Thinking smarter for a LAN party on the sun

Posted by The Technocrat | Filed under Geeky

Happy SunA great example here of thinking smarter to solve a problem. Instead of giant arrays of solar panels, just get a whole lot of mirrors together and focus them on a high-temp single panel. Looks like a 4-meter (13.1 feet) dish can put out 8 kilowatts, more than enough for a normal home. Also, they can go all the way up to a massive 64-meter (209.9 feet!) dish, capable of just over 2 megawatts! (Might want to put that one in the desert instead of the front lawn)
To put this in perspective, if you had a 600W gaming rig with a 200W LCD gaming monitor, you could support 10 machines on solar power alone with the 8kW dish. (probably 9 + a 16-port router for a solar-powered LAN party)

What would the LAN party look like with the 64-meter dish? Well, a 48-port router + 47 machines draws 39kW, let’s say (less, but OK). We’re already beyond a normalmultiplayer game, so let’s add a 48U tower of 48 IBM x306 servers, each hosting a 48-player massive multiplayer game. At about 550W each, the server center is drawing about 27kW, with rack cooling. Add in 48 groups of gamers, and you’ve got 2,256 gamers playing on 48 servers via GbitE, all by solar power.

In fact, you even have 131kW, about 5% of the output of the dish, to put towards air conditioning and vending machines.

This is all a little foolish, but it does make the point that it is quickly becoming more feasable to make renewable energy sources our main source, with non-renewables supplimenting our needs. Any one of these dishes could support a business of proportional size, from a 4-meter on a small shop to a 64-meter at an assembly plant. In fact, the company could easily make the argument to buy two and get a check from the power company!

Comments (3) | June 8th, 2006

3 Responses to “Thinking smarter for a LAN party on the sun”

  1. neoncheez Says:
    June 8, 2006 at 10:10 pm

    That would rock to have something like this the backyard, powering your entire house. I just imagine a life without paying the electric bill every month…

  2. Beckie Derosby Says:
    March 30, 2010 at 12:45 pm

    I’m really glad I discovered this post. I’ve been browsing for information on solar energy for months.Looking forward to reading through more posts about energy.

  3. Santo Formhals Says:
    July 30, 2010 at 11:20 pm

    Well written, fresh take on this subject.

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