Transitioning My Entire AI/LLM Workflow to 100% Solar Power
Posted by vesudeva@reddit | LocalLLaMA | View on Reddit | 40 comments
I'm excited to share a really cool milestone in my AI/LLM journey.
Brief backstory: Before diving into AI, I spent over a decade working in ecological fields such as the conservation corps, biodynamic farming, and natural habitat restoration. This background instilled in me a deep concern about the environmental impact of scaling AI without sustainable practices.
Driven by this concern, I've spent months planning and experimenting to make my AI work more eco-friendly. I'm thrilled to announce that I've successfully transitioned my entire operation to run on 100% sustainable solar power!
My current setup includes multiple linked Mac Pro tower desktops and custom code built from open-source libraries. While it's a bit experimental, this configuration is working great for my needs. All my LLM research, development, and client services now run exclusively on solar energy.
I'm curious if anyone else here has experimented with renewable energy for their LLM work?
For those interested in more details, I've written a brief blog post about this journey [here](https://medium.com/@betalabsllm/powering-the-future-be-ta-labs-revolutionary-100-solar-powered-ai-operation-444433e61d43).
Unknown-U@reddit
Mine works on solar most of the year but in winter it runs on good old German coal, not my fault but our gov decided that atomic power is more dirty than black coal.
carl2187@reddit
Yep. That's the world for you. Politicians listen to the vocal super-minority that doesn't understand the technology instead of using sound judgment and reason to move us to energy independence.
Electric cars only make sense if they're charged via nuclear. Currently we're just moving the pollution and doubling it due to efficiency losses in the grid even when we use coal. But yet they keep shoving this electric car only idea down our throats.
It's just sad to think about at this point how much potential is wasted due to poor policy decisions regarding nuclear.
Qwen30bEnjoyer@reddit
???
Electric cars have their problems, but I don’t understand how you would come to the conclusion that gas is the more power-efficient mode of transportation. I’m sure transmission losses make the electric less appealing, but I struggle to see how gasoline / diesel vehicles with their refining, transportation, and extraction overheads are more efficient per watt hour.
carl2187@reddit
Im comparing electric cars powered by coal to electric cars powered by nuclear.
I never mentioned petrol.
Qwen30bEnjoyer@reddit
That's what I get for commenting while travelling :) I'll try and have stronger coffee before being dumb.
Unknown-U@reddit
I think it would be possible to go without nuclear power in maybe 20 years, but before that it is the best solution. Electric cars are a blessing when you have a home and plain stupid without one, or an owned/rented parking place with a charger.
MohammadAbir@reddit
That’s an impressive setup! I’ve been using Kumo by SoranoAI to help design and optimize renewable energy systems, and it’s been incredibly useful for planning solar-powered tech operations. The AI maps out components, runs load calculations, and even suggests layout adjustments for better efficiency. It might be a great complement to your workflow if you’re looking to further fine-tune performance.
BachAgain11@reddit
This is a shill account, regularly posting up to 100 weekly comments primarily pushing the following products/brands:
- MyOutDesk
- Ethos Insurance
- Helix Mattresses
- Kumo AI
- Bayside Recovery
- Karma browser extension
- Dakota Prep
Biggest_Cans@reddit
Plants love CO2.
That said, I have a fully solar setup too! Because I live in a region where it makes sense to get a few panels. I didn't even have to work in a field where people talk about sustainability or degrowth. Or signal to everyone how morally amazing I am.
It just saves me money on my bill. Sorry plants, my electric bill being cheap is more important than getting you some extra CO2.
sluuuurp@reddit
Plants love stable ecosystems, which means many of them won’t like rapid global warming.
Biggest_Cans@reddit
Did you know that the earth is 20% greener than it was 20 years ago?
https://terra.nasa.gov/news/modis-shows-earth-is-greener
sluuuurp@reddit
Did you know that climate change causes desertification? Obviously climate change will help some plants and hurt others, that’s all I’m saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertification#Climate_change
Biggest_Cans@reddit
Just came across this thread by chance.
https://x.com/BjornLomborg/status/1825525529996591196
Funny. We'll have to find a way to complain about greening now.
sluuuurp@reddit
Rapid plant growth can be bad, and rapid plant death can be bad. In general any rapid change to an ecosystem is bad, animals cannot evolve to adapt in a few decades or centuries. Some of the rhetoric about this is more or less alarmist, but that is the truth.
Biggest_Cans@reddit
Desertification being a product of global warming is entirely conjecture led by alarmists who keep getting proven wrong.
I'm inclined to believe that more heat (if that even happens) = more rainfall. Obviously. Combined with more CO2 that's a looooot of plants, the lack of which is the actual main cause of desertification.
Ultra-Engineer@reddit
That's an impressive achievement! Transitioning to 100% solar power for AI/LLM work is no small feat, especially with the energy demands that kind of processing requires. It's awesome to see someone taking sustainability seriously, especially in a field where energy consumption can easily become an afterthought. Plus, your background in ecological work makes this milestone even more meaningful.
I bet there are a lot of people in the AI community who haven't even considered the environmental impact of their setups. Your experience could really inspire others to think about how they can integrate renewable energy into their own workflows.
And that blog post sounds like a great resource for anyone interested in following in your footsteps. Props to you for open-sourcing your data and techniques—sharing that knowledge could spark a lot of innovation in the AI community.
Out of curiosity, did you face any significant challenges getting your setup off the ground, or did your ecological background give you a leg up in making it happen?
synn89@reddit
Please do publish the Mac training details. I tested using Axolotl on Mac back in April and it was quite a bit slower than Nvidia.
I'm really hoping we see more energy efficient solutions. Not just for solar, but even in a rack lower power can be very useful for people with more casual needs. I'd love to see some company come out with a RISC-V board with 256GB RAM setup like Apple's Silicon.
Kafka-trap@reddit
I live off solar power 100% no generator with lifepo4 batteries so all my local ai stuff is renewable energy powered.
IlIllIlllIlllIllll@reddit
so did you use lots of batteries, or does it only work during the daytime?
carl2187@reddit
Fyi, tools like zerogpt are a scam. These tools are proven to be horribly ineffective. They are hurting human development more than LLMs themselves. An essay you actually write is more likely to be flagged than any modern LLM output.
The development of the LLMs is much faster than the counter LLM tools, so they're dead on arrival.
maddogxsk@reddit
This guy often comes with stuff like this
vesudeva@reddit (OP)
Great question! It's tied to a battery bank so I can run the training and other extended operations, like dataset generation, as long as it needs. Ideally, the goal is to be able to carry out pertaining completely using only renewable energy so I invested in and built out a robust battery bank. Will start my pretraining experiments with FineWeb-Edu and my custom dataset this coming week
AmericanKamikaze@reddit
Paywall.
vesudeva@reddit (OP)
The Medium paywall is based on the number of articles you've read in a month. So you probably hit your limit. I didn't place any paywall there myself
sluuuurp@reddit
You placed a paywall by writing on a paywalled website. If you want your writing to not have a paywall, you have to choose a different website to use.
AmericanKamikaze@reddit
Truth
Calcidiol@reddit
Understood. It's just annoying that any of these "big tech" (or small ones) companies try to act like "walled gardens" controlling user generated content that they didn't create and which is intended for the public without intentional limitation of how / where / how long it should be available.
From that standpoint publishing works of authorship widely on multiple platforms, trying to get copies into public archives like archive.org, digital libraries, etc. is ideal because one day or another medium, facebook, google, youtube, whatever company / "service" you care to name will be gone and perhaps taking with it to death / disappearance the only available copies of millions of person-hours worth of creative work that should be accessible in the public domain not hidden behind whatever twitter / google / whoever feels like promoting / hosting at any given year.
MrAlienOverLord@reddit
the urgent need for green however the materials needed for that are polluting the world \^\^ just the same way - a nice religion you got here sir - even if the western wold would go green it would have a very minimal impact overall as developing nations still pollute to gain economical growth / power - we did exactly the same but now we want to push the moral high-ground - hypocrisy at its finest
vesudeva@reddit (OP)
I appreciate your perspective, but I think you're missing the bigger picture. Yes, the production of renewable energy technologies has environmental costs, but these are far outweighed by their long-term benefits:
Lifecycle analyses consistently show that solar panels and other renewables have a much lower environmental impact than fossil fuels over their lifespan.
The tech industry, especially AI, is growing rapidly. By transitioning to renewables now, we're preventing massive future emissions, not just offsetting current ones.
Innovation in one sector often drives progress in others.
Developing nations are actually leapfrogging older technologies in many cases, adopting renewables faster than developed countries did.
Dismissing progress as "hypocrisy" discourages positive change. Should we not try to improve just because we weren't perfect in the past?
I was in no way trying to push a "moral high ground." I feel the need to take responsibility and try to make my little corner of the world as good as I can before I shed this mortal coil.
MrAlienOverLord@reddit
im all for posetive change however the impact is minimal - even if the full western world would go green at 100% .. tmr .. (not possible) it would not really change much as our pollution % overall are not the impact drivers - as for clean energy you cant get much cleaner then nuclear (if managed correctly)
im all for new options / but the real "elephant" in the room is space / green energy to be produced on scale needs landmass that is spares - doesnt work everywhere and then needs new transmission everywhere which there is no budget from (you find data about that from grid operators / infranstructure providers - they all complain already about EV'S to build out the infra for that)
its a novelty and like a "i give you 50 bucks to take away my guilt" kinder donation
overall .. good on you to try something to better the world, sadly the impact is minimal
Calcidiol@reddit
You're hallucinating worse than a LLM. Please learn about the things you're speaking of before pontificating about major engineering topics being useless because of your false impressions.
There's a giant fusion reactor just a short distance away continually bathing our planet in light energy and it'll keep doing so for a billion and more years to come. The amount of energy it sends to us is vastly more than the total human energy demand, in fact it's been almost the sole sole source of energy for every ecosystem, every aspect of weather on the planet for billions of years.
Billions of years of evolution have yielded photosynthetic plants etc. that capture this light energy with ~99% efficiency at the quantum level and have made almost all life on earth possible directly or indirectly since it's such a winning source of energy at the surface of the planet over billions of years.
To ignorantly suggest that we couldn't and shouldn't tap into what is the most obvious and most effective "free" / long term sustainable / energy dense / non polluting (actually photosynthesis could almost be considered anti-polluting to the extent one doesn't in this time consider oxygen to be a pollutant) energy source is sheer folly.
MrAlienOverLord@reddit
silicon production for solar (not really great for the planet / side chemicals,
lithium leeching ..
the one uniformed is you my friend \^\^ - also i was not talking that solar is a bad thing .. i was talking about % impact on global scale
kids nowadays have a goldfish ctx
Calcidiol@reddit
I'm trying to see the forest, not the trees, i.e. big picture. Are there non ideal aspects of this brand / that brand PV panels today, sure. Are there environmental costs to making PV currently, sure. Could the manufacturing / sustainability / efficiency of the tech. be improved, sure, and it WILL HAPPEN.
How good is the processor in a typical smart phone today compared to the processor and overall computer in a minicomputer the size of a room in 1980?
How good is a high quality LED light today compared to an incandescent 100W bulb from 1980?
The silicon, quantum, etc. technologies are improving rapidly every year with significant mass scale changes on a decade basis.
But one can work for decades on improving a coal burning power plant and, guess what, you're still burning coal, still inefficient, still either massively polluting or massively problematic to abate the pollution at the source.
How polluting is a green algae cell specifically wrt. its photosynthesis? How "green" is its "manufacturing process"? It's self replicating given light, water, CO2, some minerals in the water, etc. And pretty much recycled / recycle-able, too.
So nature shows us where we can in practice not just in theory get to in some years / decades, and if we try to optimize, we will.
Throwing out and dismissing the concept and even the practice of following the only road that billions of years of life on earth has shown us is a viable path just to do something EVEN WORSE simply because our current tech isn't quite perfected to the level of a billion years of photysynthesis evolution is a bit short sighted.
The % impact on a global scale of solar is the ONLY thing that matters. How long will basically all life on earth exist if the sun went out tomorrow? Nothing will grow, no plants, no food, we'd all freeze in short order, and the weather would stop, the oceans would freeze. So making silly arguments about how much energy we can extract from PV is really literally looking under the microscope to "invent" a strawman problem with the reality that it's the absolute best we're going to get in terms of available energy and energy density / availability over most of the significantly inhabited regions of the world.
Sure maybe in 20 years we'll have "usefully capable" fusion plants of our own designs but one doesn't walk away from the thing that is FREE and ~100% efficient and can be ~100% non polluting / sustainable to go with the thing that's 2% efficient, hideously expensive / problematic / hardly ubiquitously available and does have significant unsustainable aspects.
a_beautiful_rhind@reddit
Heh.. my current rate is like 13c a KWH.. to buy enough solar and batteries would cost as much as the rig.
Plus where I'm at, the solar doesn't work so good. I built a system out of some Nissan leaf batteries but it's way not enough. And plus whenever there is bad weather.. the sun is obscured.
Should also note that batteries are a consumable and constant charge/discharge cycles will cut the capacity within a couple of years. LLM stuff is not known to sip watts.
Calcidiol@reddit
Congratulations very much on your use of more sustainable & environmentally friendly PV power, that's very nice to see!
I'd like to end up at least self sufficient in terms of power by using PV if not at first a net exporter of PV energy, but sadly that's a future dream for when I have the ability to do it all.
MoffKalast@reddit
It's okay, Meta makes sure to offset their emissions! What do you mean those offsets are complete horseshit? Yeah, putting up and running directly off solar/wind and batteries is the only proper way to do it, the rest is mostly just greenwashing.
infiniteContrast@reddit
Not always.
In many countries solar energy is cheaper than fossil fuels. And there is another pro: you can exactly know how much you will spend for the next 10 or 20 years.
With fossil fuels you don't know, maybe something happens and fuel price goes 10x.
In Europe more and more energy factories are running on almost 100% solar power. They do it because it's literally cheaper and much more predictable than every other fuel.
They learned the lesson the hard way when the prices skyrocketed after what happened in Ukraine.
masc98@reddit
you should know that corpos can become carbon neutral just by buying the so called carbon credits. it s a wild world
stockshere@reddit
Exactly you just buy it from countries who are under the threshold... That's what China been doing for the last 30 years
vesudeva@reddit (OP)
Exactly! Unfortunately, there is not a great easy fix and the big enterprises are likely to never truly adopt greener practices until forced to. I agree and also believe that implementing it at the ground level is the best way forward at the moment