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100W 24x7? That's quite a lot, right? This adds some color perhaps to the argument that this is for underserviced regions -- they don't mean third-world or im

100W 24x7? That's quite a lot, right? This adds some color perhaps to the argument that this is for underserviced regions -- they don't mean third-world or impoverished even though it sounds like that, at least when I heard people defending Starlink.

flyingfences 5y ago
100W is a couple of light bulbs. It's not nothing, but it's not all that much. It'd be challenging off-grid, but not a concern anywhere with electrical infrastructure.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  100W is a lot. It is a couple of very old incandescent bulbs or ten 60W equivalent LED bulbs.
  - ls612 5y ago
    It is a lot but it’s also outside so it won’t heat up your house and in most places it only adds up to about $10 a month or less on your power bill
  - katbyte 5y ago
    perspective i guess - i used to use 2 100watt bulbs to light a single room.
    - user5994461 5y ago
      For perspective, these will cost around $0.3 a day in electricity, when in the room you spend most of your time in. And yes, that's easily over a hundred dollar a year.
  - tigershark 5y ago
    No, it’s ONE incandescent bulb. And much less than the bulbs that were needed to light a fairly large room. We used to have a lot of 100W lights until not many years ago, honestly I don’t see the problem in spending that amount of energy if you have no other means to access a fast internet connection.
- tialaramex 5y ago
  A more durable reference comparison: 100W is similar to a human. An adult human, not exercising heavily, but not asleep, maybe reading a book, or talking to a friend, something in that ballpark. Also, if you aren't off-grid, you're apparently not so far from civilisation that previous utility suppliers couldn't be bothered to provide service to you. Maybe if this generation's utility suppliers got their act together you wouldn't need Starlink anyway.
martincmartin 5y ago
At 25c per kWhr, that's 60 cents a day, ~ $18/mo.
- phire 5y ago
  If it's your only (or best) option for decent internet, that cost probably won't consern you at all. People who are off grid might grumble at having to provision more solar, battery and inverter capacity. But for people who have other Internet options, $18/month might influence their decision.
- SamBam 5y ago
  That's actually non-trivial. That makes the monthly cost nearly 20% higher.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  To be clear, electrical rates are much different in different parts of the country. At my house in the suburbs outside St. Louis, MO, the cost is about $9/month. Not nothing, but not too significant compared to the total cost of the service.
- minhazm 5y ago
  25c per kWh is pretty high, I think that's high even for CA. Most states are in the 12-13 cents per kWh range [1]. 1. https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
  - SavantIdiot 5y ago
    Many places are tiered, so if you go above a certain kW/h the rate doubles or triples. Cali and parts of NY state are like that (never lived anywhere else tho).
  - skellington 5y ago
    Electriciy in CA is ridiculously expensive. $0.27/kWh average rate is common in CA. Going up to $0.40+ if you get into the higher tiers. But even with insane generation rates, most of the electric bill is the power company service fee, not the generation fee. For example, out of a $200/mo bill, maybe $50 is electric generation, the rest is the service fee. PG&E is insanely badly run.
geerlingguy 5y ago
It's a little less than a modern efficient fridge (2-3 kWh/day). I used to have 100W light bulbs in the house, so it's not a crazy amount of power, but it's most significant to anyone planning on using Starlink 'off-grid', since it's a lot more than just a little 4G or 5G hotspot, or a standard DSL or Cable modem and router.
- morsch 5y ago
  A modern efficient fridge uses way less than 1 kWh/day. The one I bought in 2018 uses 0.44 kWh/day. 2-3 kWh/day is awful. Three random examples: https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/kge36awca/bosch-kge36awca-serie-6 https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/kge36awca/bosch-kge36aw... https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/ffu3dx1/hotpoint-ffu3dx1-day1-freestanding-fridge-freezer https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/ffu3dx1/hotpoint-ffu3dx... https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/htf-540dp7/haier-htf540dp7-fridge-freezers-american-fridge-freezer https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/htf-540dp7/haier-htf540...
  - geerlingguy 5y ago
    I should be more specific: an efficient 'USA-megahome-sized' fridge. Our typical fridge is often 25-35 cubic feet (850 litre)... that's about double the size of the small fridges used in many parts of the world.
    - morsch 5y ago
      That's not an average size even in the USA and you could probably still do it on less than 1 kWh. Of course, once you're doing the 'USA-megahome-sized' thing, it's pointless to bother with energy efficient fridges. And many people don't!
oscardssmith 5y ago
It totally can make sense in third world improved regions, just not in homes (and/or possibly not on all the time). You could pretty easily run a small business off of 100 mb down, 50 up, and in that setting, you can probably power it with a small solar panel and just turn it off at night.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  A "small" solar panel? A 100W solar panel is 2 x 3 ft (.60m x .90m). You'd need multiple panels even if you run it only during the day, because fixed solar doesn't just go from 0% to 100% once the sun rises.
  - ecpottinger 5y ago
    That is what batteries are for. and you don't need many to do the job.
    - dboreham 5y ago
      A reliable 100W solar installation is indeed non-trivial especially at higher latitudes. Source: typing this on a packets routed via a solar powered relay site on a mountain. Our site only needs ~20W.
  - cyberge99 5y ago
    Solar technology, including the footprint is advancing rapidly. I believe there are panels that can do much higher wattage around that size. Your point stands though. “Small” is a relative term.
    - qayxc 5y ago
      > Solar technology, including the footprint is advancing rapidly. Is it, though? The price drops have been significant, yes, but the efficiency of COTS panels hasn't seen any dramatic improvements in the past 20 years. Silicon panels have a theoretical limit of 29% efficiency and current models are close to 20%. There's not much room for improvement left there.
SamBam 5y ago
Anyone know if Starlink is happy turning off and on again throughout the day? I know we are all used to 24 hour internet, but if I were energy-conscious or off-grid, I might want to turn it on for 3-4 half-hour sessions during the day.
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I tested it a few times (putting in stow mode, turning off while I was rebuilding network rack, etc.), and it always picked back up within 2-4 minutes. I know a few people who have Starlink on an outlet timer or WiFi switched outlet, and only have it run during the day. It seems to be okay with that.
ecpottinger 5y ago
A single 400 watt solar panel and batteries could power this 24/7, no problem.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  Doubtful. Most of the US does not get 6 hours of full/peak sun (2400w/6 = 400w)
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  Only if you live in the Sahara. Panels are rated for power they produce at 1,000W/m2 irradiance, in UK average is 100W, that panel will produce 40W on average.
  - turtlebits 5y ago
    That seems absurdly low. My 250w panels get within 90% of rated output and I'm in Seattle.
    - coder543 5y ago
      I think they're averaging throughout the year, using the number of "Mean Annual Sunshine Hours" * "Percent Possible Sunshine", which would account for average cloud cover and such. I'm sure that for a few hours during the summer, the solar irradiance in London is probably 90% of what it is at the equator. That doesn't help most of the year.
- bick_nyers 5y ago
  Gotta remember the double whammy here. Starlink is mostly rolled out at higher latitudes where solar power is less effective. Still, solar is cheaper than utility power most of the time. Might need 1.5 of those panels. Maybe I'm crazy, but I wouldn't consider off-grid unless I had like a 5KWh array at a minimum. Probably with wood burning stove as primary heating source if I really couldn't expand that solar for electric heating due to cost. With heat inverter pump tech. taking over fridges, water heaters, AC, etc. and making them so much more efficient, it can give a lot of headroom on energy requirements.
spookthesunset 5y ago
Is this power requirement just because the hardware hasn't had a chance for years of iteration or is it a "hard" requirement that no amount of product iteration can fix? In other words is it 100W all the time because of physics or is it just "sub optimal" hardware that in theory can be mitigated through smarter protocols and fancier hardware?
- qayxc 5y ago
  For the foreseeable future it's mostly physics. The "all the time"-part is of course something that can be worked on even without changing the hardware. A simple switch on the outlet to turn it off during the night or if everybody is at work/school and thus doesn't need it would reduce power consumption a lot already. "Fancier hardware" could also mean a timer for the outlet switch or a "smart home"-solution. This could mitigate connection time by turning the router back on before you arrive at home/wake-up. There's a lot of potential for not having to use 100W all the time without hardware changes.
- aWidebrant 5y ago
  Presuming that a large part of those 100 W go to the power amps for uplink transmissions, it seems that it should be possible to make at least that part scale with how much outgoing data the terminal is actually sending. But that may require new hardware, and it may conflict with the ambition of reducing cost per unit.
- user5994461 5y ago
  I'd say 80% physics, 20% poor hardware/design. Talking to a satellite in space through the atmosphere has a lot of attenuation. That's for the physics. For comparison, wifi is 0.03W for 100 meters, mobile phones are 2W for 35km range. A satellite using 100W is not out of the ordinary. There's a balance to decide on, power vs bandwidth, noting that doubling power has little effect on signal (log2). They could probably half the power for little difference in operation, but a notable difference on the bill. It's exactly the sort of thing that should be adjustable, there could be a setting to adjust power/bandwidth/quality. Both for customers and for support. edit: the video mentions up to 300 Mbps and up to 200W power consumption during snow (extra power to melt the snow). They have a lot of margin to reduce power while still being able to watch YouTube 4k.
turtlebits 5y ago
Yes, 2.4kw in a day is a lot. I was hoping to switch to it from tethered cell service for my off-grid cabin. (I need 24/7 for security cameras), but it looks like I won't be able to without a substantial solar and battery addition.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
stordoff 5y ago
It would cost me about £11/month to run. For context, I currently pay ~£80/month for electricity (UK average is ~£60[1]). Not prohibitive, but it's a pretty sizeable increase. When you consider I can get 4G connectivity[2] for £22/month, with significantly less power consumption,, it doesn't seem that attractive unless you have no other options. [1] Table 2.2.1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/annual-domestic-energy-price-statistics https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/annual-d... [2] Claiming typical down speeds of 50Mbps-100Mbps

flyingfences 5y ago

100W is a couple of light bulbs. It's not nothing, but it's not all that much. It'd be challenging off-grid, but not a concern anywhere with electrical infrastructure.

humanistbot 5y ago
100W is a lot. It is a couple of very old incandescent bulbs or ten 60W equivalent LED bulbs.
- ls612 5y ago
  It is a lot but it’s also outside so it won’t heat up your house and in most places it only adds up to about $10 a month or less on your power bill
- katbyte 5y ago
  perspective i guess - i used to use 2 100watt bulbs to light a single room.
  - user5994461 5y ago
    For perspective, these will cost around $0.3 a day in electricity, when in the room you spend most of your time in. And yes, that's easily over a hundred dollar a year.
- tigershark 5y ago
  No, it’s ONE incandescent bulb. And much less than the bulbs that were needed to light a fairly large room. We used to have a lot of 100W lights until not many years ago, honestly I don’t see the problem in spending that amount of energy if you have no other means to access a fast internet connection.
tialaramex 5y ago
A more durable reference comparison: 100W is similar to a human. An adult human, not exercising heavily, but not asleep, maybe reading a book, or talking to a friend, something in that ballpark. Also, if you aren't off-grid, you're apparently not so far from civilisation that previous utility suppliers couldn't be bothered to provide service to you. Maybe if this generation's utility suppliers got their act together you wouldn't need Starlink anyway.

martincmartin 5y ago

At 25c per kWhr, that's 60 cents a day, ~ $18/mo.

phire 5y ago
If it's your only (or best) option for decent internet, that cost probably won't consern you at all. People who are off grid might grumble at having to provision more solar, battery and inverter capacity. But for people who have other Internet options, $18/month might influence their decision.
SamBam 5y ago
That's actually non-trivial. That makes the monthly cost nearly 20% higher.
geerlingguy 5y ago
To be clear, electrical rates are much different in different parts of the country. At my house in the suburbs outside St. Louis, MO, the cost is about $9/month. Not nothing, but not too significant compared to the total cost of the service.
minhazm 5y ago
25c per kWh is pretty high, I think that's high even for CA. Most states are in the 12-13 cents per kWh range [1]. 1. https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/ https://www.electricchoice.com/electricity-prices-by-state/
- SavantIdiot 5y ago
  Many places are tiered, so if you go above a certain kW/h the rate doubles or triples. Cali and parts of NY state are like that (never lived anywhere else tho).
- skellington 5y ago
  Electriciy in CA is ridiculously expensive. $0.27/kWh average rate is common in CA. Going up to $0.40+ if you get into the higher tiers. But even with insane generation rates, most of the electric bill is the power company service fee, not the generation fee. For example, out of a $200/mo bill, maybe $50 is electric generation, the rest is the service fee. PG&E is insanely badly run.

geerlingguy 5y ago

It's a little less than a modern efficient fridge (2-3 kWh/day). I used to have 100W light bulbs in the house, so it's not a crazy amount of power, but it's most significant to anyone planning on using Starlink 'off-grid', since it's a lot more than just a little 4G or 5G hotspot, or a standard DSL or Cable modem and router.

morsch 5y ago
A modern efficient fridge uses way less than 1 kWh/day. The one I bought in 2018 uses 0.44 kWh/day. 2-3 kWh/day is awful. Three random examples: https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/kge36awca/bosch-kge36awca-serie-6 https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/kge36awca/bosch-kge36aw... https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/ffu3dx1/hotpoint-ffu3dx1-day1-freestanding-fridge-freezer https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/ffu3dx1/hotpoint-ffu3dx... https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/htf-540dp7/haier-htf540dp7-fridge-freezers-american-fridge-freezer https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/htf-540dp7/haier-htf540...
- geerlingguy 5y ago
  I should be more specific: an efficient 'USA-megahome-sized' fridge. Our typical fridge is often 25-35 cubic feet (850 litre)... that's about double the size of the small fridges used in many parts of the world.
  - morsch 5y ago
    That's not an average size even in the USA and you could probably still do it on less than 1 kWh. Of course, once you're doing the 'USA-megahome-sized' thing, it's pointless to bother with energy efficient fridges. And many people don't!

oscardssmith 5y ago

It totally can make sense in third world improved regions, just not in homes (and/or possibly not on all the time). You could pretty easily run a small business off of 100 mb down, 50 up, and in that setting, you can probably power it with a small solar panel and just turn it off at night.

humanistbot 5y ago
A "small" solar panel? A 100W solar panel is 2 x 3 ft (.60m x .90m). You'd need multiple panels even if you run it only during the day, because fixed solar doesn't just go from 0% to 100% once the sun rises.
- ecpottinger 5y ago
  That is what batteries are for. and you don't need many to do the job.
  - dboreham 5y ago
    A reliable 100W solar installation is indeed non-trivial especially at higher latitudes. Source: typing this on a packets routed via a solar powered relay site on a mountain. Our site only needs ~20W.
- cyberge99 5y ago
  Solar technology, including the footprint is advancing rapidly. I believe there are panels that can do much higher wattage around that size. Your point stands though. “Small” is a relative term.
  - qayxc 5y ago
    > Solar technology, including the footprint is advancing rapidly. Is it, though? The price drops have been significant, yes, but the efficiency of COTS panels hasn't seen any dramatic improvements in the past 20 years. Silicon panels have a theoretical limit of 29% efficiency and current models are close to 20%. There's not much room for improvement left there.

SamBam 5y ago

Anyone know if Starlink is happy turning off and on again throughout the day? I know we are all used to 24 hour internet, but if I were energy-conscious or off-grid, I might want to turn it on for 3-4 half-hour sessions during the day.

geerlingguy 5y ago
I tested it a few times (putting in stow mode, turning off while I was rebuilding network rack, etc.), and it always picked back up within 2-4 minutes. I know a few people who have Starlink on an outlet timer or WiFi switched outlet, and only have it run during the day. It seems to be okay with that.

ecpottinger 5y ago

A single 400 watt solar panel and batteries could power this 24/7, no problem.

turtlebits 5y ago
Doubtful. Most of the US does not get 6 hours of full/peak sun (2400w/6 = 400w)
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Only if you live in the Sahara. Panels are rated for power they produce at 1,000W/m2 irradiance, in UK average is 100W, that panel will produce 40W on average.
- turtlebits 5y ago
  That seems absurdly low. My 250w panels get within 90% of rated output and I'm in Seattle.
  - coder543 5y ago
    I think they're averaging throughout the year, using the number of "Mean Annual Sunshine Hours" * "Percent Possible Sunshine", which would account for average cloud cover and such. I'm sure that for a few hours during the summer, the solar irradiance in London is probably 90% of what it is at the equator. That doesn't help most of the year.
bick_nyers 5y ago
Gotta remember the double whammy here. Starlink is mostly rolled out at higher latitudes where solar power is less effective. Still, solar is cheaper than utility power most of the time. Might need 1.5 of those panels. Maybe I'm crazy, but I wouldn't consider off-grid unless I had like a 5KWh array at a minimum. Probably with wood burning stove as primary heating source if I really couldn't expand that solar for electric heating due to cost. With heat inverter pump tech. taking over fridges, water heaters, AC, etc. and making them so much more efficient, it can give a lot of headroom on energy requirements.

spookthesunset 5y ago

Is this power requirement just because the hardware hasn't had a chance for years of iteration or is it a "hard" requirement that no amount of product iteration can fix? In other words is it 100W all the time because of physics or is it just "sub optimal" hardware that in theory can be mitigated through smarter protocols and fancier hardware?

qayxc 5y ago
For the foreseeable future it's mostly physics. The "all the time"-part is of course something that can be worked on even without changing the hardware. A simple switch on the outlet to turn it off during the night or if everybody is at work/school and thus doesn't need it would reduce power consumption a lot already. "Fancier hardware" could also mean a timer for the outlet switch or a "smart home"-solution. This could mitigate connection time by turning the router back on before you arrive at home/wake-up. There's a lot of potential for not having to use 100W all the time without hardware changes.
aWidebrant 5y ago
Presuming that a large part of those 100 W go to the power amps for uplink transmissions, it seems that it should be possible to make at least that part scale with how much outgoing data the terminal is actually sending. But that may require new hardware, and it may conflict with the ambition of reducing cost per unit.
user5994461 5y ago
I'd say 80% physics, 20% poor hardware/design. Talking to a satellite in space through the atmosphere has a lot of attenuation. That's for the physics. For comparison, wifi is 0.03W for 100 meters, mobile phones are 2W for 35km range. A satellite using 100W is not out of the ordinary. There's a balance to decide on, power vs bandwidth, noting that doubling power has little effect on signal (log2). They could probably half the power for little difference in operation, but a notable difference on the bill. It's exactly the sort of thing that should be adjustable, there could be a setting to adjust power/bandwidth/quality. Both for customers and for support. edit: the video mentions up to 300 Mbps and up to 200W power consumption during snow (extra power to melt the snow). They have a lot of margin to reduce power while still being able to watch YouTube 4k.

turtlebits 5y ago

Yes, 2.4kw in a day is a lot. I was hoping to switch to it from tethered cell service for my off-grid cabin. (I need 24/7 for security cameras), but it looks like I won't be able to without a substantial solar and battery addition.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

stordoff 5y ago

It would cost me about £11/month to run. For context, I currently pay ~£80/month for electricity (UK average is ~£60[1]). Not prohibitive, but it's a pretty sizeable increase. When you consider I can get 4G connectivity[2] for £22/month, with significantly less power consumption,, it doesn't seem that attractive unless you have no other options. [1] Table 2.2.1 https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/annual-domestic-energy-price-statistics https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/annual-d... [2] Claiming typical down speeds of 50Mbps-100Mbps