Using solar panels without backup infrastructure makes renewable energy production much more affordable, efficient and sustainable.
We have launched the first volume in a new series of books opening up Low-tech Magazine’s archive by theme.
Andy Lagzdins built and documented a pedal-powered air compressor to run the power tools in his motorcycle workshop.
You’re looking at a completely rebuilt version of the solar powered website, which now allows you to turn off the dithering compression and see the original images.
Filmmaker Guillaume Lion visited Low-tech Magazine in Barcelona and turned his experience into a comic for the Belgian magazine Médor.
Cycling is the most sustainable form of transportation, but the bicycle is becoming increasingly damaging to the environment. The energy and material used for its production go up while its life expectancy decreases.
The bicycle and the bow are both highly efficient, human-powered technologies that could substitute for two very harmful alternatives: the car and the firearm. Why do we promote one but not the other?
While manufacturing modern firearms and bullets depends on a global supply chain and fossil fuels, bows and arrows can be made anywhere out of anything, using only human power and simple hand tools.
We built a pedal-powered generator and controller, which is practical to use as an energy source and exercise machine in a household – and which you can integrate into a solar PV system. We provide detailed plans to build your own, using basic skills and common hand tools.
Imagine a personal heating system that works indoors as well as outdoors, can be taken anywhere, requires little energy, and is independent of any infrastructure. It exists – and is hundreds of years old.
The printed archives of Low-tech Magazine now amount to four volumes with a total of 2,398 pages and 709 images.
Around the 17th century, the Dutch started reinforcing their dykes and harbours with sturdy mats the size of football pitches – hand-woven from thousands of twigs grown on nearby coppice plantations. These “fascine mattresses” were weighted with rocks and sunk into canals, estuaries, and rivers.
George Cove, a forgotten solar power pioneer, may have built a highly efficient photovoltaic panel 40 years before Bell Labs engineers invented silicon cells. If proven to work, his design could lead to less complex and more sustainable solar panels.