This is cool, but I don't think "move everyone off of government managed utilities to private profit extractors" is very Solar Punk.
Solarpunk is happening in Africa
111–120 of 616 posts
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I lost power for 10h in my city recently and it was a big fucking deal. The last 5 years that's the first time that happened. I would say I have less than a hour of downtime per year in the other years
PS I don't live in the US.
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#113Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#114I think this is really cool, but math seems off: > A company (Sun King, SunCulture) installs a solar system in your home > * You pay ~$100 down > * Then $40-65/month over 24-30 months But also: > The magic is this: You’re not buying a $1,200 solar system. You’re replacing $3-5/week kerosene spending with a $0.21/day solar subscription (so with $1.5 per week half the price of kerosene) $1.5 week is $6 a month, not $60…
They mixed up the numbers for residential solar (Solar King) and agriculture solar (SunCulture).
The $100 down + $65/mo is for agriculture.
(not that the numbers are correct or make sense)
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Wild! I’ve lived in Chicago and San Francisco and have never lost power for more than an hour. And can’t remember the last time it went out at all, maybe 2 years ago?
What city do you live in?
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#116Earlier 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…
> Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXTREMELY expensive. And grid has a lot of 9s. Correction: should have a lot of 9s. But in a lot of places in the U.S., even rich states, it doesn't because a combination of regulatory capture, profiteering and straight corruption. I can see why solar and batteries are so attractive because at least its your prerogative when the power goes out.
Have you heard how companies makes money on the US grid?
Oh boy.
They are incentivized to BULID but not to maintain or upgrade because that grants them guarantee rate of return.
It was enlightening to see what caused the big blackout during a big snowfall in texas a few years ago
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#117This article has ChatGPT written all over it
Even if it's not written by ChatGPT, it's the /exact style/ used by the linkedin AI evangelists
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#118The 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…
> Thanks to all the entrepreneurs and engineers over the past decades Hat tip also to China's ideological commitment to independence from external oil supplies, as nicely coupled to reducing pollution and greenwashing their image. It's their citizens who sacrifice to make solar power cheap enough.
I dont think China deserves that hat tip. Their "commitment" was done years after all the major nations had committed to emissions reduction and seems to have only been done so they could sell the solution. They've made little attempt to reduce emissions and instead scaled their industrial base to capitalize on the demand from nations working to reduce their carbon footprint.
The only thing they've done to greenwash their image is spend money buying articles that present the false image of a green china.
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#119This article has ChatGPT written all over it
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)
It's an AI generated article full of errors. Simple arithmetic errors. Probably copied from a video or another article.
Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa
#120This is cool, but I don't think "move everyone off of government managed utilities to private profit extractors" is very Solar Punk.
Huh? These people own their own equipment after 30 months and are then not reliant on usually corrupt and/or incompetent government. They're not exactly rent seeking.
Being self reliant is indeed "very punk".