4-Person / 2-3kW House — Sovereignty-Ladder Sizing
nodeCrypto & Digital ID
The math shows that a truly self-sufficient, fully repairable off-grid home would turn a family's house into a punishing industrial farm.
Who they are
The '4-Person / 2-3kW House' node, a worked-out sizing of an energy-independence ladder for a typical household.
What they do
In the engine it is a concrete, arithmetic reality check on how much it really takes to power a home fully off the grid at different levels of independence.
How it works
For a heavy household using about 60 kWh/day, a grid-tied solar setup dies the moment the grid goes down, a commercial off-grid setup with batteries and fossil backup lasts only 7-12 years before an unrepairable part kills it, and a fully salvageable, repairable system (32 kW of salvaged panels, five wind turbines, 6.5 tons of nickel-iron batteries, solar-thermal, and a biogas digester needing dozens of cows for manure) can last 30-50 years but is practically absurd — it 'physically crushes the operators it was designed to liberate,' with roundtrip efficiency collapsing to about 43%.
Why it matters
It matters because it honestly shows the ceiling: chasing full independence at that power level is self-defeating, and the realistic path is to slash demand (thermal bypass, DC-native loads) toward roughly 100 watts per home and pool across a small community.
The engine's record — word for word
[Report #157] Concrete sizing of the stewards_ark L0-L4 ladder for a 4-person house at a 2-3kW target (verified arithmetic). LOAD DISAMBIGUATION: Load A = 2.5kW continuous = 60 kWh/day (heavy modern); Load B = 1kW avg / 3kW peak = 24 kWh/day. PER-RUNG (Load A): L1 grid-tied 16.5 kW PV -> G1 PASS / G2 FAIL / half-life 0 (anti-islanding kills it on outage). L2 commercial off-grid 18 kW PV + 112.5 kWh LiFePO4 + fossil backup -> G1 PASS / G2 FAIL / half-life 7-12yr (dies with its weakest unrepairable silicon board = displaced dependency). L3 salvageable: 32 kW salvaged PV + 5x Piggott ferrite turbines + 150 kWh NiFe (~6.5 tons) + analog SG3525 inverter + 255 m2 solar-thermal + 240 m3 biogas digester -> G1 PASS / G2 PASS / half-life 30-50yr, but PRACTICALLY ABSURD: it turns a household into an industrial ag facility that 'physically crushes the operators it was designed to liberate.' EFFICIENCY: the L3 roundtrip collapses to 43.2% (0.90 charge x 0.60 NiFe x 0.80 analog inverter) -> 2.3x overcompensation at the source. COW CORRECTION (verified): a dairy cow yields ~30 kg collectible dung/day, not 50, so the herd figures are UNDERSTATED — at the honest ~1.5 kWh electrical/cow/day, Load A is ~30-40+ cows and the 'absurd' verdict only hardens. THE HONEST CEILING (practical_sovereignty_synthesis): abandon the 2-3kW target — demand-min (thermal-load bypass: solar-thermal water, wood/propane heat, DC-native) drops each household toward ~100W, and a community N=15 pools to a 1.5kW / 90 kWh NiFe microgrid + one ~30-cow communal dairy = indefinite half-life without breaking a single family. DISCIPLINE: G1 and G2 scored SEPARATELY; geographic off-grid != sovereignty (the supply-chain tether is the real dependency); L4 free-energy held extractability-open, EXCLUDED from this concrete build. Held; name no holder.
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