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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#241

Post by mensetmanusman »

epolanski wrote: post #203
baxtr wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like anything else that the world procures cheaply from China btw.

At this point this is a cliche. There's tons of countries with much cheaper labor. The reasons we build in china are not related to cheap labor, this hasn't been the case from quite some time.

The older generation made huge sacrifices with no wage growth because the CCP kept the currency low.

This allowed for China to choose industries it would dominate outside of economic forces. It chose to dominate solar and was allowed to sell panels below raw materials cost in order to kill competition.

In one hand it’s good for world solar, on the other hand this has helped cause the rise of the far right all over the west.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#242

Post by nandomrumber »

hattmall wrote: post #211
epolanski wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At this point this is a cliche. There's tons of countries with much cheaper labor. The reasons we build in china are not related to cheap labor, this hasn't been the case from quite some time.

Cheap labor is still a major factor, but infrastructure is definitely another.

And trust, probably the most valuable commodity.

Three or four decades of proven ability to deliver, trusted relationships.

Even despite all the political noise.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#243

Post by martinald »

ryandrake wrote: post #76
roywiggins wrote: post #53

Earlier 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.

It's very location dependent fwiw.

In the UK, I think I can remember 3 power outages my entire life. One when there was significant flooding in my hometown as a child, which lasted around a day, once at university for a few hours (local substation failed) and recently 30 minutes overnight while they were upgrading something (with a lot of notice). I may be undercounting/misremembering but I don't think its far off.

I think the main difference is the UK in all but mostly rural areas has all the power lines underground. This is very different in eg North America where you can go a few blocks out of downtown areas and it is all overhead delivery.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#244

Post by mensetmanusman »

w10-1 wrote: post #38
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…

> 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.

[flagged]

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#245

Post by nandomrumber »

aeonfox wrote: post #194
epistasis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's a bit different, I never heard a story of iPhones being manufactured like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 However most of the "slave" talk these days comes from highly politicized sources, so it's hard to cut through to the truth. For example, it's not likely that there's enough Uyghur slave labor to be involved with "most" of the polysilicon even from Xinjiang, much less the ent…

> IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa Not really an issue for solar battery systems as they typically use the cheaper LFP chemistry that has a much higher cycle count. The gravimetric density is a bit less, but that only really matters for high-performance mobility.

You responded to a comment about cobalt with vague references to cell chemistry, cycle count, and energy density.

What does any of that have to do with cobalt?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#246

Post by Steven_Vellon »

pfdietz wrote: post #239
Steven_Vellon wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what was the storage requirement? I just ran those parameters myself with China's 2.9 TW of constant electricity demand, and the storage requirement was over 70,000 GWh of battery storage. By comparison, global battery production is around 1,000 GWh per year.

It was around 14 hours of battery storage. Seems reasonable. Realize that replacing all ICE road vehicles in the US with 70 kWh BEVs would require storage equal to ~40 hours of our average grid usage. The future is going to need large numbers of batteries, which is why China has been all in on this.

14 hours of battery (~40 TWh for China) with the hydrogen storage or without? Because the calculator was reporting ~78,000 GWh battery storage with China's weather selected, and 2030 technology assumptions. I changed the spatial capacity factor from 1 to 2 and the battery storage requirement dropped down to 68 TWh, but still well above 40 TWH.

Regardless, 14 hours of China's electricity demand is a whopping 40,600 GWh. By comparison, 2024's lithium ion battery production figure was 1.5 TWh [1]. Even assuming 100% of this went to EV's we're still talking about roughly 25 years worth of global battery production to fulfill only China's demand for storage in this model. As you point out, we still have loads of battery demand for EV adoption, so nowhere near 100% of production will be able to be diverted to grid storage.

The scale of storage required to make intermittent sources viable without being backed by a dispatchable energy source really is tremendous, and this often gets overlooked in pushes for a fully renewable grid.

1. https://www.argusmedia.com/ja/news-and-insights/latest-marke...

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#247

Post by pfdietz »

Steven_Vellon wrote: post #246
pfdietz wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was around 14 hours of battery storage. Seems reasonable. Realize that replacing all ICE road vehicles in the US with 70 kWh BEVs would require storage equal to ~40 hours of our average grid usage. The future is going to need large numbers of batteries, which is why China has been all in on this.

14 hours of battery (~40 TWh for China) with the hydrogen storage or without? Because the calculator was reporting ~78,000 GWh battery storage with China's weather selected, and 2030 technology assumptions. I changed the spatial capacity factor from 1 to 2 and the battery storage requirement dropped down to 68 TWh, but still well above 40 TWH. Regardless, 14 hours of China's electricity demand is a whopping 40,600 GW…

That was about the amount in both cases. Slightly more in the no-hydrogen case than otherwise. Hydrogen contributed only marginally.

Yes, it's a lot of batteries. So what? It's not like the current battery production is some firm limit. If anything, the very large future demand ensures batteries will be driven down their experience curve, so the cost will be even lower than assumed.

The world spends something like $10T per year on energy. Any replacement energy system is going to be a big thing.

You need to make an argument that is more than you expressing fear of large numbers.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#248

Post by [deleted] »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #244
w10-1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

[flagged]

[deleted]

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#249

Post by dgacmu »

nandomrumber wrote: post #245
aeonfox wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from artisanal-scale mines in Africa Not really an issue for solar battery systems as they typically use the cheaper LFP chemistry that has a much higher cycle count. The gravimetric density is a bit less, but that only really matters for high-performance mobility.

You responded to a comment about cobalt with vague references to cell chemistry, cycle count, and energy density. What does any of that have to do with cobalt?

The post you're replying to didn't explain it well, but: LFP batteries don't use cobalt (or nickel).

LFP production is starting to pass NMC (lithium + nickel manganese cobalt oxide). Slightly lower density but a lot of advantages in lack of easily catching on fire, longer lifetime -- and lack of cobalt. LFP (LiFePo4) is the battery chemistry of choice today for solar installations, where the longer lifetime and increased safety are a big win and the slightly lower density doesn't matter, unlike mobile applications.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#250

Post by throwaway290 »

htrp wrote: post #158

>Solar Home System Evolution: >2008: $5,000 (affordable only for wealthy urban Kenyans) >2015: $800 (middle-class farmers) >2025: $120-$1,200 (true smallholders) How does US solar cost so much?

probably CCP subsidizing manufacturing and sales (like they do with EV) because it's a command economy and getting the world to run on their stuff is good for their "national security". and US taxing it for that reason
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