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In Lebanon, solar power is booming

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Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#101

Post by mschuster91 »

LatteLazy wrote: post #98

Solar is lovely and all but the far more concerning thing here is that 30 years on from it's civil war, Lebanon still does not have a functioning government. More and more places seem to be ending up in this state, both in places like Lebanon AND in the West (looking at you Texas, or here in the UK). It's nice that at least some people are finding ways to work around these failures. But let's not pretend that that is…

The actual core issue is piss-poor governance in politics, but in the US, UK and Lebanon the governments are entrenched in a way that it will require an actual revolution to get rid of them - and the only place of these where a revolution seems likely is Lebanon.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#102

Post by mschuster91 »

llampx wrote: post #64
culebron21 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did mathhs on it. To cope with daily peaks of generation and usage, a family that spends modest 100-150 kW*h/mo will need a 30-meter tall tower and a 5*5*5 meter cube of concrete inside as a load. Not to mention mechanisms to drive this up and down. Just one household! Which is completely unfeasible for an apartment building.*

Pareto principle - optimize for 80% of the load and you probably can get by with 20% of the effort. Connect a few V2G cars to the apartment building as well to soak up the excess supply in the daytime and demand at night, and pretty soon we have a robust solution.

> Connect a few V2G cars to the apartment building as well to soak up the excess supply in the daytime and demand at night, and pretty soon we have a robust solution.

V2G (or generally, electric) cars are absurdly expensive even in Western countries.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#103

Post by [deleted] »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #62
rowtheway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Africa’s infrastructure failures have little to do with privatization or “the West,” and far more to do with self-inflicted brain drain, a general lack of expertise and project management skills, theft, crime, and corruption: https://saice.org.za/downloads/SAICE-2022-Infrastructure-Rep...

Its not only south africa. Its england, its europe, the concept of failing state services via lobbyism, then privatization of basic services, seems to be part of the us colonial model. Cant argue with it being good for buisness, its just bad for the people living in such a society.

[deleted]

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#104

Post by sgerenser »

zo1 wrote: post #77
nibbleshifter wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Preventing backfeeding during an outage isn't a hard problem, technically speaking...

It's a default feature in grid tied inverters from what I've been told.

Yes, but the most common way they do this is just by shutting down completely and not accepting any input from the solar panels.

You need to move up to more expensive models that support “islanding” to be able to use solar power while the grid is down. For some reason it appears that this type of inverter isn’t legal in Israel?

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#105

Post by SuoDuanDao »

unmole wrote: post #78
redtriumph wrote: post #30

I hail from a Tier 3 city in India [a]. Due to mismgmt. or exorbitant electricity prices, several folks would end up stealing electricity from the main line. Electricity distribution companies would keep on increasing prices to make up for lost revenue from stealing. On other hand, stealing kept on increasing. In recent years, huge chunk of public have pivoted to installing solar panels for water heater etc. When I w…

> exorbitant electricity prices, Yeah, no. There is no state in India that has exorbitant electricity prices for domestic consumers. Virtually every state discom sets the base tarrif below cost. People steal electricity because they can, not because they can't afford it.

just because something is sold below cost, doesn't mean the costs aren't exorbitant.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#106

Post by afarrell »

oblio wrote: post #74
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not only south africa. Its england, its europe, the concept of failing state services via lobbyism, then privatization of basic services, seems to be part of the us colonial model. Cant argue with it being good for buisness, its just bad for the people living in such a society.

> Its not only south africa. Its england, its europe, the concept of failing state services via lobbyism, then privatization of basic services, seems to be part of the us colonial model. > Cant argue with it being good for buisness, its just bad for the people living in such a society. You've taken a sliver of truth and ran away with it into the abyss.

Excellent turn of phrase

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#107

Post by Pigalowda »

darkwater wrote: post #86
xiphias2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this like bra sizes? I’m out of my element here..

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#108

Post by darkwater »

mijamo wrote: post #92
darkwater wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

On the other hand if you had "8" how would you know if it's good or bad? It is not intuitive, especially if you keep adding more. And the scale needs to be changed regularly anyways because the criteria are not the same, so a 8 now would not even be guaranteed to be a 8 tomorrow. The European system already resets the scales after a while (for instance the new ones don't have a + yet) and it is not just about changin…

> On the other hand if you had "8" how would you know if it's good or bad? It is not intuitive, especially if you keep adding more.

You will know that, when measuring something, the higher, the better, for whatever definition of "better" applies (less CO2, less Watts, more good nutrients etc). If the scale changes, or the definition of "better", you now have "9" appliances, which will be better than "3" appliances with their 15 years old label still attached to them. With the current system you have to check "oh, it's A+ from 2017, I need to check the actual numbers anyway".

And yes, I understand that those labels are mainly directed at new items bought right now, and only as "local" comparison. And that if you sell a "new" appliance today manufactured 5 years ago and the labels have changed, you need to update the labels on it. Still, it's cumbersome. You either update the scale ever 2 years or keep adding "+" for a while.

EDIT: also, houses. those fuckers tend to last for tens of years while being sold and bought all the time in the meanwhile.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#109

Post by usrusr »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #10

This article kind of has the: “Obesity rates are plummeting as cancer rates increase” feel to it. Basically, a really shitty situation is driving something that you are seeing as good. Lebanon at this point is pretty close to a failed state. The solar power boom is basically the populace losing faith in the government to provide basic infrastructure.

What you write is certainly not wrong, but it's also not the complete picture: unlike their contemporaries in non-failed states, those people learn electricity usage patterns that are adapted to supply. And that will also transfer well from the insular home battery to a grid with supply-dependent pricing, something which will come to every grid sooner or later. Grid addicts like us will be much less capable of adapting to that change, we will pay while those better at adapting enjoy the spoils of efficiency they deserve. To them, our inability will look like the trouble car-addicts who have never experienced walkability have with adapting to increasing fuel prices.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#110

Post by darkwater »

Pigalowda wrote: post #107
darkwater wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Is this like bra sizes? I’m out of my element here..

No, the other way round. Well, actually it depends on your aesthetic canons.
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