Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Solarpunk is happening in Africa

climatedrift.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 616 posts

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#421

Post by don_esteban »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #172
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…

Rural electrification in the US hugely proves your point. Yes, grid costs are fantastically expensive!! At the time: we had no choice! Universal electricity access was (& is) vastly better than the alternative: not having universal access. But what's happening in this article isn't an alternative, not so far: it's leaving the masses behind, dropping the pretense that electricity is a utility that ought be available t…

This is not about rich society abandoning its people. (That's the US healthcare mess.)

This is about advances in the technology allowing the people to take care of themselves in cases when the overall society is so poor that it can't provide the central electricity grid.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#422

Post by manmal »

defrost wrote: post #416
nandomrumber wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of gas peaked plants: because they’re providing grid stability. Whereas solar generators are ruining grid stability.

Mini pumped storage dams and battery banks fix that issue cheaper than gas peaker plants. Eg: In your market, Australia, this was completed this year for $8 million AU https://www.westernpower.com.au/resources-education/network-...

That’s just media hype. You need orders of magnitude more of these plants to prevent blackouts entirely.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#423

Post by manmal »

CorrectHorseBat wrote: post #401
manmal wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Soon there is so much solar that you don't need the expensive gas most of the time. In the EU (winters with weak solar radiation) this only works if you can store power over multiple months. Getting rid of gas means purchasing and maintaining a giant amount of batteries. Slow storage won’t save you from outages during peaks. We do have very cheap power from solar, during the hot months. In winter, its wind and offs…

Right now providing grid stability is maximally rewarded because you get paid a lot when it's needed and little when there's a lot of electricity available. Storage providers can use this spread to make money and create grid stability. I'm not sure what you mean by second peak market? Let me turn around the question, why should a gas plant get more for its electricity when it's indistinguishable from solar electricit…

> why should a gas plant get more for its electricity when it's indistinguishable from solar electricity?

I already wrote it: levels of service. A gas plant powers up in minutes. A coal plant in hours. A nuclear reactor in years. Solar and wind isn’t controllable at all.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#424

Post by ZeroGravitas »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #372

This revolution also has a dark side: People are paying off these devices and then once they have paid them off, they break and people in these areas don’t have the skills or resources to fix them. This has led to over 250 million of the units lying around broken in peoples homes, leading to solar being one of the fastest growing e-waste streams in the world. It’s hardly solar punk to sell people cheap crap at a 10x…

That seems more optimistic (or solar punk) than your summary e.g.:

> In terms of waste management, 85.3% of distributors reported that they had a waste management strategy. Mostly, this tended to involve collecting broken products, harvesting them for spare parts and then storing the remainder in a central warehouse before sending them to a (usually certified) local e-waste recycling facility. How effective these recycling facilities are, however, was beyond the scope of this report.

They seem to suggest that lithium batteries are the hardest to repair and recycle, but people want to do so. It feels like a problem that will get easier at scale.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#425

Post by chrneu »

dhoe wrote: post #415
MrsPeaches wrote: post #372

This revolution also has a dark side: People are paying off these devices and then once they have paid them off, they break and people in these areas don’t have the skills or resources to fix them. This has led to over 250 million of the units lying around broken in peoples homes, leading to solar being one of the fastest growing e-waste streams in the world. It’s hardly solar punk to sell people cheap crap at a 10x…

As someone who's spent the last 3 years in Africa, if there's one thing I learnt here is that if it can be fixed, they'll find a way to fix it.

lol yeah I was gonna say that they fix everything. They can't just Amazon prime new shit. It's weird how OP just assumes they're inept at repairs when that's just not true at all.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#426

Post by chrneu »

kaon_2 wrote: post #405

I worked in this industry as a software developer. Companies like SunCulture (who used to be a customer of ours) started maintaining all their customers on spreadsheets. But with high volume low-value sales, you need to have good software to manage this. We were a player. I once had to do a mobile money integration with a Zimbabwean bank. A dozen skype calls led to nothing. Then I visited the country, bought a local…

My understanding is that the main benefit of small solar like this is to get combustion out of the home, specifically kerosene or dung lamps/stoves. A lot of folks have respiratory issues because they cook indoors.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#427

Post by chrneu »

dustypotato wrote: post #395
yanhangyhy wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i think no one can stop that from happening.. you have electricity, you have apps. people will have more thinking on the child thing. and more time on the internet and less time on the home.

One thing i think a lot of people forget is the effect of Porn on fertility rates.

lmao what?

Is this some /r/nofap stuff leaking?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#428

Post by defrost »

manmal wrote: post #422
defrost wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mini pumped storage dams and battery banks fix that issue cheaper than gas peaker plants. Eg: In your market, Australia, this was completed this year for $8 million AU https://www.westernpower.com.au/resources-education/network-...

That’s just media hype. You need orders of magnitude more of these plants to prevent blackouts entirely.

Err, no, it's an actual system we built here to service an actual town to soak excess energy from midday solar and buffer an actual real town from blackouts.

The battery banks in Adelaide an elsewhere are real - you can kick them.

You can price these against gas peaker turbine plants, and then compare the robustness of mini distributed storage nodes against larger single point of failure fossil fuel gas plants.

I understand the Western Power link provided looks like media hype, it was put together years back at the start of the project with minal updates in the interim.

It's well out of date now that the Walpole project has been completed and is up and running for a few months now.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#429

Post by chrneu »

xbmcuser wrote: post #213

I have been saying this for a few years now that people are underestimating the change solar, batteries and electric transport/machinery will bring about im many of parts of the world. People are not going to just get access to cheap electricity but also a lot of machinery that they can run with that electricity that was not possible before.

EV powertrains also have way fewer parts. Arguably, repairs are easier.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#430

Post by chrneu »

pinkmuffinere wrote: post #280

I understand why this is happening in Africa first — lack of infrastructure makes the solution much more competitive. But as prices fall, it seems that this might be cost competitive in other areas as well. Selfishly, I’d love to see this in the US! Any big issues that would prevent adoption in the US?

>Any big issues that would prevent adoption in the US?

Lol is this sarcasm? America is back on the fossil fuel train baby! If you're a patriot, jump on board as we sink this ship! Solar panels are for soyboys and we eat beef out hur.

Joking aside, solar is so cheap that even without subsidies the US is installing more solar than anything else. Fossil fuels are dirty and expensive in comparison.

Post reply on HN