Korea, Germany, and Japan are relying on increasing amounts of nuclear energy - in France's case, almost 4/5ths of their electricity comes from nuclear energy.

We've found ways to make the Uranium and Thorium last longer in the reactor, and in fact, nuclear power plants are among the safest in the world. The only emission is water vapor - not including the construction - and we have hundreds or thousands of years left of nuclear energy at our current consumption, even more if we can find out how to harness ocean Uranium and seafloor Thorium or harness nuclear fusion.

Nuclear power plants produce absurd amounts of electricity - a single 6 gigawatt power plant (high end, but do exist) could singlehandedly provide the entire electric requirements of New York City - think of what several of them across the country could do. They generate power incredibly reliably.

Nuclear disasters like Fukushima and Chernobyl are far behind us. Fukushima was entirely preventable - they knew about the lack of safety regulations and did not fix them - and Chernobyl was 40 years ago. Technology has come a long way since then.

Hydroelectric

Hydroelectric dams that kill fish are out - tidal turbines and fish ladders are in. Fish ladders provide ways for fish to escape and not get caught in the turbine, though the reduced quality of life both up and downstream is an issue.

Enter tidal energy! Yes, really!

A startup in Scotland, MeyGen has proven that two-way off-shore turbines can provide significant amounts of electricity. Just four turbines were enough to provide electricity to over 4,000 homes. Tidal barrages have been used on bridges and coasts to generate hydroelectric energy from the incoming ocean waves.

There are no significant emissions beyond construction, AND the turbines and barrages *do not kill fish or sea creatures*. The turbines, at worst, caused dolphins and seals to simply avoid the area the turbines were in. They work when the ocean is flowing either direction, and can be put nearly anywhere - think about the power the Gulf Stream would generate!

Solar

Solar energy is fast-growing - and this part is my favourite. Homes are being designed with solar heating in mind. Not just in the panels, no - window placements, albedo, and materials have allowed homes to be heated by the sun in winter, but shielded from it in summer. A properly solar optimized home can cut on 75% of electricity use!

Solar panels are up to 46% efficiency now, which is insane. In parts of the western US, up to 8.6 kWh per m^2 of solar panels can be generated. For perspective, a single home uses about 30 kWh per day - a number that is decreasing. A home would only need about 43 square feet of solar panels to power their home, and lord knows roofs have more space than that.

Roofs are being designed to reflect heat, to reduce the heat island effects of big cities. Green spaces are being built for shade and cooling through transpiration. They've even invented a paint that reflects so much heat that it can cool your home by several degrees.

They've even invented thin-film solar panels that you can use as windows. Yeah! Solar panels YOU CAN USE AS WINDOWS! So skyscrapers that are covered in windows on all sides - think about the power generation. An office building doubling as a power plant. It's incredible.

Wind

Wind turbines don't kill that many birds. They used to, but they don't anymore - at least in most areas. The myth comes from the old 1960s turbines that were low to the ground and spun fast like a fan, so birds had trouble seeing where the blades were. The high up turbines nowadays are really only a problem for high-flying birds of prey, but even that's still being worked on. Wind energy is becoming increasingly efficient and producing more power than ever before.

Geothermal

Geothermal energy is going crazy. Iceland uses it to heat their homes and keep their streets ice-free instead of using snowplows in Reykjavik. There are systems in production now that would be able to generate power year-round using the heat of the earth.

By using a special liquid with a lower boiling point than water, electricity can be generated easily and without any kind of toxic waste that would normally result from groundwater energy production.

Geothermal plants can also be used for temperature regulation - the ground stays a relatively constant temperature. Say it's 65 degrees Fahrenheit in an area. In summer, you can pump that heat underground instead of into the air, which contributes to heat islands. In winter, when it's colder, you can extract the heat back out again. Heat and cooling are the single biggest energy sink in the US and in most parts of the world, and it's about to become completely clean.

Energy Consumption and The Grid

While CO2 emissions are increasing, that's mostly due to population increase. The emissions per capita has actually gone down - the average person produces almost 20 tons fewer of CO2 emissions than in 1990, and that number is going to continue to drop.

As we shift more towards renewable energy and working from home, those emissions per capita are going to drop more and more. People buy more local now. They use electric cars. Their household appliances have spiked in efficiency. LED bulbs produce significantly less emissions than the incandescent bulb, and the number of LED bulbs across the world is rapidly increasing.

The Grid is changing. Normally, the reason power generation produces so much CO2 is that power plants can't shut down - they have to produce at all hours of the day to remain economical. They produce more in the evenings when electricity demand is higher, and less in the early morning when it is lower.

The new electric grid would have energy storage. If a home or a power source, such as solar, produced too much energy, it would be sent back into the grid and stored for spikes in demand later - the system would become more efficient, and overproduction of electricity would no longer mean wasting it.

Conservation and Restoration

We can un-desertify farmland. We've figured out how to bring back rivers and streams that have dried up from overfarming in sub-saharan Africa. We can plant trees, we can enrich the soil, we can undo the damage that we've caused.

We can bring back coral. We can increase the albedo of the Arctic and Antarctic. We can re-introduce extinct animals and bring balance to the ecosystem again. We've massively reduced poaching and needless hunting of endangered animals. We know how to make sustainable, permaculture farming practices.

We have everything we need to fix the ecosystems we've damaged or destroyed - and people are already doing it.

Why it's actually gonna be okay

Guys, we're past the worst of it. Maybe not the worst of the effects of climate change, but certainly the worst of the emissions. We are going to have a clean future. Young people support environmental regulations the most, and there are enough passionate young minds that it's going to get done.

I know I talked most about the US here, but it's changes all across the world. I focused on the US because it has the highest per capita emissions of any country on Earth. Don't be fooled though - everyone is going green.

Meat is being eaten less than ever before. Fewer people drive cars. Fewer people waste and throw things away. Don't let the scary news of private jets and mega-corporations disillusion you. GOOD CHANGES ARE HAPPENING!

Enough of the doomer apocalypse viewpoint of climate change. There is a hopeful future for all of us. Let's achieve it together!

#hopepunk #hope #climate change #climate crisis #future #climate doomerism #renewable power #renewable future #solarpunk

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Projects like this are starting to take off. These old tractors are easy to work on so converting them to electric is relativly straightforward. They're from an age when easy to repair was the status quo.

Arkansas couple build their own solar powered tractor

A little over a year ago, my husband, Terry, started talking about building a solar tractor. Since we were planning a move to a thirty-acre farm in Arkansas, the tractor would have to actually be the workhorse we expected we would need rather than a conversation piece shown off in parades. The original tractor — and I use that expression loosely — was a Ford 1950 8n bound for the scrap metal pile. When Terry told me he paid $200 for the rusty tractor pieces he proudly showed me I admit I wondered about his sanity. The front tires were lying off to one side and there was no motor, seat or fenders. Despite my doubts, his enthusiasm never waned and he began building his solar tractor.

For those who are mechanically-minded and are thinking about building their own solar tractor I will attempt to relay the information given to me by Terry—also sometimes known as “MacGyver” due to his ability to fix anything and make something out of nothing! So, according to my mad scientist… READ MORE

#solarpunk #solar punk #DIY #solarpunkdiy #electronics #farming #homesteading

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Ok Day 4 or so of the ebike project. Built a solar trailer with 200watts of output. About to cement the thing together and paint it. The question I have is should I keep the construction orange color or paint the thing forest green? Both would have the solarpunk emblam on them.

#solarpunkdiy #diy #solarpunk #ebikes #electric vehicles #cycling stuff #upcycle #electronics #paint job

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Great series and easy to follow. It begins to get you in the right headspace for this sort of thing. How the systems interact and all that.

ok so instead of going on my usual the earth is doomed spiral I started looking into solar punk solutions and stumbled across the practice of permaculture & found a free 50 video series from the university of oregon on it if anyone else would like to learn abt ways we can actually start restoring earths whole deal

#solarpunk #permaculture #gardening #solarpunkdiy #garden #food forest #greenthumb #design #youtube video #rewilding

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

My comment responding to you on your post about the autonomous tractor kept being removed: I couldn't find any info, but if you wanted to know a bit more, it looks like 4 ~300W panels and 4 ~150amp hour batteries. Panels>charge controller>batteries>inverter>microcontroller like raspberry pi or arduino running a platform like OpenMower with GPS unit>actuators and motor controller. Probably has 433mhz or wifi or something for local control too. Hard to guess what electric motor, you wouldn't want to use anything more powerful than necessary.

Neat, none of that is really complicated other than the code. It would probably take ages to actucaly fine tune it though. Didnt know about openmower will look into that.

#solarpunkdiy #diy #solarpunk

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Silicon valley tech bro: this new thing is so cool! It will revolutionize everything and-

Me: can I repair it?

Tech bro: umm no

Me: then it's shit and I don't want it

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Know if he has a link to how he did it?

Swedish inventor and eco farmer Jesper Elsander and the fully autonomous solar powered tractor he and a friend built. They took a Volvo T24 from the 1950s and retrofitted it with a electric engine, solar power and installed GPS steering on it.

Source

#solarpunk #solarpunkdiy #machinery

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Day 2 of the solar ebike project. I managed to get more power input on this thing, the problem is it's way more janky. With all the hinges and panels on them it's going to clang itself apart with a big enough pothole.

Oh well, I'll think of a solution.

#solarpunk #diy #solarpunkdiy #ebikes #electronics #electric vehicles #solar #diy help

[thesolarpunkworkshop]

Converted an Ebike to run off of solar. Wasn't too hard but there are a few thing's it would be better to know beforehand. Will put together a guide once I'm done.

#solarpunk #diy #solarpunkdiy #ebikes #bikelife #cycling stuff #electric vehicles #electronics