This article is a perfect example. This solar powered server which does not have 100% uptime for artistic reasons is probably sitting in someone’s kitchen next to a refrigerator which uses many times as much power and definitely has 100% uptime.
The solar webserver is another step towards that goal.
Except that the making-cold mechanism of fridges have nowhere near a 100% duty-cycle. You probably wouldn't notice if it didn't even meet two "nines" of uptime.
In fact, that's how frost-free freezers work, by taking advantage that fact to run a heater(!) for some number of minutes several times a day. A defrost timer that does 10 minutes every 8 hours reduces compressor uptime to 98%.
Though transmitting data that far might be against the point of the art project.
I welcome that day.
"Less than 100% reliability is essential for the sustainability of an off-the-grid solar system."
IMO, this can only become mainstream once there is no longer an expectation of "100%" uptime for websites in general.
It's far-fetched, but I can imagine it becoming mainstream if mesh networking becomes popular, or if the Internet were to become a widely self-hosted platform (e.g. people had their own "clouds" running in their homes). In such situations, 100% uptime would no longer be an expectation, so the perceived cost of using an off-the-grid system would be reduced.