SunBlock: The Solar-Powered Server

Since February 2024

In the grand scheme of things, computer gaming does not rank high on the list of things to worry about when it comes to decarbonization and energy transition. While great gains have been made in the energy efficiency of computers and consoles over the last fifteen years, game culture has only recently started to awaken to the increasing climate impact of global game culture across players, game developers, and hardware manufacturers.

SunBlock is a research-creation project synthesizing a solar-powered server running modded Minecraft bringing solar-data into the game-world as a game mechanic, illustrating a need for infrastructural intimacy between transitional systems and their users.

The goal of our project was to blend the material conditions of gameplay (the computer hardware, networking, and energy infrastructure) with the production of the game world. Rather than just playing a game with thematics or a message around energy transition, we are endeavoring to provide a direct, tangible, and playable experience of the energy infrastructures which make that experience possible.

I was responsible for all the tech. Setting up the solar infrastructure (thanks A levels physics!) and developing our software. I am also the open-source maintainer for this project.

SunBlock has quite a few moving parts, and for sanity's sake, I find it useful to view the system in three layers.

These are:

1. Physical Layer (PL)
2. Logical Layer (LL)
3. Game Layer (GL)

The physical layer captures the solar data and hands it off to the server to read, store, and broadcast on our live status website. This data is then read by the mod server-side and broadcast to the players as part of an in-game HUD. (You can read more on our GitHub repo)

This only makes it Minecraft on a solar-server. So next we introduced a solar-powered sword and a power button. The sword would directly translate solar power into attack damage. When the sun is bright, the sword's at its height. The power button allowed players to switch the server from power-saver profile to performance profile. This allowed players to directly affect the power consumption of the server significantly which then changed the collective gameplay style, server lag, monster strengths (since it affected TPS), and battery duration. For anyone experimenting with Solar Powered systems: lithium-ion batteries are EXTREMELY inconsistent.

This affordance made it solar Minecraft. Now we were playing with power. The server ran its first full survival multiplayer season from May through July 2025. Players experienced energy constraints as a gameplay mechanic rather than a message — when clouds rolled in over Montreal, the game world responded in real time. We got to observe people collectively worry about keeping the world alive; talk about allegorical play...

Since then, we have expanded to a full set of solar-powered tools with tool healing, speed, and efficiency. We now have two servers that we call SunBlock One and SunBlock Two. We have published and presented around the world, and have launched a second survival multiplayer modpack: For the Trees.

Also, we got interviewed by CTV News!

Java (Minecraft Forge Mod), Python, Node.js, Express.js, Socket.io, React, SQLite, Jupyter

Yes, we do think we're the coolest.