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In Lebanon, solar power is booming

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Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#111

Post by anovikov »

BlueTemplar wrote: post #70
anovikov wrote: post #60

I hope we all won't have to live through the "green transition" in the similar way...

A bit too late for that, we picked the wrong road in the 80's and the debt is starting to come due... I expect the worst of it to be when (former) middle class residing in suburban sprawl realise they cannot afford a car any more : think yellow vests (aka "roundabout folks"), but worse.

Oh on that one, there's no problem, gas powered cars are going to be extinct very soon so gasoline will be cheap for those still willing to use them due to low demand, and electric cars are already mainstream.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#112

Post by jcbrand »

mschuster91 wrote: post #96
jcbrand wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eskom in South Africa provides about 90% of the electricity and is a state owned enterprise. It's not privatized at all, it's a state-owned monopoly. So basically the exact opposite of what you're complaining about. Privatization, i.e. selling off individual power plants to private entities and allowing private entities to generate more power is probably the best way out of their electricity crisis.

Europe and in particular Germany or the US shows just how bad that can end up as well. When private companies seize control of utilities - water, electricity, gas, internet, railway, streets - they inevitably end up cutting corners, deferring or ignoring maintenance, firing support staff and generally reducing service quality while keeping to raise rates to make the money back for the banks that backed the loans. Or,…

South Africans would be overjoyed to have stable electricity and clean water to the extent that Germans have.

The problems Europeans complain about are on a much higher level and can't be compared to having 2 to 4 hours blackouts every day for the majority of the year, or to having the water cut off regularly or various other examples of state failure.

> but at least the government there can be held accountable by the general public in elections.

This is tenuous at best in advanced democracies and practically non-existent in many developing countries, like South Africa.

South Africa has had rolling blackouts since around 2007, and the same government that's caused this mess is still in power.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#113

Post by SuoDuanDao »

pja wrote: post #91
shapefrog wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shower heat recovery system would be better, which seems like such low hanging energy saving I am unsure why it isnt more of a thing.

A neighbour has one of these. What surprised me was that it didn’t bother (as far as I could see) pulling the heat out of the waste water - it was setup to pull the heat out of the air in the bathroom. I guess this makes at least some sense though? A sizable proportion of the heat from shower water must go into water vapour that evaporates into the air as the droplets fall from shower head to floor drain. If you go i…

there's probably also the benefit that condensing the water out of a post-shower bathroom will dehydrate the air, reducing mold/rot issues in the house.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#114

Post by mschuster91 »

jcbrand wrote: post #112
mschuster91 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe and in particular Germany or the US shows just how bad that can end up as well. When private companies seize control of utilities - water, electricity, gas, internet, railway, streets - they inevitably end up cutting corners, deferring or ignoring maintenance, firing support staff and generally reducing service quality while keeping to raise rates to make the money back for the banks that backed the loans. Or,…

South Africans would be overjoyed to have stable electricity and clean water to the extent that Germans have. The problems Europeans complain about are on a much higher level and can't be compared to having 2 to 4 hours blackouts every day for the majority of the year, or to having the water cut off regularly or various other examples of state failure. > but at least the government there can be held accountable by th…

> South Africans would be overjoyed to have stable electricity and clean water to the extent that Germans have.

Not disputing that - but I fear that allowing private/venture capital to intervene will further solidify existing discrimination issues in the long term, even if it may show quick improvements short term.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#115

Post by DFHippie »

oblio wrote: post #93
DFHippie wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because poor people don't care about them if their lives become worse. That's the sad truth. I mean, they do care about them, but their lives already suck a ton so distant doom is not really on their radar when faced with constant, present doom. Simple example: EVs are arguably less polluting. So there might be a need for a policy to ban ICEs, which are much, much less expensive monetarily. That would mean poor peopl…

My point was just that it's an interesting use of quotation marks.

People once had no writing system at all. Then they had no way to represent speech sounds. Then they had no way to represent individual phonemes. They had to invent spaces between words, punctuation, capital letters. I expect the Egyptians had no way to represent what was represented here with quotation marks. I'm curious how long and how widely quotation marks have been used this way.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#116

Post by tchaffee »

belorn wrote: post #76
tchaffee wrote: post #59

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.

Lebanon is located next middle east and north Africa. It has 10.72% arable land, water being a scarce resource, and dust storms being one of the natural hazards. The average number of days with rain for months between May and September is between 0 and 2. Solar is an obvious choice for that climate.

They are putting solar all over the UK. Today's panels are so efficient that cloudy weather is fine.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#117

Post by [deleted] »

jcbrand wrote: post #112
mschuster91 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe and in particular Germany or the US shows just how bad that can end up as well. When private companies seize control of utilities - water, electricity, gas, internet, railway, streets - they inevitably end up cutting corners, deferring or ignoring maintenance, firing support staff and generally reducing service quality while keeping to raise rates to make the money back for the banks that backed the loans. Or,…

South Africans would be overjoyed to have stable electricity and clean water to the extent that Germans have. The problems Europeans complain about are on a much higher level and can't be compared to having 2 to 4 hours blackouts every day for the majority of the year, or to having the water cut off regularly or various other examples of state failure. > but at least the government there can be held accountable by th…

[deleted]

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#118

Post by jcbrand »

mschuster91 wrote: post #114
jcbrand wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Africans would be overjoyed to have stable electricity and clean water to the extent that Germans have. The problems Europeans complain about are on a much higher level and can't be compared to having 2 to 4 hours blackouts every day for the majority of the year, or to having the water cut off regularly or various other examples of state failure. > but at least the government there can be held accountable by th…

> South Africans would be overjoyed to have stable electricity and clean water to the extent that Germans have. Not disputing that - but I fear that allowing private/venture capital to intervene will further solidify existing discrimination issues in the long term, even if it may show quick improvements short term.

> I fear that allowing private/venture capital to intervene will further solidify existing discrimination issues in the long term, even if it may show quick improvements short term

South Africa's discrimination issues are largely due to the state and not private capital or the private sector.

The private sector on the whole would be happy to hire and provide services to any race or ethnicity, but the state has always aggressively intervened in favor of certain ethnic groups. During Apartheid it was intervening in favor of white people, today it's in favor of black Africans.

Many of the current discrimination issues are a result of the (Apartheid) state actively impeding the economic development of black people.

The current electricity crisis is in no small part due to the current state actively discriminating against skilled white employees (forcing them into early retirement, hiring based on race and not skills, forcing Eskom to procure from black-owned companies who are often just middle-men adding huge markups due to their regulatory capture).

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#119

Post by pestatije »

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…

Misery loves company...i'm sure you also share those savings with certain individuals?

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#120

Post by groestl »

darkwater wrote: post #66
archon1410 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Footnote 1 I have never heard that before, cities like Ranchi can hardly be described as "Tier 1". The HRA classification given on the Wikipedia page[1] is much better guide to what my intuitions are on what people mean by tier 1-3. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Indian_cit...

> [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.

My favorite is American Wire Gauge: 0, 00, 000, 0000

"This gauge system originated in the number of drawing operations used to produce a given gauge of wire."

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