Solarpunk is happening in Africa • Hacker News Board

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#71

Post by andyferris » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:08 PM UTC

justapassenger wrote: post #44

epistasis wrote: post #9

The grid is HUGELY expensive, an absolutely massive cost for our electricity. And it would still be expensive in a well-regulated environment where you can quickly and easily get permission to build, without, say, voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission line for years [1]. Here in the US we have a very very poorly regulated environment for adding to our grid, it moves slower than molasses and ther…

> Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The only thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the contractor hassle. Does decentralized solar plus batteries give you same amount of reliability? How many days without sunny weather can you survive without having to change your energy use habits? Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXT…

Distributed can do redundancy. It’s relatively cheap.

Consider a family with two cars instead of one. How often do they have zero working cars? The correlated failure rate squares while the cost doubles.

My home now has a grid connection, house battery and solar, a caravan with mounted solar/battery/fridge/inverter beside it, and I also have a portable “powerstation” and portable solar panel which is basically a UPS. My fridge contents and phone charging needs have a several extra 9’s now for costs that have scaled very well.

These systems are tech that is improving rapidly. In some years these African farmers with their increased yields will likely add a bigger, second solar & battery system. In a village you can run a cable next door. Etc.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#72

Post by abdullahkhalids » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:09 PM UTC

hatthew wrote: post #14

wlesieutre wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get how it makes this jump > Then $40-65/month over 24-30 months > replacing $3-5/week kerosene spending with a $0.21/day solar subscription (so with $1.5 per week half the price of kerosene)" in the next paragraph. If it's $40-65/month that's $1.33 to $2.17 per day, not $0.21/day (assuming month with 30 days)

Similarly > Crop yields increase 3-5× > Farmers go from $600/acre to $14,000/acre revenue Wouldn't that revenue jump require a 23x increase in crop yield?

Let's be very charitable and figure out a scenario where this could be true.

Suppose, a farmer has a farm which produces 1 unit of crop. Farmer uses 0.8 of the crop for subsistence and sells 0.2 of the crop. They get $600/acre.

Now, crop yields go up 5x, so now the farm produces 5 units of crop. Subsistence needs are the same, so the farmer is now able to sell 4.2 units of crop. This is 4.2/0.2 = 21 times more revenue or $12,600/acre.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#73

Post by tekchip » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:10 PM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #53

justapassenger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The only thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the contractor hassle. Does decentralized solar plus batteries give you same amount of reliability? How many days without sunny weather can you survive without having to change your energy use habits? Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXT…

The grid has a lot of 9s, but in a lot of places losing power for a day or two after a storm is not unusual at all. The grid per se being fine but your actual neighborhood being dark for a couple days is a pretty common experience in some places.

Can confirm. I live in a US city and the only 9 involved is maybe the very first number. I've lived here just over a year and we've had 1 full day without power and probably 8 to 10 short outages between a few seconds and several 10s of minutes. I'm adding batteries and solar permitting be damned.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#74

Post by raincole » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

marstall wrote: post #58

people saying this is AI-generated: why? It seems voicey, pacey, individualistic ... and contains new-to-the-world info. And it's good. None of these being qualities I associate with AI writing.

Lack of sources. Questionable numbers and math. Tone. Emoji. In short: everything.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#75

Post by honkostani » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #9

The grid is HUGELY expensive, an absolutely massive cost for our electricity. And it would still be expensive in a well-regulated environment where you can quickly and easily get permission to build, without, say, voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission line for years [1]. Here in the US we have a very very poorly regulated environment for adding to our grid, it moves slower than molasses and ther…

[dead]

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#76

Post by ryandrake » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:12 PM UTC

roywiggins wrote: post #53

justapassenger wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The only thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the contractor hassle. Does decentralized solar plus batteries give you same amount of reliability? How many days without sunny weather can you survive without having to change your energy use habits? Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXT…

The grid has a lot of 9s, but in a lot of places losing power for a day or two after a storm is not unusual at all. The grid per se being fine but your actual neighborhood being dark for a couple days is a pretty common experience in some places.

If you have ever lost power for just 12 hours in an entire year, you're already down to only two 9's: 99.863%

I've never lived anywhere where the power didn't go down for at least a few (cumulative) days a year.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#77

Post by FuriouslyAdrift » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

datadrivenangel wrote: post #51

whatever1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor countries have different problems that don’t let decentralization to work. Local gangs go around and demand protection money and if you don’t pay up your solar panels will unfortunately suffer some “accidental” catastrophic damage.

Apparently solar panels that have fake cracks are moderately popular in some parts of the world to deter theft and similar behavior.

Counterfeit panels are also a huge problem

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/507496-knock-off-solar...

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#78

Post by manoDev » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

This article is a good example of how, sometimes, starting from scratch is a blessing, since you can adopt the best tech right away instead of fighting market inertia and monopolies trying to keep a status quo - as a counter example, see Japan being stuck w/ fax past the internet advent.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#79

Post by xipho » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:13 PM UTC

"But here’s the thing: this massively understates the opportunity.

The solar system is the Trojan horse. The real business is the financial relationship with 40 million customers."

Soooo... they have a good thing going, there is an opportunity to fsk them over? Like more centralized fees?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#80

Post by hatthew » Wed, Nov 05, 2025, 9:14 PM UTC

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #72

hatthew wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similarly > Crop yields increase 3-5× > Farmers go from $600/acre to $14,000/acre revenue Wouldn't that revenue jump require a 23x increase in crop yield?

Let's be very charitable and figure out a scenario where this could be true. Suppose, a farmer has a farm which produces 1 unit of crop. Farmer uses 0.8 of the crop for subsistence and sells 0.2 of the crop. They get $600/acre. Now, crop yields go up 5x, so now the farm produces 5 units of crop. Subsistence needs are the same, so the farmer is now able to sell 4.2 units of crop. This is 4.2/0.2 = 21 times more revenu…

Hmm yeah I didn't consider that they might use part of their yields in ways that don't generate revenue. However that would mean they use $2,400/acre/month of their crops for subsistence which doesn't seem very plausible, so I agree that's a very charitable interpretation. Would only make sense if their field is only a few square meters, in which case the framing of "revenue per acre" is extremely misleading.

Edit: looks like those numbers might be per year (it doesn't seem to specify explicitly), so it actually might be vaguely plausible (though misleading) if we make several charitable assumptions.