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For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

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Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#71

Post by alephnerd »

bilbo0s wrote: post #67
decimalenough wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really characterizing Nigeria's notoriously kleptocratic bureaucratic system as "relatively competent", while self-styled Singapore of Africa Rwanda is a "basket case"? Most observers would reverse those labels.

I think the example would have been better if they had put Ghana in the place of Nigeria. I have no idea how anyone did an analysis of the stability of African nations, and came out of it thinking Nigeria was an example to hold up as some kind of gold standard? It reinforces my belief that we Westerners, as a group, know very little about the African continent.

> they had put Ghana in the place of Nigeria

Absolutely not.

> reinforces my belief that we Westerners, as a group, know very little about the African continent

Or normies like you only listen to BTP Adviser funded submarine articles.

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#72

Post by HPsquared »

NullPrefix wrote: post #65

Why are solar panels subject to VAT? If it's the way of the future and we want everyone to buy and use them then why are there taxes on them?

If people are buying them because they're a good idea and profitable / economical.. of course the state will want a cut. That's how it always works, everywhere.

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#73

Post by arcmechanica »

throwaway4220 wrote: post #59
viktour19 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world’s first hydrogen exploration company was founded in Mali. No one knows for a fact what the development pathway is. Solar might turn out to be inconsequential. https://news.mit.edu/2024/iwnetim-abate-aims-extract-hydroge... > In 1987, well-diggers drilling for water in Mali in Western Africa uncovered a natural hydrogen deposit, causing an explosion. Decades later, Malian entrepreneur Aliou Diallo and his Ca…

Promising but how do pipelines deal with hydrogen?

They leak, hydrogen is smaller then all other atoms, so they are hard to contain. local production and immediate use is the only option that makes sense. Pipelines are non-sensical

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#74

Post by rssoconnor »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #19
postepowanieadm wrote: post #16

Mini-grids may be the part the EU is missing. Selling your surplus ev power to grid is a huge waste, charging your neighbours car is a better use.

But with mini grids you'll just end up with over supply during sunshine/wind with nobody at all to sell the excess to

Can you use the spare electricity to stockpile some sodium hydroxide or something?

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#75

Post by 7952 »

manmal wrote: post #52
shawabawa3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But with mini grids you'll just end up with over supply during sunshine/wind with nobody at all to sell the excess to

That’s a problem big grids also share. It‘s probably easier to buffer power for a small neighborhood, than for a city.

Perhaps easier but less versatile. A large storage site connected to a national high voltage grid can take electricity from a much wider variety of sources and send it to a wider variety of consumers.

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#76

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

marcosdumay wrote: post #45
bpfrh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is not necessarily day/night but summer with solar+and possible wind and winter with less solar and possible no wind. So you need to store energy for more than a few hours or generate it from something else. You then have the choice to use batteries(costly for megwatts as of now), things like hydrostorage, fossil fuels(gas/coal/oil) or hydrogen generated from renewable sources. If you need big energy stor…

> The problem is not necessarily day/night but summer with solar+and possible wind and winter with less solar and possible no wind. So they have to buy some 30% more panels.

So you can have thirty percent more not enough!

I’m sorry, we’re all out of solar. Perhaps you can have no wind instead.

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#77

Post by aaron695 »

breakyerself wrote: post #14

It's been obvious for a long time this was going to be the development path for Africa. Just as they leapfrogged land line telephones for cellular. Africa was never going to build out massive coal and natural gas based electrical grids with transmission lines substations and utility poles bringing electricity to every home. The capital isn't there and the cost of renewables keeps falling.

[dead]

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#78

Post by bsder »

tpm wrote: post #68
bsder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The capital isn't there and the cost of renewables keeps falling. It doesn't help that Africa is huge and the population density of most of it is damn near zero. Grids of any form make very little sense given those constraints.

Nigeria has higher population density than the US.

https://kids.britannica.com/students/assembly/view/201807

An island of density in a sea of empty.

And Nigeria's grid has its own set of issues.

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#79

Post by reverendjames »

breakyerself wrote: post #14

It's been obvious for a long time this was going to be the development path for Africa. Just as they leapfrogged land line telephones for cellular. Africa was never going to build out massive coal and natural gas based electrical grids with transmission lines substations and utility poles bringing electricity to every home. The capital isn't there and the cost of renewables keeps falling.

These mini grids will never lift any African country into modernity. The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.

Re: For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids

#80

Post by totallynothoney »

reverendjames wrote: post #79
breakyerself wrote: post #14

It's been obvious for a long time this was going to be the development path for Africa. Just as they leapfrogged land line telephones for cellular. Africa was never going to build out massive coal and natural gas based electrical grids with transmission lines substations and utility poles bringing electricity to every home. The capital isn't there and the cost of renewables keeps falling.

These mini grids will never lift any African country into modernity. The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.

> The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power.

This is false, like logic wise even if your assumptions were true. You might say that supposed cost right now is fake. If it's actually much higher (accounting for batteries or NatGas) the ridiculous drop in price from panels still means that the cost is falling.

> If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.

They are probably not gonna be smelting with arc furnaces in bumbfuck-nowhere, Nigeria; but that's also not happening in some hamlet in the UK. African cities and resource extractions areas already have power grinds, the problem are rural areas.

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