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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

#91

Post by marcosdumay »

bpfrh wrote: post #83
marcosdumay wrote: post #45

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 they have to buy some 30% more panels.

sorry my bad for formulating it badly: less solar and now wind means days or even weeks with no solar and no wind aka "dunkelflaute" In germany a week long dukelflaute occurs every 2 years. You don't need 30% more panels, you need to store energy for the all usage for about a week.

Oh, you mean a rare eventuality.

Yes, you need some redundant power supply. We should probably be investing more on research about synthetic fuels than we are right now (and shelf-stable flow batteries; hydrogen won't cut it in a micro-scale, even though it's great for national grids), but for a long time everybody will still use fossil fuels for that.

It's not a huge problem right now.

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

#92

Post by ninalanyon »

mmooss wrote: post #32
alephnerd wrote: post #17

Small pet peeve - saying "Africa" is too broad a statement for a continent with 54 countries, and does a disservice to the actual government institutions working on development. They should explicitly call out Nigeria instead of treating it as "Africa". Nigeria is unique in how they actually have a formal industrial strategy for mini-grids [0] thanks to World Bank support [1] It's a uniquely Nigerian program and Nige…

That was my first thought. Let's say you are an editor: You can be accurate and write 'Nigeria' in the headline, but you realize that most people have no idea where or what Nigeria is - that's a bad thing, but true. If you write 'Africa', then many more people will learn about Nigeria. I don't have a good answer. Maybe they should squeeze both into the headline: 'For African climate and livelihoods, Nigeria bets big…

> most people have no idea where or what Nigeria is

Really? I'm pretty sure that everyone I know knows where Nigeria is.

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

#93

Post by mmooss »

ninalanyon wrote: post #92
mmooss wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my first thought. Let's say you are an editor: You can be accurate and write 'Nigeria' in the headline, but you realize that most people have no idea where or what Nigeria is - that's a bad thing, but true. If you write 'Africa', then many more people will learn about Nigeria. I don't have a good answer. Maybe they should squeeze both into the headline: 'For African climate and livelihoods, Nigeria bets big…

> most people have no idea where or what Nigeria is Really? I'm pretty sure that everyone I know knows where Nigeria is.

> everyone I know

Not a representative sample of Western humanity. Look up surveys on knowledge and beliefs; you'll be very surprised.

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

#94

Post by devilbunny »

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.

I mean, it's not going to turn these countries into rich places, but the article points out several ways that having power - even intermittent power - at a very low cost has improved people's lives significantly. They no longer have to walk miles to get drinking water; they drilled a well and put in an electric pump. Water towers are pretty straightforward tech; run the pump during the day until the tower is full, and the villagers can walk a couple of blocks to the spigot to get water. Charge spare phone batteries during the day. Any task that doesn't actually have to run 24 hours a day can take advantage of the power when it's there.

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

#95

Post by throwaway4220 »

arcmechanica wrote: post #73
throwaway4220 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This must limit electricity generation to local hydrogen sources which may be challenging compared to natural gas. Prob similar to nuclear?

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

#96

Post by modo_mario »

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.

I don't think 30% comes close to cutting it. Look up the difference in production for a solar panel in summer vs winter in let's say Berlin. And that's average. Consider extended lowpoints.

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

#97

Post by NullPrefix »

HPsquared wrote: post #72
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.

State wanting a cut proves that the clean energy is not the number one priority

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

#98

Post by HPsquared »

NullPrefix wrote: post #97
HPsquared wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

State wanting a cut proves that the clean energy is not the number one priority

Well that goes without saying.

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

#99

Post by atonse »

philipkglass wrote: post #40
atonse wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was at my local Home Depot last weekend and the rep told me that just a few weeks prior, a couple people stole a couple rolls of electrical wire (romex) and the value was over $4,000 because of the cost of the copper in it. I was buying a 15ft strand and it was $18.

Copper as a commodity is currently worth under $5/pound: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper It's probably worth even less if you have to resell wire to recycling businesses of the "no questions about where you got it" variety. Are these wire rolls large enough to contain a thousand pounds of copper?

Not sure but the price tag of each roll was about $1,500. So I think it was a 1000ft spool.
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