the way you'd scale it would be by using a system made out of these.

every time i need more capacity to hold a new waste source, i'd just get more batteries.

https://www.18650batterystore.com/18650-Batteries-s/106.htm

so, what am i going to do?

well, i think i've saved myself from paying an electrical bill for a while, already. i don't need to start messing around with converting heat to electricity. yet.

i want to finish my thought with the usb fan, but it's only necessary to an extent.

however, every time they boost the price, i'll need to do something to compensate and take something else off the grid, or down somehow.

if i can just find a way to run the fan off the lights using mirrors or lenses, for now, that's a win. step two will be getting a small battery, and a larger panel. and i will need bigger and bigger batteries and more and more efficient recycling options as the price increases - which it will.

for now, i need to get back to focusing on what i was doing.

something more exotic - and i'm not exactly channeling tesla because this source didn't exist when he lived - is the question of whether you can pull down radio waves and wifi signals.

again: that's not "free". it's being generated.

but, it's out there.

this is smart.

i would support introducing it into the building code.

so, what's a smart way to do this?

well, if your heater is near the window - and it probably is - then you can put one side on the window, and the other over the heater, then dump what you generate into a battery. and, the colder it is outside, the better it will work.

you could also potentially dig up your floors..

it's true that you'll lose a little of the heat, but the point is that you're wasting oodles of it in the first place.

if you could potentially set up a system that takes a few watts an hour from a dozen different sources, you could salvage enough heat to charge your batteries. ten sources at two-three watts each would be twenty-thirty watts an hour.

so, these are the two ways to salvage excess energy from around your home - light and heat. a potential third source would be sound, but it probably is too low efficiency to bother with.

if you don't use a lot of energy to begin with, i think you should be able to reduce your consumption to the big appliances, and please understand that i'm not proposing you can get off of the grid using these methods. you will need something like a solar panel outside to run your stove and your fridge, and your lights and your heaters in the first place.

but, i've piqued my own curiosity, here.

i have two heaters in here.

in canada, we live with these devices that emit hot air into our living spaces, and we have them on half the year.

it's very wasteful, and there's a potential source of recycling, there.

i want to be clear.

1) this isn't free energy, in the generative sense. it's energy recycling. i'm not generating energy out of nothing, i'm trying to find a way to reuse the light energy being ejected by the lights as waste. and, maybe you could reuse the energy from the heaters, too, which would be even more cost effective.

2) it's not free in terms of money, either. it costs me money to run the lights. it's just that i'm running the lights anyways, and the lights are currently relatively cheap. further, if i can find a way to generate electricity from the heaters, that's energy that my landlord is paying for.

3) it's therefore not a perpetual motion machine, and i'm not breaking the second law. certainly, i can't get more energy than i'm generating. but, lighting and heating are inherently wasteful, and if we go out of our way to efficiently recycle the energy we're wasting, then the end result may just go to show you how much you're actually wasting.

so.

could, i get some overhead led lights and feed a fresnel lens into a 200 W panel, with a homemade lithium battery array? at peak usage, i'm looking at 300 wh for a computer and maybe that much for extra gear, so if i can get 25 kw worth of battery space, and can get the fresnel lens running at something close to 50% efficiency, i could fill up more than i need for a full day in a few days. and, that's more than enough for continuous day-to-day use. i'd just have to scale it as best as i could.

one thing at a time....but, if electrical prices keep going up, i might have myself a new hobby.

but, wait.

if i use this panel, i can get 50-100 mA directly from the led.

i thought that wasn't enough.

but, if a fresnel lens can give me 5x that....

he showed a small fresnel lens at a 2x factor, and a big one at a 20x factor. surely, i can get one at 5x.

i'm going to wait until december, but we're still going with this.

i'm as curious as anything else, at this point. i'm an anarchist. fuck the 2nd law. or, at least, fuck being a slave to it. let's see how much we can break it, just for the fun of it.

so, i mentioned that empiricism is required for a valid epistemology.

my laptop was manufactured in 2006, and purchased as a refurbished model in mid-2010. the two t4300 processors were first manufactured in 2009, and the bios revision is likewise set to 2009, so i guess it got upgraded at the store. i should probably think of it as a 2009 model. nonetheless, it came with vista pre-installed, and is not a high-end machine at all.

usb 3.0 didn't exist until very late 2009, and you were probably unable to get your hands on a low-end consumer grade laptop with usb 3.0 ports until 2011 or 2012.

so, i must have usb 2.0 ports. and, if there's any further question about the issue, msinfo is clear enough about it:

why am i pulling more than an amp, then?

not 900 mA. 1.03 A.

see, those were my two options, logically - either i'm pulling more than i should be, or the device is restricted in what it can pull. it makes no sense that i'm getting over an amp out of the usb 2.0 ports. but, that's the actual answer.

so, the fan is indeed drawing at 2.5 W as advertised, and it's not a lot, for what it is. i'm not going to be able to drive this any further. that's as strong as it gets.

how, though? well, i guess that either the electricity in the board is faulty, or i got a very late usb 2.0 revision that can draw at usb 3.0 levels. well, do you have a better explanation?

i think that 500 mA is pushing it for a solar panel on a led light. i'll look into it, but it doesn't seem like a worthwhile investment, i don't think. rather, i've got it plugged into the wall socket drawing 2.5 W. there's a second usb slot; together, i can pull a maximum of 5 W from the wall over usb. so, i'm better off getting a second similar fan, maybe one that's just a tad bigger.

right now, i've got the 90W fan at half speed, which i hope is 45W. together, it's 47.5W. if i push this up to 50W, and i "only" save 40W, that's still pushing 30 kwh, or 15-20% of the total usage.

or, maybe i'll find the right solar cell technology, after all.

so, here's my updated information, in regard to the things i use frequently and want to get down to the 1.5-2.5 kwhish range:

ac fan (on full) - 0.08-0.09
ac fan (on low) - ??
laptop + monitor - 0.02-0.03
lights - 0.01-0.02 (per bulb)
modem - 0.01-0.02
usb fan - 0.002-0.003

also:
stove: 0.4-0.6
desktop pc - 0.2-0.3
coffee machine - 0.15-0.20
90s laptop - 0.05-0.06

i really only slept for about three hours yesterday morning, so it was actually kind of a long day, carrying over from thursday night. i wanted to get the finishing touches on inri000 done, but i instead ended up spending the afternoon clearing out shows for the rest of the week.

i have to get ready for the trip to toronto now, but i should hopefully have some time to upload a file or two before i go.

if i'm efficient about this, it might only take a few hours, but i don't want to get stuck.