How to power your house, with xkcd's Randall Munroe

[@WarhavenSC]

The biomass seems extra bad because it not only produces little power, you have to spend extra money to raptor-proof your doors and windows as the foliage provides a natural hiding place for velociraptors.

[@nathanyou1899]

Ah, the true meaning of fossil fuels

[@xponen]

biomass produces construction materials that is used to build protection. Of course if you didn't harvest it it became a dense cover for dangerous creatures like velociraptors.

[@williamedstrom5681]

Listen up, these are the most important gardening tips of your life!

[@Ptaku93]

velociraptors were desert-dwelling creatures. It's like saying foliage is a natural hiding place for a fenneck fox

[@piratewhoisquiet]

@@Ptaku93 Are you suggesting that foliage is instead a synthetic hiding place for a fenneck fox? The foliage is natural. Any hiding place for any creature created by the foliage is natural. Naturality is a transitive property.

[@wohdinhel]

My entire comprehension of spacetime has collapsed upon learning that xkcd is a real person with a normal human form in meatspace

[@StevoDesign]

No, it's a webcomic.

[@Snowshowslow]

Meatspace :D That makes me happy

[@pseudotasuki]

Fear not, what you see in this video is merely the three-dimensional projection of his true two-dimensional body.

[@jayceh]

That's merely the 3D projection of a 2D cartoon, don't be fooled.

[@JYT256]

If Randall is calling something his worst idea ever, that means it has to be extraordinarily silly. EDIT: Did not disappoint.

[@relsqui]

honestly I'm not convinced it even IS the worst idea in that book

[@squirlmy]

@@Josh-ks7co it's more silly than the average person can possibly conceive! It brings into play ontological questions of what the word "sillyness" means (which is pretty damn silly). It takes a brain the size of a planet... oh, never mind!

[@GreyAcumen]

But it only will take 36million years to pay for itself!

[@AldorEricsson]

Not nearly as expensive OR destructive as the Earth-Moon fire pole.

[@Norsilca]

Earth not destroyed. Disappointed.

[@StraveTube]

"Plants are kind of like solar panels: they grow on the ground." Yeah, uh... That sounds right to me.

[@nickbrutanna9973]

It's a valid statement. They just are even less efficient than our own crappy solar collectors

[@skyrask1948]

@@nickbrutanna9973 Can you give me a link to solar panels that grow on ground. I tried to google them, but i failed.

[@GraveGround]

@@skyrask1948 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photosynthesis perhaps?

[@StraveTube]

@@skyrask1948 I got u fam middle.pngfans.com/20190502/z/solar-plant-drawing-png-solar-power-solar-energy-c-367cae9eaf9cd4b6.jpg

[@bjfire01]

Clearly means they're like solar panels in that they collect energy from the sun.. and they just happen to sit on the ground....

[@thexalon]

Here I was thinking the worst idea ever would be a pitcher throwing baseballs at 0.9c.

[@pmnt_]

well, that was a reader question... it's not *his* most silly idea

[@TheQuark6789]

Nah, that's the worst idea in a _different_ book of his.

[@thomasboys7216]

.....but can you use a near light speed baseball to power your house? Would it have enough energy?

[@frantisekvrana3902]

@@thomasboys7216 It _would_ have enough energy to power your house for years. Unfortunately, your house could not coexist on the same lot with a near-lightspeed baseball, and would be consumed by said baseball's expanding sphere of incandescent plasma.

[@nilsp9426]

The baseball game at least makes for a handy weapon in a total war (of annihilation).

[@matthewmcneany]

I always assumed Randal was some sort of advanced machine learning programme which the developers had taught to draw cartoons as a joke.

[@uss_04]

So thats randall. Hes not actually a stick figure?

[@belthize]

He is, they used CGI for this video to make him look more normal.

[@Orillion123456]

He is. This is a stick figure wearing a skinsuit.

[@Grist]

Alas, we now have no more budget for the rest of the year.

[@uss_04]

I like to think they use the same GFX company they used in the MCU for Michael Douglas and Sam Jackson

[@Grist]

@@uss_04 🤫

[@tompw3141]

I was expecting geothermal. If you drill down deep enough, the rocks will be hot enough.

[@famuel2604]

Well your property only extends a little underground so you wouldn’t be able to do that

[@Ztaticify]

Me too, it's in his book though

[@gregoryc29]

In the US at least, most land is owned “to the center of the Earth.”

[@ABaumstumpf]

@@gregoryc29 No, not even close - that heavily depends on the state. In many the property and underground rights are sold separately. Even where not there are many other limitations in place. This can be as bad as an mineral-company showing up and start creating tunnels just 5m under.

[@Reach3DPrinters]

@@ABaumstumpf Technically, the land isn't even owned. In the states, we are tenants. Check the abstract, we technically rent the land from the U.S. government, as with everywhere in the world. I do believe in the US, we usually possess most mineral rights though, but that also depends on state.

[@ronanostendorf7661]

Randall, it's so good to actually hear your voice. Huge fan.

[@RussellFineArt]

I have both a small wind turbine (2.4kW) and solar panels (5kW) on my property which powers my entire house. The wind turbine is mostly a waste of money as it only produces a small fraction of my annual energy but the sola panels are fantastic! I recommend solar panels to everyone. I also charge my EV with my solar panels and wind turbine so I pay $0 for electricity and $0 for gasoline.

[@CemKalyoncu]

@MantasXVIII I have 7kW panels with 5kW inverter, paid about 7k$. ROI in 4-5 years even though electricity is cheap where I live.

[@waltuh2.3bviews3secondsago3]

Cool that you’re using good sources of energy

[@CemKalyoncu]

@MantasXVIII They are guaranteed to have I think 80% (or 70, not sure) efficiency up to 25 years!

[@CemKalyoncu]

​@MantasXVIII Though you have to clean them from time to time. I have seen over 5% improvement cleaning after a 2-3 months without cleaning or rain.

[@Shaun_Jones]

Sure, solar is infinitely more practical, but imagine the Godzilla-class middle finger it would give to the HOA to have a full-size wind turbine on your lot.

[@jamesrussels7766]

I’ve read xkcd since the late 2000s and this is literally the first time I’ve ever seen Randall

[@maidden]

I don't know who this weird 3D man is, but there's a webcomic I think he'd like.

[@Ricky_McCoy]

Just want to say, How To is a brilliant book.

[@MattieAMiller]

No lie, the first time I saw him (in a TED talk video), I was so offput by his face having features that I could barely listen to what he was saying.

[@soupgirl1864]

Yeah, but at the same time, it's kind of the face you'd have imagined him to have. Which is weird, given that all you had to go on was a featureless stick figure.

[@CraftBasti]

Link me, when did he give a Ted talk o.o

[@MattieAMiller]

@@CraftBasti Absolutely, here it is: kzbin.info/www/bejne/f2eXdISma99jhs0

[@WinstonFord]

Hey Randall, for your plate tectonics generator, you might consider a piezo chip instead of a piston!

[@TheQuark6789]

I love this investigation into dumber forms of renewable energy, to show why the common methods really are the best ones.

[@gvigary1]

Except biofuels are relatively common. I'd love to see the difference if growing, say, corn instead of trees.

[@Explosivebarrelsman]

But what about stars? No, like, tapping directly into the fusion energy they produce. At some point *one* of them must be in the column (or, on a practical cosmic scale, cone) you own.

[@qwertystop]

It doesn't stay there, though, and you have to stay in your lot.

[@timothyconover9805]

I'm just curious one calculates how much coal, uranium, etc. is under a 0.2 acre suburban lot? It's not like we're going to run out of coal in 12 years.

[@Dorian_sapiens]

@@timothyconover9805 He gives the explanation at 0:19. Your lot is assumed to have a fraction of the US's resources proportional to its size, as if all energy resources were distributed exactly evenly across the country's total area.

[@squirlmy]

@@timothyconover9805 however, in 12 years, our weather is going to be so bad that anyone found to be powering anything as large as a house with coal is going to be met with a group of angry suburbanites with pitchforks. At which point it will become a "human-body-powered" house for about 10 minutes. I'm a little disappointed "witch-burning" wasn't considered as a power source. ;(

[@MenloMarseilles]

IIUC above a certain altitude space treaties kick in (google "common heritage of mankind") and you can't extract resources by default anymore.

[@waterunderthebridge7950]

For some reason I was always imagining cgp grey’s voice whenever I read his books

[@AmeshaSpentaArmaiti]

Who woulda thought Randall had a mouth. or eyes. or volume.

[@amschind]

The key phrase is "Averaged over the course of a year." As in, "Will my ground loop heater come on when my house is 38 degrees?" "Well, averaged over the course of a year...."

[@smc1897]

"Averaged over the course of a year, this food that rots in one day has enough calories to sustain us for the entire year!" - starves to death 3 weeks later

[@ximumn2738]

“Averaged over the course of a week, setting fire to your car will keep it warm enough to comfortably live in it.”

[@robloughrey]

You keep your thermostat at 38? C or F that's really odd...

[@odizzido]

@@robloughrey What's extra strange is adam is turning ON the heater at 38 degrees. I think he may be an alien.

[@kloss213]

I designed my home to be passive solar and passive geothermal in S WI my home stays between 50-82d without extra heat added. I can cool the large home with a bedroom-sized AC unit

[@KazisCollection]

Little disappointed that the only method he considered for biomass was burning, when you could also compost the material. Conmposting generates heat due to thermophillic bacteria

[@marvinkitfox3386]

Relax, he completely fucked up the biomass calculation from the very start.

[@IanXMiller]

It doesn't really matter how he extracts the energy. He is turning carbon and hydrogen (from the tree) into carbon dioxide and water. I have no idea how he got his number (so it may be incorrect) but the method is immaterial to these sorts of calculations.

[@fergochan]

Do the thermophillic bacteria produce more heat than burning the biomass? Burning would get you maximum efficiency, though it is perhaps less efficient in other ways. ​@@marvinkitfox3386 could you provide better calculations for us? The problem I see with it is that he chose trees as his biomass, when he could have chosen something much faster growing (I suspect this is the reason his numbers are so low). That being said, the most efficient photosynthesis is somewhere around 1%, compared to solar panels which can regularly get something closer to 15%, so biomass is never going to be able to power an average home in this way.

[@marvinkitfox3386]

@@IanXMiller His figure of 38watt, implies that his 0.2 acres of forest grows a total of 60 kg of wood per year, only. 2 tons is closer to correct. Making his calc for wood off by a FACTOR of 31. Planting pine on that 0.2 acre grows enough wood to sustain about 400watt *after conversion inefficiencies*. And Pine is about the shittiest source for biofuel you can imagine! Grow maize, it is more than twice as photosyntheticaly efficient, and produces its fuel in a much more convenient form.

[@ramblinevilmushroom]

@@marvinkitfox3386 but planting something like maze would rapidly deplete the nitrogen in the soil, unless you also planted nitrogen fixing legumes with them, which would offset the amount of maze you could grow. But maybe you could eat the legumes and harness your flatulence for more energy. But all in all, a solar panel topped wind harvesting tunnel would probably be the most efficient. Im being kind of silly, i should go back to work.

[@Heidelaffe]

Got 60x 390Wp on the roof (east and west directed) and a 16,6kWh battery. Had the first energy independent days in febuary and only gotten 39kWh from the grid in march. While using a heat pump as sole source of heat. I am loving it.

[@LoneStarr1979]

I do not know your property.... but I would assume that you do not have 390 KILO_watt_peak panels installed... 🤔 Otherwise, I would consider a 16kWh battery a bit small 2x11 MW solar generation ...

[@StephenJay]

Love this. One question/observation, would the ratio of solar vs wind power differ greatly based on location? For example, I am in Winnipeg, and while we have incredible summers, we would have less than ideal winters for optimal solar power generation. We always seem to have wind blowing, however.

[@Grist]

Thanks, Stephen. For the sake of easy comparison, he assumed all resources were evenly distributed. Of course in reality, all of these resources do vary depending on where you live. So in Winnipeg, the long summer days might be great for solar, but you're correct that the winters/cloudy days/nights would be a challenge.

[@StephenJay]

@@dirty_mac thanx for the laugh.

[@garrettk7166]

@Michael Yu: As a Winnipegger, I can agree with your statement.

[@StephenJay]

@@alexkramerblogs Thank you for that!

[@autohmae]

Yes, this is part of the reason why all these different solutions have been further developed as they are. If it was one size fits all, well, no reason to keep working on the rest.

[@killessaslaire]

This was pretty rad, only because I have never ever known what Randall Munroe looked like. He looks almost exactly like what I imagined, so this is gold.

[@PokeNebula]

he doesnt look like i presumed the author of xkcd would look like but he absolutely looks like i presume someone named Randall Munroe would look like

[@koko-lores]

And I'm just sitting here, thinking of getting a plot with a small stream and building a water mill.

[@adamwishneusky]

Just finished this book and highly recommend it (and What If)! 👍👍👍

[@matthewadamsteil]

One note about nuclear. The 1.5 grams is at like 0.3% of usable fuel that get 5% efficiency of fuel usage. There are newer designs that use thorium 6 gram equivalent and have 100% fuel usage. So it would be 4x20x333= 26640 times longer than a few months. A bit further off it seems that fusion might be a thing that can actually power something. Definitely buy solar now though. It is worth it.

[@CarFreeSegnitz]

First mistake: single-family detached house. Apartments/condominiums have several advantages: -shared walls, fewer external walls, less energy required for heating/cooling. -higher density means shorter distances for everyone in the community, less need for cars. Fewer cars-> fewer parking lots, smaller roads->still more room for high-density residential or mixed-use. Often referred to as “walkable communities”. Missed: -ground-source heat pumps (sometimes mistakenly called geothermal) takes advantage of thermal mass of the ground just 5-10 feet down whose temperature does not vary through winter or summer. -deep rock geothermal energy: sink a vertical shaft deep enough *anywhere* and you’ll encounter hot rocks. Rocks hot enough to heat a working fluid to drive a turbine for electric generation. Not for the faint-of-heart, vertical shafts may need to be 30-40 km deep.

[@Frost517]

I would also think geothermal, and various ways of hydro from rain, ground flow, or under ground would be effective.

[@Grist]

Hi Frost, because of time, we weren't able to go into all the ideas Randall laid out. You can find out more of the ideas from chapter in the book here: xkcd.com/how-to/

[@enzldavaractl8345]

if it's the average geothermal energy the entire world has that seems like it would not actually be a lot

[@baker7280]

No

[@oliverspin8963]

I would expect hydro from rain (on one urban lot), to be difficult. Water needs to drop a very far to create power needed to generate the kind of power a typical house needs.

[@SkashTheKitsune]

XKCD in 3D is quite the uncanny experience, I am so used to those stick figures as a representation of "don't focus on me, focus on my work"

[@michaelmorris4515]

What about thorium?

[@enzldavaractl8345]

the average amount of thorium under a given amount of land would be negligible, there are no rich deposits in this scenario

[@michaelmorris4515]

@@enzldavaractl8345 The video states the "average" lot has 1.5 ounces of Uranium. Thorium is 7 times as abundant as Uranium, which works out to 10.5 ounces. Nothing was said about deposits in the video. Also, a Liftr reactor can extract all of the 10.5 ounces of Thorium into power where a standard Uranium reactor can only use about 1% of the uranium in the fuel rod. Hence where the uranium only lasts for a few months a 10 ounce ball of Thorium can last several decades at least.

[@mikemhz]

@@michaelmorris4515 You gonna turn your lot into a big hole in the ground for 10.5 ounces of thorium?

[@michaelmorris4515]

@@mikemhz You're being intentionally obtuse for the sake of being argumentative. The video is about energy potential - not the logistics of getting the stuff out of the ground.

[@jtknox91]

Regarding wind power, is it really your "fair share"? I assume that would deny your down-wind neighbors from using wind power if they wanted, but maybe the energy lost from house to house is negligible, or maybe there's some pattern for optimally staggering the heights. Can anyone help me do the math on this?

[@fighteer1]

You could presumably look at plans for real wind farms to see what kind of spacing is optimal for power generation. One turbine the size of the typical suburban plot of land could power many homes, so share a bit and you’d be fine. It’d also be pretty expensive. Solar is way more cost efficient for this sort of situation, and frankly looks better, as long as you aren’t putting up a panel the size of your lot... Actually, I’d be curious to see cost vs cost for the same kW output.

[@Arjay404]

He did say that you would be able to get enough energy to power your house and about half dozen of your neighbors, so your next door neighbor might not be able to get any energy because of your turbine, but you could just share the energy you worked up to make up for his loss.

[@oliverspin8963]

Energy lost is far from negligible. You need hundreds of feet of clear air before and after it passes through your turbine if you want decent generation (you need low turbulence). Also, the turbine needs to be very tall. Wind is not practical (yet?) in urban areas like in Munroe's example.

[@nickbrutanna9973]

In ALL of these cases for solar and wind, he ignores the location, seasonal, and intermittency issues buried in the problem. The sun drops pretty close to one kilowatt per square meter (see "Solar Constant"), so to provide your house with, say, 200 kw-hrs of power per day, you are talking about needing not less than 200 square meters of coverage for the whole day. Since the sun only shines about half the day, double that, to 400 sm. But really, thanks to clouds, the sun moving across the sky, etc., you really only have PART of the day's power at that level (see "Solar Insolation, Map, USA") -- which runs from 7 to 4 kwH/sm/day -- so figure out where you are, divide 200 (or 100, look at your electric bill to figure out what your max usage probably was -- call it 2x your daily usage to be "safe") by 4,5,6,or 7 and you'll get an actual idea how many sq-m panels you'll need. 25 to 50 sq meters is not huge, but it's not all that small, either -- we are talking a segment that is 25'x18' for that 200kwh instance. And it'll cost you probably something over US$10,000 -- the national average is about US$20k for 6kw, for a 2500 sq-ft home. THEN let's recall you need to store it, so you can use about half of it at night. So, more money for batteries. Did you want to sell the excess? That requires a split setup, so you can sell it to the power company. As many people in Cali have found out to their dismay, having solar hooked up to sell to the power companies does not mean it goes to your house when there's a blackout. Psych!! This requires yet another expensive setup... So when the government starts MANDATING this stuff, as Cali has, they're basically making home ownership into something impossible for most people... even in those areas where property values are not already insane. OH. Then there's CLEANING. Solar panels, with only about a 20% coverage of "stuff" -- dust, soot, etc., -- lose up to 50% of their capacity. So you need to clean them regularly. And where are we placing them? On the roof? Yeah, this is a popular place. And are you aware of what the second most common cause of accidental death in the USA is? YUP. Falls. So, you're going to be out on that roof regularly cleaning these off... even (or especially) when it's snowing. Sweeeeeeeet!

[@ssj3gohan456]

@@nickbrutanna9973 he uses average yearly production and divides it by the hours in a year to get to the average power. But even then, solar provides way more energy than a single house needs. Typical capacity factors for fixed solar in the US are 7-12%, so that still leaves you with at least double what you need for an average house. Insulate it a bit better and it's a lot less. Drive electric and you can even power your average daily direct energy consumption. The only thing you can't power is the energy associated with producing all the crap you buy, which is fairly significant.

[@stephanweinberger]

Heat (in the ground as well as in the air) would be another resource you could tap into, by using a heat pump. Ok, you'd need something else (like wind or solar) to run it, but you'd be able to extract more energy from the lot.

[@johanneshalvorsen275]

Plenty of hydrogen in the rainwater. Fire up the thermonuclear fusion reactor! Should be enough for both you and your 100 millions closest neighbors.

[@pseudotasuki]

Johannes Halvorsen Good luck fitting one with a positive energy return on that lot.

[@luongmaihunggia]

@@pseudotasuki we haven't even made any that produce a net positive energy output

[@nahyanrajee198]

A backyard nuclear would definitely be the most practical

[@Mackinstyle]

"Hey where'd the entire neighbourhood go?" "Bob's Tectonic Compressor exploded."

[@JamesEck]

Only the biomass solution is actually limited to your plot, since all of the others require bringing in significant resources from outside the plot to build the power collection apparatus.

[@vornamenachname5267]

Biomass is also powered by the sun.

[@JamesEck]

@@vornamenachname5267 Coal, too, if you go back far enough.

[@oliverspin8963]

Biomass uses sunlight and the sun is outside the plot.

[@franchufranchu119]

1:39 or to your south, depending on where you live

[@pRahvi0]

If you live in the polar regions, there's no sunlight at all in winter. And when there is, your entire neighbourhood will taste the shadow of your panel once a day, unless the panel is very small. But I guess the average plot is at the average latitude of US plots of land.

[@Saxophonin]

My house has a lot of solar panels on the roof. $10k Australian in fact. It covers around 2/3 of our energy bill during the summer for our big, quite high energy lot with a pool. However during the winter and during the night we get way less. The problem is to get a battery at least for the night, is another $10k. Which we sadly don’t have lying around.

[@spacewolfjr]

I saw uranium but I was hoping he'd cover thorium too.

[@16m49x3]

or fusion

[@michaelvandermeer6416]

His numbers are wrong for uranium. The average suburban lot (800 sq metres) to a depth of 1metre contains 3 kg of uranium. That is enough to power the house for centuries.

[@spacewolfjr]

@@michaelvandermeer6416 That's an interesting stat, do you have a source for it?

[@michaelvandermeer6416]

@@spacewolfjr I calculated it using average lot size, average soil density and average uranium content. Depending on sources for the above data, I get between 3 and 8 Kg Uranium. That is enough to power a house for 1000-2000 years.

[@michaelvandermeer6416]

Others have pointed out that I neglected the Thorium, which is true. This means I have underestimated the number by 1000's of years.

[@AndreInfanteInc]

I'm pretty frustrated by the glossed over claim that each person would get only 1.5 ounces of uranium, which is misleading by like six orders of magnitude. There are 4.5 billion tons of uranium in the world's oceans, or about a half ton per person. This could generate 20-30 gigawatt hours of electricity, or enough to run a 1kw continuous draw household for a little less than five thousand years. (Before you ask, yes, there are viable ways to extract uranium from seawater. It's more expensive, but frankly uranium is incredibly cheap already - 90+% of the cost is plant operation. Doubling the price of uranium barely affects the bottom line ). And before you say "okay, but in five thousand years we'll be in real trouble", the uranium in seawater is supplied by dissolving deposits of uranium-rich rock. If we actually extracted enough uranium from seawater to reduce the concentration, the change in osmotic density would cause it to be replenished from the rocks at an increased rate. The *actual* amount of uranium we can access from the sea is several orders of magnitude higher. We have on the order hundreds of thousands to millions of years before "running out of uranium" is a remotely realistic concern. That's also ignoring the availability of other radioisotopes you can extract power from, like thorium. To sum up, for practical purposes nuclear power is a renewable resource. We will not run out. It is wrong to imply that that there is *any* risk of that. Sources: cna.ca/news/theres-uranium-seawater-renewable/ www.pnnl.gov/news/release.aspx?id=4514 web.evs.anl.gov/uranium/guide/facts/

[@manoflead643]

the ocean's not on your plot of land, however.

[@AndreInfanteInc]

​@@manoflead643 Sure, but it's at least worth mentioning as a caveat. The impression given here is that only solar and wind are viable long term, and everything else will run out in a few months or years, and that's not even kind of true.

[@thegenericguy8309]

calm down

[@AndreInfanteInc]

For you, anything.

[@Grist]

So Randall dug into uranium a little more in the book, but we didn't have time to go in-depth on everything. We (grist.org, the enviro news org that produced this video) have written more about it on our site. For people who are interested, we have a couple of pieces here: Next-gen nuclear is coming if we want it grist.org/article/next-gen-nuclear-is-coming-if-we-want-it/ Nuclear is scary - let's face those fears grist.org/article/nuclear-is-scary-lets-face-those-fears/

[@plumbersteve]

Just get a “Mr. Fusion.”

[@petermower5708]

Randall's genius, subtle humour is far better suited to his chosen medium. This sort of video needs much more creative editing in order for it to come out.

[@karmanyaahm]

Nice interview! I've read How To in the first month.

[@RichardPerfectKiwi]

How about Geothermal energy? Sink some really long pipes into the ground and tap into the thermal energy of the planet.

[@Lincoln257]

What about finding a chunk of thorium under ground (not hard) and running your house and and the whole town? Thorium is a much safer version of nuclear energy.

[@hooplehead1019]

The next guy who comes around with this wishful thinking trip of the Garden of Eden Thorium reactor that has not run one year with acceptable economy and safety - will be dissolved in molten salts. :)

[@Widesight]

Nice video! Added to our channel playlist and shared with our stakeholders (renewables in UK).

[@sebbes333]

1:32 It was never defined how HIGH you are allowed to build. So I ignore the inefficiency & compensate it with quality by building an INFINITE solar panel straight up & solve the global energy crisis in 1 swoop. (& also probably stop Earth's rotation & causes massive earthquakes & so on... (can some scientists calculate what effects this would have?))

[@_topsy]

am scientist, can't calculate. but eventually you run into the issue of the FAA being upset that they have to route airplanes around your humble abode if you build tall enough.

[@sebbes333]

@@_topsy Ok, but you're thinking too small, they have to also route the ISS & Mars & many galaxies around the solar panel too :D

[@pRahvi0]

Hook an anchor to Moon and have it pull your generator.

[@sebbes333]

@@pRahvi0 Maybe that could work, I heard that the moon moves away from earth by roughly the same speed that your nails grow...

[@arjovenzia]

just ordered this book today ^.^ kinda woulda like to have seen some of the sketches being drawn. xkcd incoming!! yaaay!

[@S3thc0n]

How much fissile material is there under the average plot of land?

[@tofu_golem]

Kxcd (not an acronym) is one of the greatest things on the Internet.

[@kwzieleniewski]

If you mean xkcd, then yes, you're right.

[@glengarland6564]

It's awesome to show the scientific knowledge sooo easily!! I'd like to meet you someday...

[@Seegtease]

Solar AND wind. Not mutually exclusive, the turbine only throws a little bit of shade.

[@pRahvi0]

The others can be included too, except biomass

[@viniciusvbf22]

People saying that most of the energy goes to heating surely don't live on a tropical country :D Unless they're saying that most of gasoline energy, for example, is usually converted to heat.

[@pRahvi0]

Average plot of land in not tropical. Well, it depends on what you average. But the average of neither US or the entire World is not tropical.

[@viniciusvbf22]

@@pRahvi0 Agreed. Not the average, but 40%, which is almost half. If we consider that 50% of the world uses energy to generate heat, and, let's say, 20% uses energy to generate cold (which consumes MUCH more energy, because of the losses on conversions), my point is still pretty valid. worldpopulationreview.com/countries/tropical-countries/

[@jennalee5967]

are those calculations/scribbles written in the inside book cover?

[@baffo32ios]

- rain, common one; - in areas with winter ice melting and freezing across seasons transfers a lot of energy; - under ground, there are often huge waterways people drill for wells that could be used hydroelectrically; - up in the air, there is an ionic differential as you go higher; …

[@kwzieleniewski]

How about thermal changes between night and day? That should be relatively easy to extract.

[@RGVZGM]

Check out power from thorium.

[@Ni999]

Have a lot of that on your lot, do you?

[@deneb_tm]

@@Ni999 Thorium is several times more abundant than uranium, and you can use close to 100% of it as nuclear fuel without refining, versus only around 1% of uranium.

[@mikemhz]

@@deneb_tm Destroy your whole property and refine every ounce of dirt to access it 🤦‍♂️

[@Ni999]

@@deneb_tm Thanks for the commercial but you didn't answer my question and you didn't get the point.

[@deneb_tm]

​@@mikemhz Do the same with any other non-renewable fuel.

[@mrpepin]

As a Northern European, what is Sunlight?

[@thexalon]

It's that big yellow thing that shows up in the sky on June 21 for a few hours every year.

[@mrpepin]

@@thexalon in Belgium we say that we only have two seasons : Fall and the 15th of August.

[@swayuuum]

Nice soundtrack. Any ideas about the name?

[@breakablec]

Talking about hypotheticals, what about fusion power?

[@gabedarrett1301]

Using E=mc^2, you could just dig up some dirt or use some trash or something, and combine with antimatter to solve all your energy problems! Easy peasy!

[@elietheprof5678]

Since most electricity is used for heating, is there an efficient way to capture the sun's energy to heat your home directly, without even converting it to electricity?

[@_topsy]

There are solar panels specifically meant to heat water, so that could work to supplement your heating system if you use classic water-based radiators for heat. Although usually these panels are used to supplement hot water consumption in something like a shower.

[@ValeriePallaoro]

Live in a glass house.

[@danser_theplayer01]

Turbines have insane amount of vibration this is why they build them out in the fields, if you plonk that down near your house it will ruin the foundation and will be too noisy for comfort.

[@uplink-on-yt]

$40 billion to hook up to tectonic plates. In 2022 money, that's $4 billion short of one Twitter.

[@veryInteresting_]

Buy a huge battery and a lightening rod and just hope it strikes soon

[@oliverspin8963]

Taking in that much energy in such a short period is difficult.

[@veryInteresting_]

@@oliverspin8963 It is difficult, but is it impossible?🤔

[@marvinkitfox3386]

Lightning is a bad source of power. Too infrequent, and too strong when you get it. But consider atmospheric electricity. The normal earth static field, not the nasty stuff from convection currents in thunderstorms! kzbin.info/www/bejne/aKO5lXierrKFbKM

[@Xencam]

@@veryInteresting_ Currently yes. We don't have big enough batteries for that, and they can't absorb that much power in half a second without frying

[@autohmae]

@@Xencam a lot full of super capacitors maybe ?

[@questionablecommands9423]

I love xkcd, but unfortunately, the community around Randall (through no fault of his own) is a toxic environment full of people who are so busy trying to prove that they're smart, that they can't have a sane discourse.

[@alakani]

Dang, the very specific way Randall yeets papers off tables like one might suddenly acquire sentience is extremely relatable

[@timhofstetter5654]

Keep in mind the fact that an "average lot" is a 27th-floor walkup in a tenement building surrounded by tenement buildings. Photovoltaic is a ridiculous propsition, as is wind. Keep in mind, too, the fact that only about 20% of roof ridge lines run east-west. And the fact that the vast majority of "burb" homes have prohibitions written into their mortgage contracts and the majority of the remainder are rentals.

[@acidnik00]

1kw for a house? A freezer needs 500w, a microwawe needs 800w, a hair dryer needs 1.5kw, a kettle needs 2kw. You need at least 10kw to be sure that you have enouhg power for daily needs, 15kw preferable

[@smc1897]

You're being kind. You didn't list any real inductive loads like a well pump, or furnace, But hey, who needs water. Or heat. And apparently, he found a way to to not kill everyone in the house when it's -30F, for only 1kw. Then there's the whole, "No wind for days" thing. And hail. And snow.

[@Martianbuddah]

The 1kw number is of course an average ... and that is about right. E.g. in 2018 the averge us household consumed ~30kwh per day (source: google), this requires an average energy production of 1.25kw during the day to cover. Sure you will also need energy storage to be able to handle peak loads but that was not the topic here. If you are aiming for 15kw of average energy production you would be able to cover 10+ us housholds so yeah ... your number is very far off

[@kappamakizushi]

Do you have your microwave, hair dryer, and kettle running all day? If so, please stop.

[@smc1897]

@@kappamakizushi Learn how power works. Either it supplies peak, or it browns out like California.

[@kappamakizushi]

@@smc1897 Since we're talking about solar and wind, I'm assuming there is some kind of storage that can handle higher output during peak usage.

[@lightbox617]

Did you overlook Geo thermic? Bet I could find it in many if not most locations in North America where it would work. How deep would I have to drill to hit that hot air or water? In North Jersy, I worked in a zinc mine (White Hores, Ogdensberg, NJ). At 150 ft to 750, the temp was 60 f. At 150, it was getting warm. At 225, it was uncomfortably warm. What if I used/had access to current oil drilling tech and materials? What if I drilled to 3,00 ft and introcduced a water to steam circulation system? Would it last forever (or until the materials corroded out)?

[@norbertfleck812]

How do you solve the problem of a sunset on a windless cold winter day? Here in Germany we have whole weeks in winter with less than 5% solar energy harvest (compared to the installed capacity) and no (zero) wind. This means you need accumulators with a capacity of more than a week - but you don't have enough sun to recharge them for months.

[@tompw3141]

Joys of a grid - it's generally sunny somewhere!

[@norbertfleck812]

@@tompw3141 Especially at night. A grid which could compensate day and night would have to reach around the whole globe and needs cables under the ocean.

[@catprog]

@@tompw3141 Especially in a European Grid. And you have a lot of pumped hydro.

[@tompw3141]

@@norbertfleck812 Fair enough - I should have said "it's generally sunny or windy somewhere!"

[@norbertfleck812]

@@tompw3141 That's a very common fallacy. Even on a continent wide grid, we have whole weeks when neither sun nor wind is delivering more than a few percent of the installed capacity. And the sun sets on windless days, too. Every evening. For further details (with true, real data) see www.smard.de It's the official website of the German Federal Power Network agency.

[@brokenrecord3523]

Do we own the entire vertical column above our houses? or down?

[@michaelwalsh6276]

What if you used mithril instead of steel?

[@eddieb4557]

4:18 when high school classmates try to lure you into some money-making scheme

[@Ztingjammer]

Only 36 million years? I'm going to start right away!

[@MrCharles7994]

You forgot to consider the Uranium in an average patch of dirt at the very end there. Assuming you can filter about a meter of top soil from your acre for uranium and that there are 3 ppm uranium in that soil you can extract about 30 kg of natural uranium, capable of producing over 350 years of power. Of course magically stripping uranium from your topsoil, refining it, and producing a functioning reactor is a lot more energy intensive, but there is enough Uranium to make it work. Uranium is energy dense enough that refining it from seawater or granite are actually feasible from an energy return perspective. Of course solar also works. Uranium power is mostly useful as a replacement for battery banks in a solar grid.

[@scottpelak1856]

What about the uranium mine beneath my house?

[@macsnafu]

I'm adding this info to my survival guide. The way the government is regulating the electrical grid, we may all have to seek alternative energy sources! Add a heat pump to the solar and wind power, and you and your neighbors should be pretty good.

[@EebstertheGreat]

No updates on the forums yet. Is it reasonable to expect them to come back before the end of the year?

[@filedotnix]

The tectonic plate idea would work well for Iceland, because they're on the edge of two tectonic plates (North-American and European). I was volunteering there last summer and my leg fell in one of those cracks, netting me a nasty bruise.

[@KOTYAR0]

This man is the reason I have high education and can speak English

[@andrewwolfgangbakes5285]

How heavy or tall of a gravity engine would you need to power a house (if say it was manually reset)?

[@catprog]

1 ton * 100m = .272kwh However if you are manually resetting it. 2 lots of 1kg * 1m , while one falls you reset the other one

[@Pac0Master]

What about Geothermal power?

[@joedellinger9437]

What about the tectonic plate idea if you lived in Hollister, CA? Moving fault on your door step. Plus they seem to sell a lot of branded clothing, too.

[@mrjaz666]

My house is a sailboat and 300w solar powers everything

[@NewMozart]

This is excellent. I love xkcd

[@andypughtube]

So, how about the economics of buying a house in Colorado, growing vegetation, selling that and buying someone else's solar power with the proceeds?

[@PeterKese]

How much lithium is there in an average lot (to build a battery to store sunlight for the winter)?

[@tompw3141]

The world has 15 million tonnes of lithium reserves, and an area of 510m km². Randall assumed a lot size of 0.2 acres, so your fair share would be 23g. That's maybe an AA battery.

[@catprog]

@@tompw3141 15 million tons / 11 billion people. = 1.3 kg I don't know why the 510km^2 area is relevant. From wikipeida: The battery requires from 0.15 to 0.3 kg of lithium per kWh So about 5kWh.

[@tompw3141]

​@@catprog The question was "how much lithium is there in an average lot?". So the number is [world lithium reserves] * [area of lot]/[area of world].

[@mauriciogerhardt3209]

What about animals being fed by plants you can grow, which in turn can spin things, making a generator?

[@Techischannel]

Why not combine both wind and solar energy into a combined usage thingy, and also dig a deeeep hole and get some geothermal power going aswell. In the Summer you just pump the heat into the ground. Become a powerhouse powering your entire neighbourhood by just having a very deep borehole. And if you are allowed to you might aswell build a space tether on your plot with solar panels and wind turbines attached to it. While having the tippy top have some sort of fetching thingy that harvests Antimatter you can then combine with rainwater to produce even more energy.

[@vincentrobinette1507]

For home use, solar seems by far and away, the most practical. Forget 'grid tie". go with battery and inverter, with a charger connected to the grid, if needed. According to my calculations, a 24 hour battery will produce the lowest cost of energy storage, whether you choose Lead Acid, or Lithium.

[@goodguykonrad3701]

To be honest, I do like the idea of a futuristic society generating power by harnessing the power of the movement of tectonic plate Could double up that they're simultaneously lessening the frequency and severity of earthquakes in a region with the extensive power network adding a layer of stability

[@FlameRat_YehLon]

Meanwhile I'm still waiting for that book to get published in China. Don't really want to bother with importing a single book unless it's something absurdly hard to find. I've got his other two books so it's likely just a matter of time for this one (to get localized) as well.

[@Ole_Rasmussen]

Okay, but what if I find uranium under my house and build a fission reactor?

[@mohammadaladham7721]

What if the plates move between now and 36 million years?

[@DrPhr0]

Yeah that's the goal

[@thirdpedalnirvana]

I live in a forest. There is a canopy of trees above me. The sun never shines directly on my roof. Unfortunately solar panels would only be good at waiting for a falling branch to shatter them

[@SoloRenegade]

at tree-top altitudes (slower more turbulent air), old school "wild west" windmill designs are FAR more efficient than the larger 3-bladed propeller styles.

[@billc.4584]

Great stuff.