[HH] Food hacking

[Greg London]

> LED light is so cheap we might be growing everything inside soon.
> 24 hours a day.

I'm not a grid expert, but I don't think the numbers add up for that.

For a single user, I could get a 5kw solar system for $10k
It will be ~400 square feet of panels at ~25% efficiency.
meaning it generates the power equivalent to 100 sq feet of natural sun.
That's a 10 foot by 10 foot herb garden, and it cost $10k to grow indoors.
Probably cheaper to plant it on the roof and use natural sunlight free.

As for feeding everyone:
One estimate is that it takes about 1 acre to grow food for
a person per year. That's 300 million acres.
3 acres of solar generators put out about 1gwh of electricity per year.
assume 25% efficiency for easy calculations/estimations.
That's 400 million-gillion watt hours of energy. 400 peta-watt hours.
Which I think is like, all the coal on the planet.

I believe the total us electrical consumption is 4pwh a year.

Greg


On Sat, April 1, 2017 11:10 am, Kurt Keville wrote:
> I think the OpenAG initiative is really ambitious. Publishing everything
> in ODF format... releasing their sensor designs, etc. Their numbers
> indicate a big increase in crop yield. LED light is so cheap we might be
> growing everything inside soon. 24 hours a day. They are already doing it
> in the basement of many NYC restaurants.
>
> BTW, did you see this?
> http://somervilledynamics.com/PGPcopter.htm
>
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 1, 2017, 10:05 AM Stephen Ronan <sronan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Went to the Gershoff Symposium yesterday at Tufts
>> https://nutrition.tufts.edu/event/2017-03-31/annual-gershoff-symposium
>> Found the talks by Isha Datar, who is a Shuttleworth Fellow,
>> https://www.shuttleworthfoundation.org/fellows/
>> and Caleb Harper of the MIT media lab's open agriculture project
>> https://www.media.mit.edu/groups/open-agriculture-openag/overview/
>> especially interesting... There are plenty of extended talks by each them
>> on Youtube that cover all the same material...  Here are a couple of
>> much shorter pieces that offer some highlights of their work. Isha Datar
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9DPaa9rssg
>> Caleb Harper
>> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YI569T0AMk
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