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Comment by RetpolineDrama | Hacker News Reader

We want civilian EMP hardening not just for a nuclear war, but also for an unexpected solar event. We want to be able to handle whatever nature throws at us, our fellow apes combined.

I just rounded off my most recent expansion to 120kw peak production with 500kwh storage, all EMP hardened to well above carrington event levels.

Most of you have a house full of IoT crap dependent on AWS (region) to function.

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What are you using to store ~37 Tesla Powerwalls worth of energy? How is it EMP hardened?

Is there a guide you followed or have for how to do this kind of hardening? I’ve wanted to do this for a while, don’t know where to start.

A grounded steel garbage can with aluminum lining can actual work fairly well as a faraday cage. You can put emergency electronics in there (radio, backup batteries, collapsible solar panel, old laptop, lights, etc).

> I just rounded off my most recent expansion to 120kw peak production with 500kwh storage

How are you producing 120kw? That's the equivalent of around 300 solar panels (assuming 400W panels).

That's only like 300 * $100 for the panels if you buy them used. That's less than a Model 3. Installation usually costs far far more than the panels. If you have plenty of room and you can install them on the ground, and you are remote enough you can do it without permits or permits are easy to deal with (so really this means not California or New York) and wind isn't a huge concern (so not the Atlantic or Gulf coast) and your neighbors aren't constantly in your business (so not Texas) then this is easily done by someone who has a strong interest, a moderate income, and is a little handy. It is especially easy if you live somewhere so dry that wildfire is not a huge concern, and of course you need enough sunny days for it to be economical somewhat (although with this many panels you could live off this setup even in an Alaskan winter). My guess is they live in New Mexico or Nevada.

> That's only like 300 * $100 for the panels if you buy them used. That's less than a Model 3. Installation usually costs far far more than the panels.

I brought it up more for the space requirements. That’s a physically huge system. Panels are only a fraction of the overall cost. Unless you have a massive commercial building somewhere, 300 panels are going to take up a huge amount of ground-mount space. You also need a lot of inverters, wiring, etc.

They also make claims about EMP hardening, which puts this into exotic build territory. Or maybe just a fantasy?

I don't think it's very hard to EMP harden anything that has a physical size less than a few hundred meters. The power grid is in danger because there is a huge potential created over very long distances. I think to be protected from EMP just requires isolation from large DC voltages, which can be done with an isolating transformer and some varistors? But something which is not miles long and isn't connected to the grid won't really be touched by an EMP anyway.

A couple hundred panels is less than half an acre or so.

Which, yeah, completely un-doable in manhattan (they already rules out NY anyways), but 10 acre lots are a thing in plenty of places.

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