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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

#71

Post by citrin_ru »

hedora wrote: post #12
seb1204 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since there is a limit with what the solar system can provide the user/community will work with that. No need to say it can't accommodate a wasteful western way to use the energy.

Wasteful is relative. Our house produces 250-300% of our usage most days, but 5-50% of our usage some weeks. Heating and cooling (and the computers that manage the batteries, which draw about 200W, including internet!) is hard to timeshift, but everything else is easy to move to sunny days. Anyway, on those sunny days, electricity is literally free. I wish I could just dump it into a magic box that pulled charcoal ou…

> Heating and cooling (...) is hard to timeshift

One can shift them by at least few hours using theorem-insulated water tank. It costs money but likely will be cheaper (and safer) than Lithium batteries.

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

#72

Post by nine_k »

pif wrote: post #63
nine_k wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Certainly coal-fired power stations are better than no electric power at all. They just have pretty visible cost in quality of life: they improve some aspects, but worsen others. As basically everything in life, it's a balancing act.

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

#73

Post by nonethewiser »

photochemsyn wrote: post #14
DoreenMichele wrote: post #5

Indonesia has brought electricity to millions of people in recent years, going from 85% to nearly 97% coverage between 2005 and 2020, according to World Bank data. But there are still more than half a million people in Indonesia living in places the grid doesn’t reach. While barriers still remain, experts say off-grid solar programs on the island could be replicated across the vast archipelago nation, bringing renewa…

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…

Which makes this a great time to observe that electricity != clean. That’s a non-sensical conclusion because electricity doesnt have the capacity to be clean nor dirty. Its a storage format. Stored energy in gas just sitting in your gas tank doesnt really emit either. It’s ridiculous to conclude energy is clean by simply ignoring its emissions.

Replacing an ICE vehicle with electricity isn’t necessarily lowering emissions. Its entirely dependent on how the electricity is generated. There is nothing inherently clean about switching from gas to electric. But many people only care about squeezing the balloon intil they cant see or know about the emissions.

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

#74

Post by nonethewiser »

twelvechairs wrote: post #32
rippercushions wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is particularly sad since Indonesia is volcanically very active and has tons of potential for geothermal power. Many of its islands are also quite dry, which couples with the equatorial location makes them great for year-round solar.

Nearly 60% of indonesias population and most of its industry are on Java, the most densely populated island in the world. 150m+ people on a place the size of Pennsylvania or Mississippi. Its absolutely not easy to find space for solar at scale in such a space constrained environment it would really require some massive infrastructure to a solar farm in the sea or another island. Singapore is a good comparison - a muc…

Natural gas is much better than coal in terms of emissions. Doesnt have to be solar. Obviously it would be more expensive for them, perhaps too expensive, but lets take the opportunity to at least acknowledge that natural gas is a great step away from coal.

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

#75

Post by joncrocks »

7952 wrote: post #69
gpm wrote: 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…

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 w…

The reason that high voltages are used is transmission efficiency.

Low voltage = high current = less inefficient, less dangerous. High voltage = low current = more efficient, more dangerous. There's good reasons why overhead power lines are very high voltage.

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

#76

Post by danhor »

nonethewiser wrote: post #73
photochemsyn wrote: post #14

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…

Which makes this a great time to observe that electricity != clean. That’s a non-sensical conclusion because electricity doesnt have the capacity to be clean nor dirty. Its a storage format. Stored energy in gas just sitting in your gas tank doesnt really emit either. It’s ridiculous to conclude energy is clean by simply ignoring its emissions. Replacing an ICE vehicle with electricity isn’t necessarily lowering emis…

But most things have to be electric to be able to be clean. If we want lower emissions, most stuff needs to be electrified and supplied with cleaner electricity. The latter is increasing all around the world, the former is the more worrrying bit.

But there are only few countries around the world where it's cleaner to run an ICE vehicle than an electric vehicle, due to the large inefficiencies of engines.

(There are other approaches that don't involve electricity, but most very likely won't work or won't make sense on a large scale)

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

#77

Post by neuronic »

nonethewiser wrote: post #73
photochemsyn wrote: post #14

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…

Which makes this a great time to observe that electricity != clean. That’s a non-sensical conclusion because electricity doesnt have the capacity to be clean nor dirty. Its a storage format. Stored energy in gas just sitting in your gas tank doesnt really emit either. It’s ridiculous to conclude energy is clean by simply ignoring its emissions. Replacing an ICE vehicle with electricity isn’t necessarily lowering emis…

But CO2 emissions are not the only criteria for moving to electric cars. Ease of production, ease of repair, simpler technology than ICE, reduction of distributed emissions and pollution (air in the cities), just to count a few more...

Even if CO2 emissions were the sole factor, it is very much possible to evolve the mode of electricity production to something more sustainable over the years. Electric cars may be running on coal-generated electricity today you can just change the source at any time immediately changing the overall equation.

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

#78

Post by arrrg »

nonethewiser wrote: post #73
photochemsyn wrote: post #14

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…

Which makes this a great time to observe that electricity != clean. That’s a non-sensical conclusion because electricity doesnt have the capacity to be clean nor dirty. Its a storage format. Stored energy in gas just sitting in your gas tank doesnt really emit either. It’s ridiculous to conclude energy is clean by simply ignoring its emissions. Replacing an ICE vehicle with electricity isn’t necessarily lowering emis…

Gas from the ground can never be clean. Electricity can. That’s why electrification is key to getting where we want to get. We need to both electrify and get electricity generation carbon emissions to zero.

Also: electrification additionally offers efficiency gains in many places. Heat pumps and EVs, for example, are both (in general) more efficient than gas stoves and ICE cars.

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

#79

Post by nonethewiser »

epistasis wrote: post #2

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…

> analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage

Another example of this sort of dynamic are skipping credit cards for app based payments. Or not having much of a postal service because email.

In all these cases I think its more of a shortcut than truly leapfrogging. Not as good in terms of redundancy (good for reliability) and interoperability.

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

#80

Post by notahacker »

quechimba wrote: post #33
rektide wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my mind I was comparing versus the alternative stated of buying a generator & fuel for it. The generator will be up-front pricier, weightier, and bulkier, by far on each count. So it still seems like a huge win to me versus what's available now, if the use case is as described.

I'll try to find out how people could afford buying generators. Solar shouldn't be much more expensive but I can't find any prices online.

I think there's also the sunk cost aspect. You saved for a long time for the generator on the basis it would provide power for you for a very long time so an alternative to this prized asset isn't high on your list of things to spend all your savings on (even if on paper it was economically rational to do so)
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