We Need Solutions to the Problem of Unreliable Electricity Supply in My Home Country

Living in the Third World country that I call home (South Africa), having consistently reliable and stable Internet connection is something of a luxury and a rarity. Consequently, I have had to think of ways to work around that in order to get work done despite obstacles and setbacks. Simply being flexible enough to get work done when I do have electricity supply isn't going to be sufficient, since I don't know for certain when that will be, I need to sleep for at least seven hours at some point once every twenty-four and there's not enough time in the day. (Even if there is a load-shedding schedule, "bonus" outages due to faults and overuse, particularly in Autumn and Winter, can throw it out and often do.) If I don't make another plan (and soon), then I am going to be unable to get sufficient work done in order to earn enough to provide for myself and my family on a monthly basis.

Recently, I decided that one of the ways to overcome the grid failures/power shortage is to move my workstation and tools to a GNU/Linux node running on Linode. That way, I have an always-up compute instance running 24/7 that I can access from anywhere, at any time, provided I have electricity, Internet connection and a secure shell (SSH) client with secure copy (SCP) capabilities. (On Windows, that's SmarTTY. For GNU/Linux, I can use Muon or Termius.) It will only cost me $5-10 USD a month, which is an expense that I can easily incorporate into my monthly expenses and for which I can bill my client. However, that still doesn't solve the problem of having electricity and Internet connection, even when the grid fails. For that, I need something else.

Unfortunately, I cannot currently afford the fuel necessary to run a generator for four to nine or more hours a day (the time it takes to get a day's work done, not counting house- and yard-work). A couple of days ago, it occurred to me that a possible solution would be to purchase a laptop battery and charger, as well as any additional parts to build a circuit that would enable me to run a WiFi-enabled BeagleBone or Rasbperry Pi off that. I figured that since a single-board computer (SBC) has lower power requirements and uses less power than a laptop, I might be able to run it for longer than a few hours. However, that might be rather costly to set up and building the circuit could be somewhat involved, especially since I don't have all the required tools at my disposal (because they were stolen) or a workbench on which to do so.

Edit, a few hours later: An American client, for whom I have been doing freelance work in the few hours a day in which I do have power, just to get by, has been sending me links to various products that make use of laptop batteries to provide external power. There's one that recharges through solar panels. I like the look of that. I'm going to see if I can find something locally, since I'm not a fan of Big Tech companies and don't want to support Amazon (not just because it can be finicky about shipping tech to South Africa).

Last night, another idea occurred to me: I could use a power bank or two instead, possibly splicing the output cables together with a couple of rectifier diodes, some caps, a resistor and a barrel jack once I can afford to replace my tools and buy the parts. The advantage of this is that the power bank(s) already has/have all the necessary circuitry for charging and outputting 5V @ 1A, which is perfectly adequate for an SBC doing nothing more than running GNU/Linux and SSH. (Heavier loads, such as a LAMP stack, might require up to 3A on a Pi.) Another advantage is that a couple of power banks are probably going to be cheaper than what I'd originally considered, which was customised/modified laptop circuitry. The downside, of course, is that drawing power from a rechargeable battery is never going to be as efficient as directly drawing it from a converter/transformer, thanks to the Laws of Thermodynamics. But this isn't about efficiency. It's about being able to overcome a major obstacle to productivity. Having to down tools and stop working every time the electricity goes off (which it does frequently and for prolonged periods) is definitely horribly inefficient and puts me at a major disadvantage.

"If I stay here, trouble will find me. If I stay here, I'll never leave. ... So I believe.
— The National; "Sea of Love"; Trouble Will Find Me

Ultimately, I need to get to a point where I'm living completely off-grid, generating and storing my own electricity (probably using solar power, because there's a lot of sunshine here) and processing/treating my own water (probably rainwater, because there's a lot of that too) and sewage. The way things are going in my country of residence, they're only going to get worse. (The problem isn't only that the infrastructure doesn't exist because it wasn't created or properly maintained. That's only part of it. The other part is that criminal syndicates operating within the government are sabotaging the coal supply by dumping rocks and metal ore into it, since coal is paid for by weight. These impurities damage the plants, which are already taking strain. The chief investigator who discovered this and reported on it received death threats and his home was fired upon.) Such a disconnected way of life might become a necessity, rather than an option. It's either that or gap it for Europe (probably Italy, Spain or Portugal). All that's going to be expensive and a long way off, though. For now, I've got to stay focussed on incremental improvements that I can achieve. The only missing piece in my current idea/plan is a WiFi-enabled SBC that can run GNU/Linux or me knowing enough C/C++ to write an SSH+SCP client capable of running on an Arduino Mega with microSD card and WiFi shields (or one that combines them). That's probably going to cost me an extra $125 USD I don't currently have and somehow need to bring in. I best get back to work while I'm still able to ...

Snark out!

Lead image: Photo by Andre Moura from/on Pexels