Short answer: Jim Olsen says he lives at 10,200 feet in Colorado on six solar arrays, lithium iron phosphate batteries and Starlink, getting 300 to 400 down, and can run six to seven days without sun.
Watch this answer from Episode 55 (starts at 18:33) · Episode 55 notes and transcript
From Episode 55: Every Client Is Fortune 500. What Do They Know About AI That You Don’t?, starting at 18:33.
Sam Nadler [18:33]: This will be more exciting when it's the AI personal chef, and I don't have to think about preparing dinner for a family of four every evening. The one thing just to wrap up the show in one minute, Jim, I read that you're off... You're CTO. Yeah. You're off grid. You're Correct. Yeah. Give us a
Jim Olsen [18:50]: Yeah. So I'm, solar powered on that, and we're working over Starlink right now. So I have my own network that's powered up over here, and, I mean, it's continued. I've had it since the very beginning, and it's continued to improve. We get, like... I get, like, three to 400 down on that kind of thing, about 30 or so up. So as you can tell, it's working really good. It's actually a hailstorm out right now, and you haven't seen a glitch. So we're doing the... There. But, yeah, we're... Right now, I live at 10,200 feet in Colorado, and, yeah, it's... Power lines are miles away, and it's a dirt road to get up here. So it is pretty amazing that I can work from up here, and it's woody heat and all that kind of thing. Our own water out of a spring and the simple life.
Jordan Metzner [19:38]: Wow. That's incredible. So you have solar charging up batteries and then using the batteries in the nighttime type of thing?
Jim Olsen [19:44]: Yep. Correct. So I have six different arrays of solar panels, and they go into lithium iron phosphate batteries, which is newer. I used to use lead acid, which wasn't nearly as good. These batteries are amazing. I charge great. They even heat themselves up if they get too cold. So, yeah, I run fully off of that. I do have a backup generator if needed. I have not run it in a long time. So, we do generally produce enough, but when you get a long... Good bout of rain or snow or something, you might need that. So it's good to have.
Jordan Metzner [20:18]: Yeah. Like, with no sunlight per se, if, smithers blocks the sun, how long can the batteries kinda power the house for?
Jim Olsen [20:25]: Well, that'll depend on the load because, I can check... I can obviously vary how much I turn on or turn off. But if normal load, I could go about six to seven days with absolutely zero sunlight
Jordan Metzner [20:35]: Wow. That's incredible.
Jim Olsen [20:36]: I currently have. So I have eight very large batteries.
Jordan Metzner [20:39]: Awesome.
Sam Nadler [20:41]: Oh, okay. Great. Jim, it was a pleasure. Thank you, everyone, and we'll see you next week.
Jordan Metzner [20:46]: Bye.
