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by kimmk 1485 days ago
This used to be the case, however the new dish along with recent firmware updates brings the power usage down to around 50 W on average.
2 comments

Indeed, even the older round dish is down to 60-80W from 90-110W last year. Doable now with solar and a battery.
50W is still more than 1 kWh per day.
Are you working 24 hours of the day?

An M1 Macbook will draw an average of about 30W under load.

Starlink dish is about 50W.

80W * 8 hours = 640Wh

With a 100W solar panel generating 200Wh total throughout the day, you would use up 440Wh of your 1000Wh battery.

These are conservative estimates. My M1 pulls less than 20W at most times and you can get well over 200Wh from a 100W panel in a day. Tweak the numbers just a bit and you get indefinite power for a 40 hour work week.

Issue is, if you're really in the sticks (and therefore no 2g/3g/4g/5g service), you're completely disconnected unless the thing is on, idling away at 50w.

Sure you're not using data while you're sleeping, but you might want to be able to get a call from someone if they really need to get in touch with you. Or other passive tasks where you want to at least take a call/message/email if required.

Even in a residential environment, I've toyed with a timer that cuts my ISP modem and router overnight (and kills smart devices from trying to phone home...) because falling back to 3g/4g saves me ~15 watts, but it's honestly dollars/year of savings.

I do a ton of backpacking/camping/overlanding/etc and most places you can reach by car have at least some kind of reception. It's not like you will always be 100% off the grid.

If you just need a way to stay in touch, one option is to use a satellite SMS service, like the Garmin inReach.

Though, if you really want to run that setup 24/7, 600W of panels and a 2kW battery should do it. Bump that up to 800W and 3kW and you won't have any worries.

You can also add a small gas generator to the mix for emergencies.

> most places you can reach by car have at least some kind of reception

You aren't very adventurous with where you take your car. There are large swathes of the west with no cell coverage and passable forest roads.

Of course someone had to make this comment, but don't you worry, I've driven plenty of remote trails.

Obviously there are many places where there isn't cell coverage, but the vast majority (of even very remote places) has some type of coverage. I've been hours from the nearest asphalt road, in the middle of the desert and still have coverage. This is more often than not the case. Use a cell booster with an antenna on a pole, and you can extend this range even further.

My point is that you will not need 24/7 satellite connection just for taking calls, the vast majority of the time you will be near a service area. If taking calls is important to you, you can almost always find a place to camp with service (or carry a satellite phone). I also don't find many people in the truly remote areas camping out for extended periods of time. Most of the time, people want to be relatively close to services, for many other reasons.

Uh, are you looking to carry around a Starlink receiver inside your backpack...?