| Arduino C. He's probably running it on a microcontroller that likely needs about 32mA full throttle, maybe 80ma depending on what type. They're not efficiently designed usually, and there's probably a wiznet using another watt at peak. All in all, 1.2 to 1.5W would be my guess. That is 36 watt hours per day for 24/7. We have, in a fairly dark ish winter, probably 2 hours of equivalent peak sun(Every square meter gets about 2KW per day of raw energy, which a good solar panel can get 18 to 25% of last I checked). I would probably only want to by a 25W panel for this just for cost and size. That's about 1 square foot. 50Wh a day in those 2 hours. Lose half for non optimal placement, 25Wh a day. Lose 70% for cheap electronics, and another 70% in conversions with more cheap electronics(One can do way better for not that much more), and we should get about 12Wh per day. This is, assuming it's not running full time and the Ethernet module has power save or sleep features, possibly enough to run all day if it's lightly used, but will almost certainly be enough for 6-8 hours. even a dark day. If you are in Arizona in the summer you will of course be getting 3 to 4 times this. And if you have good electronics and placement you could probably double it again, but good electronics are hard because most MPPT controllers use 25mA sitting idle, you'll need a decent sized panel to keep up with idle loads. I could also be wrong and they could be using an ESP32 with WiFi, or the Ethernet module could be better than I thought and use green ethernet modes for short range. That would mean the power could be about a quarter to a half of what I imagined depending on load. Of course, this doesn't account for the modem and other network gear in his place. But even then, an ESP32 can host it's own wifi, so if you just wanted a pure server for people right nearby, power usage can be very very low. |