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In Lebanon, solar power is booming

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Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#141

Post by Havoc »

Semaphor wrote: post #58
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).

Fridges are fine during loadshedding...just need to be careful not to open them - they hold temp long enough. The compressors in them don't always like generators though fyi.

I would suggest bringing a decent powerbank though to keep the phone charged.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#142

Post by berkes »

nradov wrote: post #135
berkes wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is to be expected when you build a massively centralized, both physical and organisational, power system. And which is my main issue with nuclear power: it isn't distributed, but centralized and heavily dependent on governments and extreme long-term-planning. Which is a recipe for disaster. The chance that Flamaville would be delivered late is about 100%. Reacting to rapid changes like a war (spiking fuel price…

Solar is only the opposite of nuclear if you ignore storage requirements. There is potential for use of distributed battery storage, but we're decades away from being able to build that out economically at scale. Installing some home battery backup or EV reverse charging systems won't be sufficient; we have to be able to keep heavy industry running through multiple days of little sunshine.

I'm not saying one is better than the other, nor am I commenting on it's value for [electricity consumer].

They are opposites on "centralisation" vs "decentralisation". With solar, I, a private citizen, can generate electricity, store it, sell it, expand it, mine bitcoin with it, and so fort. With Nuclear, I'm completely at the whims of a government and a semi-private monopolist. "Free-market-nuts" should therefore hate Nuclear and love solar. Yet the opposite is true. And I find that remarkable.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#143

Post by belorn »

tchaffee wrote: post #116
belorn wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The economics of that when you have to include storage is different than places with almost no cloudy weather. There isn't much interest to invest in solar + storage solutions without subsidizes.

Solar/wind in combination with natural gas is very profitable in the UK as long the natural gas is cheap enough. Right now that is not the case so the cost of the energy grid in UK is extremely high, and much higher than in solar heavy countries located next to deserts that don't need to use natural gas to cover all those rainy and snowy days.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#144

Post by unmole »

redtriumph wrote: post #136
unmole wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This may be true today. My memory of prices is from early 2000s when electricity distribution was still a mess financially.

I'm skeptical there has ever been a time when discom finances have not been a mess.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#145

Post by Semaphor »

Havoc wrote: post #141
Semaphor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Fridges are fine during loadshedding...just need to be careful not to open them - they hold temp long enough. The compressors in them don't always like generators though fyi. I would suggest bringing a decent powerbank though to keep the phone charged.

Thanks, I’ll forward that. And yeah, we bring a beefy powerbank anyway.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#146

Post by theluketaylor »

shapefrog wrote: post #130
pja wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The ones I designed in my head, that it turns out exist in the real world, exchange heat from the drain water to warm the cold water flowing to the shower, reducing the usage of hot water ( https://zypho.uk/ for example - turns your 10 deg C cold flow to 20 C from the 40C waste flow) In winter one would like the hot humid air from the bathroom to be heat exchanged and heat dumped back into the property. In summer per…

Drain heat recovery is quite common here in Canada and mandatory in a few jurisdictions for new builds.

https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/categories/building-materia...

As for the hot humid bathroom air, that also exists in the form of ERV (energy recovery ventilators). For well sealed houses you route all the exhaust and intake for the home to one place where there is a heat exchanger to minimize the losses from getting fresh air into the house.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#147

Post by tchaffee »

belorn wrote: post #143
tchaffee wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The economics of that when you have to include storage is different than places with almost no cloudy weather. There isn't much interest to invest in solar + storage solutions without subsidizes. Solar/wind in combination with natural gas is very profitable in the UK as long the natural gas is cheap enough. Right now that is not the case so the cost of the energy grid in UK is extremely high, and much higher than in…

That's just not true. The most recent large scale solar plants in the UK are being built without subsidies and by for-profit businesses.

The technology is improving so rapidly you can't use stats from last year.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#148

Post by MichaelZuo »

anovikov wrote: post #111
BlueTemplar wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Won’t refineries just stop producing gasoline then?

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#149

Post by anovikov »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #148
anovikov wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Won’t refineries just stop producing gasoline then?

It will be hard because of how technology works. There is some leeway in re-tuning them to produce more % of one product and less of others, but it's limited.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#150

Post by _xnmw »

wara23arish wrote: post #138
_xnmw wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This was what lebanese relied on before solar. There would be generators owned by mafia type people that would sell electricity to neighborhoods. Once we ran out of dollar currency to buy gas people resorted to solar

This is not an option for us in Ukraine, this is not a sunny desert country.
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