Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

In Lebanon, solar power is booming

sapiens.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 154 posts

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#51

Post by ycombinete »

anonu wrote: post #13

Basically, Lebanon had 30 years to figure out how to build basic infrastructure like a proper electrical grid and production (from 1990, the end of the civil war to present). Instead, crooks, thieves and fraudsters figured out how to bilk the nation of billions while leaving subpar services in their wake. My parents have had solar thermal collectors for hot water on their roof in Lebanon for 3 decades now... other th…

This is exactly the same situation in South Africa, where "solar power is [also] booming". We had world class infrastructure that not only wasn't updated, but has been looted, or left to rot. Now the water systems are also failing. Expect bore-holes and home-filtration to be "booming" in South Africa too in the near future.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#52

Post by DoreenMichele »

pmezard wrote: post #50
DoreenMichele wrote: post #11

Nearly half of Lebanon's national debt of $85 billion has been spent on the electricity sector and the state can now only provide 2 hours of electricity per day, thus the solar power boom. A much more interesting piece than I expected, though I will note that some European countries have been hard hit in the energy sector of late as well, what with France rationing power this winter, for example. Edit: Let me once ag…

> what with France rationing power this winter Said like that it sounds like rolling blackout and the state enforcing energy consumption at gun point. There was a lot of noise because the government planned some of these things. But in practice it meant reducing the temperature of public swimming pools a bit, reducing/shutting down public lighting deep in the night, reducing temperatures in office building by one or…

From what I gather, it's not just France.

Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine the price of gas and electric power in the European Union has gone up enormously.

https://jacquesmattheij.com/drastically-reducing-our-powerbi...

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#53

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

8note wrote: post #34
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #31

Tangentially related entry conservation-wise. I disabled our shower by forcing the taps shut with spanner, the tap washers I prefer are ok for this. Attached a shower head hose to the bath tap, so now all we have is a shower head you have to hold and mostly sit or squat to use it. This has eliminated certain individuals from emptying the hot water system while washing their hair, and my own tendency to use a fair bit…

What are the actual savings though? Vs alternatives like using a flash boiler, or convincing your government to reduce the water that the agriculture industry can use, or adding a timer on the shower?

Halved our water heating bill.

I don't care about water usage, it's extremely cheap here and highly recyclable. That's why I framed my comment with the energy conservation context.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#54

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

ycombinete wrote: post #51
anonu wrote: post #13

Basically, Lebanon had 30 years to figure out how to build basic infrastructure like a proper electrical grid and production (from 1990, the end of the civil war to present). Instead, crooks, thieves and fraudsters figured out how to bilk the nation of billions while leaving subpar services in their wake. My parents have had solar thermal collectors for hot water on their roof in Lebanon for 3 decades now... other th…

This is exactly the same situation in South Africa, where "solar power is [also] booming". We had world class infrastructure that not only wasn't updated, but has been looted, or left to rot. Now the water systems are also failing. Expect bore-holes and home-filtration to be "booming" in South Africa too in the near future.

Seems the west exports state service failures as a privatization product.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#55

Post by mynameisnull »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #52
pmezard wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what with France rationing power this winter Said like that it sounds like rolling blackout and the state enforcing energy consumption at gun point. There was a lot of noise because the government planned some of these things. But in practice it meant reducing the temperature of public swimming pools a bit, reducing/shutting down public lighting deep in the night, reducing temperatures in office building by one or…

From what I gather, it's not just France. Since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine the price of gas and electric power in the European Union has gone up enormously. https://jacquesmattheij.com/drastically-reducing-our-powerbi...

Yes but we should have been effectively immune because we have so much nuclear power and we were brought to this situation by a combination of several things: lack of will to continue building new power plants, maintenance schedules being behind due to Covid, and the way regulations are retroactively applied means the technical challenges are substantial in the more aged plants leaving France well below optimal nuclear capacity when it is most needed, even with that our share of gas usage to generate electricity is small and the price of electricity should be largely decoupled from gas in a normal situation.

We still use too much gas to heat our homes, but I believe if we had had the capacity expected we could have reduced that substantially by having people use electric heaters without raising everyone’s electricity bill hugely .. but alas not enough plants online have lead to France feeling the pain like everyone else.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#56

Post by raesene9 »

IcePic wrote: post #46
fnbr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike Lebanon, though, one cannot legally operate their solar panels to power a home while the electric grid is down in Israel. That’s fascinating! Can you say more?

In Sweden the same applies, at least if you have panels that can feed back excess into the grid for payment. In case the main grid goes off, your equipment is supposed to stop working so that it doesn't feed power backwards into the grid while some person is trying to fix whatever broke, so unless you have a battery/UPS and a large switch to flip, your solar panels "die" along with the grid. The alternative would be…

Adding a battery and switch is the obvious solution to the problem. I'm in the UK and ended up going for the Powerwall 2 and Tesla Gateway, alongside our panels.

The installation had to be certified by the electricity company to ensure that it operates safely in the event of a grid power outage, but (in theory as we've not had a power cut since installation) it should all work fine.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#57

Post by Havoc »

rdevsrex wrote: post #41
Havoc wrote: post #5

Same for South Africa. Thanks to the grid being severely mismanaged upper middle class and beyond are installing home solar where possible to maintain some semblance of normalcy

Ideally, municipalities in SA would be poised to create municipal solar farms a la municipal broadband. But if you can't get the energy to the consumer because of theft, then only people who can afford it and have space can use it.

The municipalities are also on trouble so I’m not holding my breath on that one.

I also suspect one needs grid scale to balance out the fluctuations of renewables to be honest

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#58

Post by Semaphor »

Havoc wrote: post #5

Same for South Africa. Thanks to the grid being severely mismanaged upper middle class and beyond are installing home solar where possible to maintain some semblance of normalcy

We are visiting family for Easter. My wife’s mom bought a generator as well, so we should at least have enough power to keep the fridge running through stage 4 (I think?) load shedding (= planned rolling blackouts).
Post reply on HN