Comment by z2
7 years ago
As the site mentions elsewhere, they have a relatively power-hungry fiber router that needs a constant 10W, currently still running on the grid. In that sense, the website isn't entirely solar-powered. This seems to be the state of things going into the future--computation may get more efficient, but pushing signals to far-away distances will always take more power!
Why are routers so energy intensive? I would think that with fiber the cost would be that of producing light which seems to be low cost.
Doesn't seem like a design point that any of them ever care about. It's easy to waste a lot of power if you treat it as a don't-care.
To add an anecdote, those Comcast modem/router combos get really hot and are constantly running their fans. They probably have some pretty poor software on average and aren’t running power management daemons.
10W is practically nothing. You can get solar panels for under US$0.50/W. I paid $125 each for brand new 300W panels.