I have small solar setup. In summer with 24 hours of light i do not use generator. In winter with 5 hours of light i use generator. Maybe for one hour a day to top everything up. This winter the starlink will be in the mix. I checked how much power it used, but forget exactly. Was somewhere around 60 watts.
The winter sun is not even the equivalent of a trickle charge so it is essentially useless. Batteries after 6 years are almost useless too. It is cheaper to use 1 dollar of gas each day instead of upgrading batteries for thousands of dollars.
I have worked in remote camps for exploration, mining, construction, environmental cleanup, etc for many years. Internet has basically been non existent. Sites were paying tens of thousands a month, sometimes hundreds of thousands, just for the slowest internet connection that barely could let you receive an email. Now they have tolerable speeds for a tiny fraction of the price. It is a pretty big deal.
I have seen two cars recently driving down the highway with starlink antennas on their roof. I do not know if they were using while driving or if is was stowed for travel.
While affordable internet everywhere is nice for the time being it does get a little scary when you consider the negative implications it could have. Surveillance, CBDCs, carbon credits, social credit scores, digital IDs. Soon we could be saying things like "back when I was young our id was just a plastic card, and we drove around all over the place". Elon bought twitter to turn it into a payment system, like wechat, so it is not a stretch to think they are setting up a network for this.
As for fires. Almost none around me. I had great summer. A few days of light smoke from Alaska, but other than that, clear skies. There was fires 1000 km east and 1500 km south. The smoke from those went south to the US. I was getting fresh air from the Juneau and Kluane Icefields. It has not gone unappreciated.
