Falsifiable on purpose.
Every number in the pre-build paper is a prediction with a grade attached. The build log will show which survived. Papers are open access under CC BY 4.0.
Thelvanor Keg-1: Pre-Build Design of a Sub-$1,000 Solar-Powered Three-Node Data Center in a Stainless Keg
Documents the design on the day before the first part is unboxed: the power path, a planning energy model for a 256 Wh battery feeding three nodes through independently fused branches, a phased bill of materials under a $1,000 ceiling, the sensor plan that converts every claim into a measurement, and a sixteen-week schedule mapped to a five-rung learning ladder. The model finds that night-time scheduling, not panel size, is the governing design problem.
Three candidate research questions.
Stated now so the measurement phases are designed to answer them, not merely to finish the build. A fourth, methodological question sits above these: whether a provable admission invariant for the scheduler, stored energy never crosses the reserve, can be written, mechanically checked, and then falsified or confirmed against a week of logged data.
- RQ1
Energy-aware scheduling as a mechanism
What is the measured price of anarchy of selfish scheduling in a solar micro cluster, and which lightweight mechanism, a state-of-charge price, a quota, or proportional allocation, recovers most of the gap at the least compute overhead?
- RQ2
Thermal behavior of a sealed passive enclosure
How do watts per node and SoC temperature scale with ambient temperature in a fanless stainless enclosure, and where in the pad, plate, wall, and air chain does the dominant thermal resistance sit?
- RQ3
The Landauer gap in the field
How far above the Landauer limit does a small solar edge node operate, and how does the gap move with temperature, workload type, and clock speed?
The learning ladders.
Each volume climbs five rungs, sixth grade to doctoral, and each rung ends on the bench with a measurement. The first series is the build’s curriculum. The second treats the shared battery as a game among three self-interested nodes. The third is written for the people who fund and direct such systems. Volumes are published as they finish; links appear here when they do.
Poles, Chips, and Halls
- PolesEnergy from first principles to the Keg-1 bus
- ChipsCompute from first principles to the Keg-1 cluster
- HallsData centers from first principles to the Keg-1 enclosure
- DeployedSynthesis from first principles to Keg-1 in the field
Proofs, Games, and Minds
- ProofsMathematics and computers
- GamesMicroeconomics and game theory
- MindsPsychology, persuasion, and ethics
Bets, Curves, and Flags
- Bets, Curves, and FlagsFor investors, builders, and strategists of the intelligence age