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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

#91

Post by robertlagrant »

pyrale wrote: post #50
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…

It's not stated because it's not related to offgrid power, which is the article's topic. It's a good reminder that not everyone has access to very high-quality, high volumes of electricity. For the people lacking either quality or quantity, solar makes a big difference.

At least from the quoted text, it does sort of imply that the solar programmes on the mainland are responsible for the increase. Saying two things next to each other doesn't explicitly mean that one causes or is related to the other, but it does seem at best unnecessarily obfuscatory.

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

#92

Post by otherme123 »

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.

You are making a dicotomy falacy with more than two options: it's either "quality of life + smog" or "being poor + clean air". There are two more options: "being poor + smog" and "quality of life + clean air".

Some 50 years ago there was no option to coal as the first source of (cheap) energy. Today you can go straight to solar and wind as a cheap energy source, unless you live on a massive oil/gas/coal field, and that's the choice of "quality of life + clean air" you dismissed.

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

#93

Post by mattferderer »

forgotusername6 wrote: post #87
guiriduro wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all. There's the cost, fire risk, and just the simple alternative of selling excess production for free/discounted grid usage at other times. You're still saving the planet to the same degree, and doing it more cheaply too, with fewer things to go wrong.

In the UK feed in tariff is terrible. There's almost no point at the moment in generating more than you use because you get so little for it. Some of the biggest suppliers are only paying ~4p to feed in compared to the average price of 34p per kWh.

US is similar in some locations (I can't speak for all as I'm sure it varies greatly).

I pay a connection fee to use the utility that some months cost more than I pay for electricity. On average half my bill is a fixed connectivity fee.

I will say though we have amazing service that rarely ever goes out & all the lines are underground.

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

#94

Post by mft_ »

rektide wrote: post #20
quechimba wrote: post #13

Many families in the nearby village run generators at night. They can't afford solar panels so they pay 5 soles for gasoline just to have lights on when it gets dark. If they could afford solar they could have lights on every night for a one time cost. Most family don't have the luxury of running generators though. This project sounds really cool. I wonder if this can be done in the Peruvian Amazon. I'm sure several…

I can get quite a lot of night time light out of a $65 100Whr lipo and a $50 inverter. That sounds much better to me than a generator.

Genuine question: isn't an inverter an unnecessary cost and relatively inefficient versus a lower voltage light (i.e. roughly matching the battery)?

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

#95

Post by tuukkah »

lightedman wrote: post #85
guiriduro wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all. There's the cost, fire risk, and just the simple alternative of selling excess production for free/discounted grid usage at other times. You're still saving the planet to the same degree, and doing it more cheaply too, with fewer things to go wrong.

"Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all." Power load smoothing, emergency backup. I been through a couple of natural disasters, and you quickly realize storage of power is just as key as power generation.

To reduce the storage needs, I think most people could be flexible with their power usage during emergencies, high prices or bad (local) production. For example, I can typically postpone big-screen movie nights, doing the hoovering/laundry, cooking in the (electric) oven, heating the (electric) sauna. For one day every now and then, it's no problem to turn off the convenience heating of the bathroom floor either.

You can check your power consumption during sleeping hours to get a base level. Then, on a normal day, I use 3 to 10 kWh but can fairly painlessly cut it down to 1.5 kWh if needed, which would be more feasible to store in a battery.

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

#96

Post by pif »

otherme123 wrote: post #92
pif wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You are making a dicotomy falacy with more than two options: it's either "quality of life + smog" or "being poor + clean air". There are two more options: "being poor + smog" and "quality of life + clean air". Some 50 years ago there was no option to coal as the first source of (cheap) energy. Today you can go straight to solar and wind as a cheap energy source, unless you live on a massive oil/gas/coal field, and th…

> dicotomy falacy

Not at all. I'm not stating that smog is fine. I'm only stating the obvious: overall quality of life is more important than smog.

It's obvious, too, that no smog can increase quality of life, depending on the associated costs.

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

#97

Post by pif »

nine_k wrote: post #72
pif wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I agree with you: it's a balancing act.

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

#98

Post by quechimba »

mft_ wrote: post #94
rektide wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can get quite a lot of night time light out of a $65 100Whr lipo and a $50 inverter. That sounds much better to me than a generator.

Genuine question: isn't an inverter an unnecessary cost and relatively inefficient versus a lower voltage light (i.e. roughly matching the battery)?

I read somewhere that a DC to AC inverter wastes 5-15% of the energy.

I guess what is needed to run lights would be a solar panel, a battery and an MPPT controller.

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

#99

Post by mindslight »

arrrg wrote: post #78
nonethewiser wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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

This is the kind of comment that makes the "electrification movement" look bad. You can't use a heat pump for a stove - the very high delta-T means maximum efficiency (COP) approaches 1, and you might as well use resistive. And generating cooking heat by burning gas at the point of use is certainly more efficient.

Perhaps you meant to say that generating electricity from gas to run heat pumps is more efficient than gas boilers/furnaces for heat. From my vague recollection this is questionable, but it's at least close. The real argument is forward looking, especially with EV's intrinsic storage being able to utilize intermittent sources.

"Gas stoves" has only entered the zeitgeist due to the culture war tempest in a teapot from New York phasing out municipal gas. Which is another ignorant overreach by the state - they should have focused on the collective problem of gas leaking from distribution pipes, and allowed for propane tanks at new single family homes that really want a gas stove. That would have preempted 90% of the valid criticism.

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

#100

Post by epistasis »

gpm wrote: post #29
epistasis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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%…

> That sort of lifestyle As I said in another comment, once people can afford a better lifestyle, they aren't remotely likely to choose to keep living the worse one. On the other hand, I too am a fan of solar and electricity. I completely buy the solar + storage + grid is sufficient for a western lifestyle. I'm not arguing against solar, I'm arguing against lack of grid, that connecting houses, towns, and cities toge…

I think misinterpretted your comment, as well as make a serious error when I said "vast majority" rather than "vast chunk" of energy is wasted.

Your position is reasonable, though I think that we will find that a lot of places that don't have grids will be just fine without them in the future. For those of us that have already invested heavily in them in the last century, we will probably continue to use them, but in many cases they will greatly raise the cost of energy as we rely on them rather than cheaper alternatives. Though we do see some "non-wires alternatives" already in the US, which are places where storage is beating out building more grid, the incentive model for most utilities will favor them building unnecessary and expensive grid infrastructure instead of the best option for ratepayers. It's going to take very vigilant advocacy groups to force regulators to hold utilities to make better decisions.

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