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Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

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Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#61
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unstated statistic in this article is that Indonesia's reliance on coal has grown from 20% of national energy production to 40% of energy production over the 2005-2020 period, which accounts for most of that 85% to 97% growth factor. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-clings-coa... The slow growth of renewables particularly in remote locations is certainly a good thing, but the actual nation-wide p…

So what? Ecology is secondary to life quality.

For some short time, yes.

Eventually pollution makes the price well-felt; look at the color of the sky over China's largest cities, or read about vendors of canned oxygen on the streets of Tokyo in 1970s.

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#62
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced that this is a case of leapfrogging. Off grid solar+storage is great when you and everyone around you is using very little electricity. It lets you go from "nothing" to "lightbulb at night" very cheaply, which is a huge improvement. Once you're using tons of electricity, list a 1st world home does (refrigeration/ac/microwaves/electric ovens/electric stoves/washing machines/vehicles/...), storage wou…

That sort of lifestyle is really feasible on solar. Rooftops alone are likely enough, or at worst some bit of agrovoltaics. The vast majority of Western energy is wasted, rejected as waste heat. Solar electrification skips over a wasteful thermodynamic conversion of heat to electricity. Even the rare case where fossil fuels seem at first glance as efficient, such as for heating water and homes, it turns out that 99%…

Current thermal cycle power stations are about 50% efficient. It's still a lot of waste heat, but far from "vast majority".

Car engines, on the other hand,...

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#63
post #61
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? Ecology is secondary to life quality.

For some short time, yes. Eventually pollution makes the price well-felt; look at the color of the sky over China's largest cities, or read about vendors of canned oxygen on the streets of Tokyo in 1970s.

> look at the color of the sky over China's largest cities

But they are still the largest cities in China: people are flowing towards the smog, not escaping from it.

Eating under a grim sky has always been incredibly better than starving in a pristine environment.

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#65
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the pictures in the article are Sumba island, which has an area of 11k km^2 and roughly 800k people (slightly less population density than the state of California), I'm not sure that really counts as small. Yes island interconnects seem reasonably unlikely. Similarly Hawaii has no interconnects between the main islands [0] despite being a first world locale. A different geography leading to a different grid struc…

Indonesia has around 10,000 inhabited islands, although around half the population is on Java and most of the rest on the next big five (Borneo/Kalimantan, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali, Papua).

[deleted]

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#66
post #16

What’s going to happen when the haves can afford to buy solar and go off grid leaving the have-nots left on a grid increasingly void of people who can pay for it? I suspect off grid users will be taxed heavily and/or it’ll be illegal to not pump back into the grid. Will probably be illegal to go off grid in the future

The key use for grids that can't be replaced is industrial use. Some companies need very-high quality power, in terms of frequency stability or downtime. Other companies require high volumes.

For these users, it's much easier to buy service than to start a dedicated service within the company responsible for, essentially, setting up their own grid.

Once you have that, connecting nearby homes cheaply is easy, and it's really a rich person's pastime to build an off-grid alternative with equivalent quality if you can get connected.

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#67
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've heard (friends who worked there for a month), electricity in South Africa is demential. For example there's a timetable to know when you will have, probably, four hours of electricity tomorrow and for the next week. You cannot make extrapolations from that.

You are 100% correct. They have planned "blackouts" according to a schedule so that it's fair and everyone gets a turn. However the schedule is based on how heavily the strain on the network is, which they regularly fiddle with. There are even apps now that notify people of blackouts planned for their area and help them make some sense of the chaos. Luckily (or not) they have huge strain on the network atm so they pr…

> And yet they're refuse to allow solar users to push back to the grid easily.

Grid solar (and even more wind) is harder to handle than a plant that can be modulated. If they can't handle their plants or invest to fix their issues, I can understand that they don't have the means to handle solar.

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#68

For years (decade? decades?) this has been the promise of distributed solar and storage, and been analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage. The grid is very valuable, but it's also very expensive, and as storage and solar get really cheap, while grid costs stay stagnant, we may arrive at a future for which decentralized, disconnected mi…

In many parts of the world the grid is a combination of unreliable or not there at all. And the required level of investment to fix all that is at least short term not keeping up with the increase in demand. So, things are getting worse for people dependent on the grid. And where grids are actually available, they aren't necessarily cheap, which incentivizes people that use a lot of power to invest in alternatives. You see this with e.g. companies exploiting vehicle chargers. They all end up installing solar panels and investing in electricity infrastructure rather than just paying per kwh to their local grid provider. The grid is a last resort for them. This is going to be true for any business where energy is a big component of their cost.

To get reliable and cheap power, people have to invest in their own generation. That's still expensive but increasingly more feasible and critical for especially small businesses. If you run e.g. a small shop and you have perishable goods in a fridge in a tropical country and the power goes out, you basically have a lot of melted / rotten goods after a few hours. Not great. If that happens a lot, your business dies. In the same way, having the AC on or off in a hot country can mean the difference between having your place full of customers or not. It's not optional. If grid power is only available a few hours a day, your business is at risk unless you fix a more reliable supply. Many grids in e.g. Africa are very unreliable and don't have enough capacity.

In many countries people are still relying on generators for this but increasingly solar and batteries are becoming a viable alternative. The upfront cost of this is a big obstacle for many smaller businesses. As is the availability of components. But generators and fuel are also not free. And they break down and need maintenance too. And the exhaust fumes cause health issues.

However, solutions in this space actually have a value and return on investment. So, providing lines of credit for this is actually something that is potentially a profitable business and not just charity. Plenty of entrepreneurs in Africa, the Middle East, parts of Asia, etc. that could use that to bootstrap their businesses and would be able to pay back loans with interest.

I'd say micro grids will be a reality long before, if ever, people figure out cheap, reliable grid power in many of these places.

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#69
post #4

For years (decade? decades?) this has been the promise of distributed solar and storage, and been analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage. The grid is very valuable, but it's also very expensive, and as storage and solar get really cheap, while grid costs stay stagnant, we may arrive at a future for which decentralized, disconnected mi…

I'm not convinced that this is a case of leapfrogging. Off grid solar+storage is great when you and everyone around you is using very little electricity. It lets you go from "nothing" to "lightbulb at night" very cheaply, which is a huge improvement. Once you're using tons of electricity, list a 1st world home does (refrigeration/ac/microwaves/electric ovens/electric stoves/washing machines/vehicles/...), storage wou…

A lot of places in the developing world have a large rural population that is widely spread out. You may have a family dwelling every 100m surrounded by a small farm with each dwelling connected by foot tracks. It is like taking a large city in America or Europe and spreading the population out across the entire county. This is a different challenge to connecting urban areas and small towns to a wider grid.

IMHO it would be useful to have grid technology that could work as a web of low voltage/low current connections. Something that could be installed without needing lots of expertise and be intrinsically safe. Maybe even in the same package as water pipes.

Re: Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

#70
post #16

What’s going to happen when the haves can afford to buy solar and go off grid leaving the have-nots left on a grid increasingly void of people who can pay for it? I suspect off grid users will be taxed heavily and/or it’ll be illegal to not pump back into the grid. Will probably be illegal to go off grid in the future

It's just evolution. At this point the price of solar on your roof with some batteries is getting low enough that it earns itself back even without subsidies. As this stuff gets cheaper, more people get access to this stuff and the market grows. As it does, prices drop further.

It's not happening overnight so people and grid suppliers have a chance to adapt. But yes, bad things generally happen to people and companies that can't adapt to changes. Ironically, people that are in developing countries tend to be more adaptable. If something works, they'll be all over it.

The monopolist's response to this is indeed to push for things to be illegal and expensive. Which ironically just speeds up their demise. Places where this happens simply become less competitive.

People move to where the jobs and economics are better. Also politically. Politicians blocking sane policies on this front are going to have a hard time. People are going to call out their bullshit and point to neighbors where the grass is greener and ask hard questions. Inevitably a few less enlightened politicians are going to insist on finding this out the hard way and then get voted out of office. The rest will learn from their examples; that's already happening. Republicans like cheap power just as much as Democrats. This is not a left-right topic anymore. People still bicker over climate change. But cheap power is something everybody can agree is a nice thing to have.

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