This is one of the less obvious reasons solar will dominate. No grid or government to rely on. Russian gas and foreign wars no longer matter. And as battery technology improves it will be 24x7 independence.
Solar + IP + ad-hoc wireless networking.
In Lebanon, solar power is booming
81–90 of 154 posts
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#82Earlier 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…
> The alternative would be to have totally separated panels, but many opt in to selling excess back, since it gets more and more profitable as prices go up.
AFAIK the latter part is now less and less true in Germany because the price for selling excess back is only a fraction of the cost of getting power out of the grid, so people are installing batteries, heat storage and controllers that switch heavy consumers like their heat pump according to other loads in their house.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#83Of course it's cool that people can use solar in these kinds of environments like Afghanistan or now Lebanon, but at the same time I wonder: why do they pay so called anthropologists big bucks to live in upscale neighborhoods and gawk at people in difficult circumstances like it's a zoo. To me it seems a little disrespectful.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#84This is one of the less obvious reasons solar will dominate. No grid or government to rely on. Russian gas and foreign wars no longer matter. And as battery technology improves it will be 24x7 independence.
Here in Ukraine we also have a severe energy problem, but I don't know of anyone using solar to fix it. Instead we use...gas generators.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are heat pumps common in Lebanon?
My guess? Not. They probably have AC, but heat pumps are expensive and the lower the income the less interest in the "environment" or "pollution". People just use whatever's cheapest upfront.
Off topic, but...
Why do you put "environment" and "pollution" in quotes? My guess is you don't believe, or mean to convey that you believe, that these are phony concepts or issues, but that lower income people treat these as someone else's concern.
I find this linguistically interesting. Someone could write a paper about this. Perhaps someone has.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Indian_cit ... Finally someone starting from the bottom of the latin alphabet to categorize something that can grow over time (i.e. Delhi becomes even bigger, much more bigger than other X cities, it will move to a W category). Yes, I'm looking at you, European energy classes system and yours A+++++++++ classes.
If you look at the previous classification it was A/B/C as well, they had to learn it.
Yeah, but at least they did learn. In Europe they keep adding the A/B/C/D/E/F/G scoring system to more and more things with the excuse - I guess - that people are now already used to it.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#87Of course it's cool that people can use solar in these kinds of environments like Afghanistan or now Lebanon, but at the same time I wonder: why do they pay so called anthropologists big bucks to live in upscale neighborhoods and gawk at people in difficult circumstances like it's a zoo. To me it seems a little disrespectful.
To me it seems more respectful for anthropologists to study everyone, not just people in pre-literate communities.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#88Nearly 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…
Based on some news it seems France (probably helped by a warmer weather) managed to restore electricity production above its needs in Jan.
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#89This is one of the less obvious reasons solar will dominate. No grid or government to rely on. Russian gas and foreign wars no longer matter. And as battery technology improves it will be 24x7 independence.
Just got myself an electric motorbike. I feel like the days of gas hegemony are well and truly on the way out. Of course, its bias on my part, but I can't imagine going back to ICE transportation now that I've had a taste of just how delightful full-electric can be.
I'll be investing in solar powers and portable generators next. Me and my motorbike are gonna go full-solar this year .. and I live in a wealthy nation that is in relatively good stance, energy-sector -wise.
The benefits outweight the disadvantages and effort required. There is nothing quite so satisfying as to navigate traffic silently, not contributing to everyones' lung disease as I pass by ..
Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming
#90Earlier 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. From what I understand, the Lebanese are used to working around the failings of their government in all aspects of life: work, shopping, now banking, and even education where possible. I don't know about water supplies or roads, but from what I heard the Lebanese view their government more…
> 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?
I have a phocos anygrid 5kwh solar inverter. It is a regular grid tie inverter but once grid goes down, it continues in off grid mode even without batteries so this inverter would be perfect without breaking any laws