4 ms·

I didn't expect Starlink equipment to be very power hungry. That's unfortunate. Really damages my rural off-grid small home fantasy.

timbit42 5y ago
Well, it's talking to satellites 400 kms away.
jws 5y ago
2kWHr/day is about 500 watts of solar panels (just for starlink, similar math for the rest of the stuff). So that's about $750 plus brackets, wires and stuff. You'll need a battery bank and you will trade off the size of the battery bank against the size of the solar array to survive partly cloudy days, but there will always a cloudy period longer than your batteries will provide, so get a small generator running on whatever fuel is convenient (you want to charge using at least 1/4 the capacity of your generator to keep the efficiency up, so small generator unless you have vast batteries). Then you don't need such a big battery bank or solar array. In the cost of a small home, the solar/battery/generator is minor. $1500 panels, $1000 inverter charger, $1000 lead acid batteries (5 years, then lithium will make sense), $2000 generator, $2000 more because I underestimate… $7500 all in. Fantasy is still a go!
oh_sigh 5y ago
It's about as power hungry as your laptop. Less so than a desktop. It's totally reasonable if you're installing a solar system to add a little more capacity to handle that much load. You can also turn it off when you aren't using it(or have your access point turn it on only when a wireless device connects to it, or something like that).
stephen_g 5y ago
Why not? It’s a phased array, and the bandwidth is high, so you need a decent amount of RF power. The amplifiers aren’t very efficient at the kind of frequencies it operates at so that makes it worse! For reference, a company I worked at produced a Ka-band (27.5-31GHz) block upconverter that produced 25W (this was used for geostationary mostly, usually with a 1m dish), and it could draw something like 200 W or more when saturated.
TawandaMoyo 5y ago
Same here, thought Starlink would be low power. Still, 100W is acceptable I suppose

timbit42 5y ago

Well, it's talking to satellites 400 kms away.

jws 5y ago

2kWHr/day is about 500 watts of solar panels (just for starlink, similar math for the rest of the stuff). So that's about $750 plus brackets, wires and stuff. You'll need a battery bank and you will trade off the size of the battery bank against the size of the solar array to survive partly cloudy days, but there will always a cloudy period longer than your batteries will provide, so get a small generator running on whatever fuel is convenient (you want to charge using at least 1/4 the capacity of your generator to keep the efficiency up, so small generator unless you have vast batteries). Then you don't need such a big battery bank or solar array. In the cost of a small home, the solar/battery/generator is minor. $1500 panels, $1000 inverter charger, $1000 lead acid batteries (5 years, then lithium will make sense), $2000 generator, $2000 more because I underestimate… $7500 all in. Fantasy is still a go!

oh_sigh 5y ago

It's about as power hungry as your laptop. Less so than a desktop. It's totally reasonable if you're installing a solar system to add a little more capacity to handle that much load. You can also turn it off when you aren't using it(or have your access point turn it on only when a wireless device connects to it, or something like that).

stephen_g 5y ago

Why not? It’s a phased array, and the bandwidth is high, so you need a decent amount of RF power. The amplifiers aren’t very efficient at the kind of frequencies it operates at so that makes it worse! For reference, a company I worked at produced a Ka-band (27.5-31GHz) block upconverter that produced 25W (this was used for geostationary mostly, usually with a 1m dish), and it could draw something like 200 W or more when saturated.

TawandaMoyo 5y ago

Same here, thought Starlink would be low power. Still, 100W is acceptable I suppose