Windternet: Designing grid-liberated servers for regenerative energy communities

Abstract

Imaginations of server practices that depend on renewable energy, Such as wind or solar, highlight alternative paradigms to the fossil Fuel intensive, resource hungry computation of cloud regimes. More often than not, the materials used to maintain off-gridness, Such as batteries and solar panels, depend on intensive resource Extraction, land grabbing and damage to soil dependent Ecosystems. This raises important questions of how both Renewables and computing are dependent on extractive practices. In response, the windternet project explores how regenerative Commitments can act as resource “limits” capable of challenging And generating alternative approaches in computing otherwise, Renewables and sustainable technological prototyping more Generally. Following propositions of regenerative agriculture and Related approaches that start from a point of not only sustaining but Actively improving socioecological relations, we outline an account Of the design practice of a grid-liberated, hybrid solar and wind Powered regenerative energy community server. Transversing Across different imaginaries of limits and abundance, we discuss How components in the designs of regenerative prototypes can be Substituted, eliminated or repurposed. This includes growing Compost-promoting wind turbine blades from mycelium, Repurposing e-waste generators and developing a custom low-cost, Open source hybrid charge controller for low power servers. In Doing so, we explore what it can mean to center regenerative Commitments when practicing with technological and Computational tools for the resourcing of community Infrastructures.