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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

climatedrift.substack.com

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#281

Post by tomalbrc »

TechDebtDevin wrote: post #274

People should learn to never trust a #1 ranked hacker news article. There are almost always hidden motives. The author (GPT???), or a company mentioned in the article likely is connected to a VC, or YC or both! Don't engage with slop that seems lazily written, if not completely generated by Claude(sorry author if I'm wrong, I know you are claiming you wrote it but idk). This stuff kinda comes off like an article writ…

It's even a tad worse; They are just one of those "career accelerator" companies. In fact most if not all of their articles seem to be AI generated

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#282

Post by noosphr »

pfdietz wrote: post #221
noosphr wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's their 2060 plan. Take it up with the CPP.

Press 'X' to doubt. Assuming someone actually told you that, I think you need to reevaluate the credibility of that source.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266649842...

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#283

Post by zzwzzw »

eric-burel wrote: post #128

I had this idea to rent roofs to install solar panels, building a kind of decentralized power plants. I live in the sunny southern France where summer are starting to become unbearably hot, but at least this comes with a lot of sunpower. There are plenty roofs but sadly we install solar plants in spaces that compete with forest/fertile soil. I am not an energy engineer so that's not a realistic project for me, but ar…

This model has actually taken off in rural China. Salespeople will tell you, "You only need to lend us your roof for 20 to 30 years,and in return, you'll receive a sum of money." Many people in rural China readily agree to this deal. I'm not entirely sure what these solar panel companies get out of the arrangement. Perhaps they sell the generated electricity for a profit, or supply it to factories with high energy demands.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#284

Post by typpilol »

nandomrumber wrote: post #242
hattmall wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The industry basically treats any designs sent to China as a loss since they know it will be duplicated

I don't think trust has much to do with it

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#285

Post by portaouflop »

SamBam wrote: post #196
FanaHOVA wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The structure of each section gives away that it's mostly AI even without having to read the actual words. I'm sure it was AI + writer, but there's something about ending each section with 3-4 short, question-like sentences that is strongly AI. This is the same format as the successful LinkedIn slop so maybe it's not AI and just algo-induced writing.

Yup. It's the colons after every paragraph's first sentence: > It worked because it solved a real problem: Kenyans were already sending money through informal networks. M-PESA just made it cheaper and safer. > Here’s why this matters: M-PESA created a payment rail with near-zero transaction costs. > The magic is this: You’re not buying a $1,200 solar system. > It gets even better: there are people who will pay for cr…

We are so cooked. We spend more time trying to suss out if something was written by AI than actually reading the article. So many legitimate ways of writing are now “ai” style. I used to use emdash a lot, but now I deliberately avoid it because it’s an AI smell - using the less “correct” version instead. E

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#286

Post by portaouflop »

energy123 wrote: post #82

North Africa has a lot of sun, a lot of land, and not much solar seasonality. They will be hit hard with climate change though.

Everyone will be hit hard by climate change. I do t see why it should be less in eg the Americas - where you already have pretty volatile climate events

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#287

Post by istjohn »

nandomrumber wrote: post #256
pantalaimon wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can make a great profit from solar, you are incentivised to build more of it for an even greater profit. Soon there is so much solar that you don't need the expensive gas most of the time.

Isn’t that a self defeating loop. Great profit to be had from solar because of expensive gas. Let’s put aside that this isn’t good for the end user, as it openly admits the whole point of solar is great profit, rather than savings for the end user. Soon there’s no need for the expensive gas. Where’s your profit margin not?

> Let’s put aside that this isn’t good for the end user, as it openly admits the whole point of solar is great profit, rather than savings for the end user.

The whole point of capitalism is that in a well-regulated, open, competitive market, an ecosystem of companies pursuing maximum profit drive down each other's profit margins as they compete for a limited pool of consumers. In other words, it is precisely the profit motive that creates savings for the end user.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#288

Post by narrator »

All the back to the land decentralized survivalists solarpunk people can do just about everything except for rare earth refining. That's the part of solarpunk that can only happen in China because nobody anywhere wants that in their backyard. One of the more interesting political/economic questions is can a non-authoritarian country that values environmental protection do rare earth refining, or is the ecological harm in isolation too abhorrent to the members of the community where it is done to counterbalance the ecological good it does elsewhere? In an authoritarian country, you can just tell the people who live around the processing plant to relocate or suffer because it helps the environment elsewhere. In a non-authoritarian country, the local people will all reject it because it will degrade the quality of life and their land. This has been happening in the backlash against mining in Madagascar for example.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#289

Post by yanhangyhy »

This phenomenon is vastly underestimated. Electricity can also amplify the influence of TikTok and Temu — a world no longer constrained by energy shortages, with social media less dominated by the West, and a marketplace for cheap and affordable industrial goods. Together, these forces will essentially curb uncontrolled population growth in any country and gradually raise living standards. (Also pakistan and many other countries)

Even North Korea is undergoing some changes. The country has long suffered from energy shortages, and the gradual spread of solar power can help address some of these issues. However, I doubt that North Korea’s geographic conditions will allow for much improvement.

And considering geography, if I understand correctly, the Middle East has once again gained a significant advantage?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#290

Post by bad_haircut72 »

zer00eyz wrote: post #266
cyberax wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is pretty much bunk. There really is _very_ little space for manual unqualified work in solar panel manufacturing. Does the supply chain contain less-than-free labor somewhere? Likely. Most probably somewhere in the raw material production, but it's not something that is a deciding factor in anything. These materials just as well likely go into making of iPhones and Lenovo laptops.

Unloading, Frame assemblies, testing, Cleanup of any failed products (this is skilled labor)... Packaging and loading. This is at the plant that does panel assembly (joining silicon to packaging). The problem is that "Highly automated" does not mean "free of people" ... the demand for low skill labor (and a fair amount of it to keep up with automated processes) is still required. The cost of labor in china remains so…

Yeh USA could doninate this if only the price of a guy to load panels onto a truck wasnt so high

/obvious sarcasm

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