491–500 of 616 posts
But solar energy itself cost more than other form of electricity. But who is driving cost of solar? Is it China?
> But solar energy itself cost more than other form of electricity That is in fact, not correct. Maybe you should put that one back where you pulled it from.
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…
My takeaway from observing “tech in developing world” projects is that the key gap is usually maintenance . That is, continuous small investment to prevent things from breaking in the first place. To be fair, that’s not exactly a solved problem in developed countries either! Sometimes development projects just throw solutions at rural communities then move onto their next project, leaving no legacy of training or con…
even in the Big IT Enterprise "support" is a byword that appears in all discussions.
it's not enough to have, or to build, you gotta maintain, fix, replace, and eventually, remove.
those discussions aren't fun or sexy, and everyone hates when you tank a blue-sky "it'll fix everything" discussion with the unpleasant realities of long-term care and feeding
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The detectors are wrong. Here’s the thing: AI slop has a distinctive structure that many of us spot from a mile away. The kicker? This setup-punchline format sets off a red alert for astute readers’ AI detectors. This isn’t just AI slop, it’s an industrial AI sludge factory. (note: this was ironically written by a human)
You realise the irony right? You say say AI "slop" has a distinctive structure, but at the same time you (and the other poster) say that AI tools can not detect it? For what it's worth I'm an AI sceptic, but one thing that AI tools are good at is pattern matching (that's really all they do). But somehow pattern matching AI writing is so obvious to human's but it completely fails all AI tools (just tried another tool…
Food for thought, fwiw I think you have some valid points.
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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.
Brazilian person here, when I moved to Europe I was baffled I couldn't find shops that fixed electronics. Like I wanted to get my Android phone charging port replaced, I literally couldn't find a shop in my city willing to do the repair. I eventually went back to Brazil and had it fixed there and replaced the battery. Freaking phone lasted 8 years on my very clumsly hands, still works even. The fix cost me ~30 usd pl…
Industrial dishwasher breaks down? You need to get an electrician there ASAP.
Cell phone breaks down? Throw it away and buy a new one.
Brazil has very low salaries for skilled workers, so it makes sense that it's cheap to find somebody to fix your phone.
This is cool, but I don't think "move everyone off of government managed utilities to private profit extractors" is very Solar Punk.
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…
I know you have some bias for the education solution, but I can't see why this is not a market problem. You have broken devices; you send them to get fixed; you have to travel one day to get them fixed; you have someone take them for a fee. You would be surprised at the amount of product repairs that are deemed not worth solving in a developed country that you can sort out in a couple of hours in a developing country…
Most of the people we’re talking about here are subsistence farmers who pick up casual labour at a local farm. Income is sporadic and seasonal.
That was the initial brilliance of the PAYGO system, it allows users to pay off their device sporadically I.e. they buy units when they get paid and that goes towards paying off an asset that in theory will then provide energy at 0 marginal cost. Turns out that last bit isn’t true.
Here the VC story is important, these companies were meant to be high growth and giving significant returns. We all know how that ends.
> You would be surprised at the amount of product repairs that are deemed not worth solving in a developed country that you can sort out in a couple of hours in a developing country.
I have been in the past, but not anymore. No one is saying people aren’t resourceful but there is a significant barrier to entry when it comes to electronics repairs for the general population. One part of what we provide is an off-grid repair lab bundled with our new education offering so it’s very much knowledge + tools.
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You're attempting to be sarcastic but that's actually accurate: > Capitalism is really centralized monopolistic oligarchical control in modern media parlance. Of course, because the Capitalists try to control the industry they've invested in. > Distributed empowering democratic grassroots level allocation of resources that don't provide centralized control and administration is "socialism". Yes, it is. When the peopl…
>Of course, because the Capitalists try to control the industry they've invested in. But does the system eventually result in a small number of capitalists taking power or is it distributed over many capitalists? Not all monopolies are natural. What is the "work" being done here? Manufacturing or installation? It's not like all of the solar companies are co-ops and contractors.
Because it's based on sunlight which is distributed and noncentralized and free.
With battery storage, the intermittency is solved largely. Maybe you have your own gasoline peaker.
With enough solar, and an electric vehicle, you have transportation independence.
And I'm no expert on the historical and political nature of agriculture and centralized control, but I could argue agriculture is also fundamentally decentralized, certainly within the modern standards of deep technological stack control.
So if you can get your food, energy, transportation, water by yourself or within a local network... Then while I wouldn't call that socialist, I would call that highly democratilized, is that a word?
Now traditionally you also needed centralized power for defense.
And I'm wondering if drones will provide a fundamental advantage to guerilla defense.
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Yeah way too many tell-tale ChatGPT rhetorical devices in this article, which is a shame because the topic and premise are fascinating, but those turned me off from finishing it. AI slop hits 700+ upvotes on Hacker News. The Dead Internet and the triumph of quantity over quality loom. A sign of things to come.
I think it's more of a link with a nice title getting 700+ upvotes. IMO many (and most non-tech) articles linked on HN are bad and most of their value lies in them being a conversation starter.
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Exactly. The same principles that apply for solar energy are already in place for natural gas and for every other form of energy and the fundamental logic of markets is that there's a price point consumers will pay that's also profitable for the company. That didn't newly become an issue for the first time once solar entered the picture. There should be a word for this type of argument where people relitigate settled…
> the fundamental logic of markets is that there's a price point consumers will pay that's also profitable for the company Electricity demand is price inelastic, meaning the consumer has no direct influence on prices, and will pay practically any price (well, up to a point). In the EU, the day-ahead spot prices are published every day at 2PM CEST, and it's a bidding market driven only by suppliers. If gas price goes…
For starters, numbers I've seen suggest something day ahead prices are something like 10% to 30% of the overall energy supply because most of it's sold outside of that context via things like regulated utility pricing, forward and futures markets which sell weeks to years ahead, and long-term bilateral contracts such as power purchase agreements. So most energy is not purchased this way over the short term.
Moreover, for goodness sake, inelasticity at the margin doesn't make something not a market, that's simply not what inelasticity means, and none of these considerations have anything to do with whether solar power in particular can be profitably offered to customers. (Again, why would it be just applying uniquely and exclusively to solar power but not other forms of energy?)
Investments of various kind occur over horizons of days, months, and years where these market dynamics unfold. Every energy source on offer whether it be solar panel, gas turbine and storage facility is financed built and dispatched based on the expectations of cost and profit. Demand is quite elastic over the horizon of months and years, and demand inelasticity is sometimes a feature of markets not something that identifies any specific phenomena that prevents solar power in particular from entering markets.
Solar power rises and falls throughout the day in a manner that conveniently aligns with actual energy consumption patterns, and its net effect on the grid is de-stressing peaking infrastructure.
So it's certainly true that there are day ahead markets but if you think the upshot of that is that it somehow means solar can't be provided at a price point affordable to consumers that simultaneously profitable to the companies providing it, well, the phrase "missing the forest for the trees" was practically invented for moments like this.
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> So you are looking at powering DC only appliances! Is there anything you actually need AC for? The big advantage of AC is that you can easily transform it for long range transmission. If you don't need that, AC is not really necessary, is it? I guess the bigger issue is the limited power -- you probably can't use a small scale solar installation for cooking or washing, not because it's DC, but because it just wont…
Lowtech magazine recently had an article about cooking with solar power: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-a-sol...