Here's the stats on the fuel savings so far:
7500 total miles
4600 gas miles
2300 electric miles
600 solar miles
$330 fuel savings (compared to Subaru outback)
$66/month in savings
I expect the average savings to go up significantly more now that I'm charging mostly with solar and the range is maximized from warmer weather.
Charging Chevy Volt electric vehicle with off grid solar power, for even better value than Bitcoin mining.I met someone at the Bitcoin meetups who was buying used volts and fixing them up. Every meetup they would talk about all the features of the car that made it stand apart from other electric hybrids. The Bitcoin price was also ripping at the time and had recently broke 100k for the first time. I had been driving a lot more too, attending a Bitcoin meetup a week, sometimes two in a week. Most of the time the meetups were over an hour drive from the homestead. I was burning up as many sats in fuel as I could earn at a meetup a lot of times. Once I realized turning the solar power production into miles on the road would net me more Bitcoin in the end with the fuel savings vs using that power to mine, it was time to make the purchase. Getting an electric vehicle at the beginning of winter offered an underwhelming experience to start. The vehicles electric range was greatly reduced by the cold and I hardly had any solar power to charge it. As the days got longer and warmer the electric range drastically increased to the point where I can do most local trips without burning any gas.
Another sunny day and some warmer temperatures too, which means the roads were clear. The Chevy Volt is a plug in electric vehicle with a gas generator, in very cold weather or when the roads are bad the Subaru Outback is the vehicle of choice, but today the weather was good to take the Volt out for some errands.
Thanks to Bitcoin meetups, the Volt was acquired p2p for Bitcoin and today was the first day conditions were good to charge it back up with solar power. While the value of mining Bitcoin with solar is good, using solar power to charge a vehicle is even better!
Hour for hour, solar charging the volt is about 3x more valuable than solar mining Bitcoin when comparing the fuel savings to driving the Subaru Outback. In the summer, with warmer weather, this ratio will get even better (assuming the bitcoin price doesn't 3x by then) because the battery gets more efficient when it's warm. (I also have some very cool plans this summer related to Bitcoin mining and this vehicle too...)
Oh, and I'm also still mining Bitcoin with the solar power today too, because I can only charge Volt at 12amps on 120v, I've got 24amps to work with.
#permaculture #permies #homesteading #meshtadel #solarpower #offgrid #ev #electricvehicle #pev
nevent1q…mkke
#permaculture #permies #homesteading #meshtadel #electricvehicle #solarpower #circulareconony #p2p