Solarpunk is happening in Africa • Hacker News Board

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#511

Post by edelbitter » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 2:56 PM UTC

stingrae wrote: post #328

"This worked great if you were electrifying America in the 1930s, when labor was cheap, materials were subsidized, and the government could strong-arm right-of-way access." It was good in the moment. The issue is maintaining it without the same cheap labor and materials. PG&E in California is a perfect example. There is no way for them to maintain the grid which is aging and causing fires. We are going to have to swi…

As long as grid upgrades & maintenance continue to work reasonably well across western Europe, bad examples from the US are not particularly worrying. Economics of scale still very much apply; there is a point in maintaining expensive grid infrastructure. Especially so when using it to improve other expensive infrastructure, such as electric high-speed passenger rail.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#512

Post by gimmeThaBeet » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:02 PM UTC

amluto wrote: post #419

jjcob wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Battery powered induction stoves exist, although they are not cheap enough yet. They are, however, truly excellent products. The one from Impulse Labs is not a case of “wow, I can get decent performance without the monster electric hookup it used to require” — it’s “wow, this seems to be the best stove of any sort on the market by a considerable margin, and it’s nifty that it happens to run off an integral battery, t…

Dang that 6k is pretty prohibitive not for the overall level, but because it's 4 hobs or nothing. Hardly a "give it a swag" kind of level. I assume they are probably somewhat comparable to the Breville Control Freak, so at a single hob you'd be competing against $1500.

But the battery is a nice philosophy, similar to hybrid/mild electric cars. You don't need all the power forever. You just need more than a 120V circuit can provide.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#513

Post by Tepix » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

interstice wrote: post #12

Every time I see $/watt charts like this I just want a single link to buy something at that price. 20c/watt? Yes please, _where_.

Here in Germany you can now buy 450W-500W solar panels at 50-60€ (§) That's already much lower than 20c/watt.

(§) for example: https://www.mydealz.de/deals/sunpro-500-wp-solarmodul-210-r-...

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#514

Post by marstall » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:03 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #451

nluken wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The giveaway is almost always an over-dependence on "Not 'x' but 'y'" structure. Even when the author changes the wording so that the phrase doesn't read exactly like that, they tend to leave the structure intact, and the bots really like to lead with the inverse of what the author wants to say to create contrast. A human author might have used this technique once to really emphasize a strong point, but today's LLMs…

As a human who's written like that for decades, this witch-hunt makes it really hard to participate online anymore. This was a standard expository device taught in school, some of us latched onto it, and now it's impossible to argue that we're human because someone's conviction that we're AI is just an opinion and there is no evidence that will convince them, nor do they deserve the effort it would take even if it we…

yeah it's a crazy trend. suspicion that everything is AI is a poison to forums. have no idea how this moves forward. secretly hoping it destroys the entire internet, and rapidly. so we can go back to conspiring in smoke-filled rooms.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#515

Post by tonyarkles » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:07 PM UTC

randomtoast wrote: post #490

mtrovo wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It depends. If the quality of the panels is similar to Temu products and not design with any repairablity in mind, then even with almost no labor costs, it still might be more cost-effective to simply replace the entire thing.

I was thinking about this too. There are tradeoffs around repairability. As an example, if you're expecting the unit to live in a wet environment it's not unreasonable to consider potting the circuit boards. This makes water ingress as a source of failure significantly less likely, but also has thermal effects (heat can't radiate very well through a block of silicone) that can hurt the overall lifetime as well as make it almost impossible to repair.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#516

Post by Tepix » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:08 PM UTC

portaouflop wrote: post #286

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

Scandinavia is likely to benefit from climate change.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#517

Post by nluken » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:11 PM UTC

myself248 wrote: post #451

nluken wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The giveaway is almost always an over-dependence on "Not 'x' but 'y'" structure. Even when the author changes the wording so that the phrase doesn't read exactly like that, they tend to leave the structure intact, and the bots really like to lead with the inverse of what the author wants to say to create contrast. A human author might have used this technique once to really emphasize a strong point, but today's LLMs…

As a human who's written like that for decades, this witch-hunt makes it really hard to participate online anymore. This was a standard expository device taught in school, some of us latched onto it, and now it's impossible to argue that we're human because someone's conviction that we're AI is just an opinion and there is no evidence that will convince them, nor do they deserve the effort it would take even if it we…

Keep using that structure. The bots use it so much, and in ways that human authors wouldn't, that it becomes self-parodying. As long as you're not using the same device over and over again in the same piece you'll be fine.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#518

Post by segmondy » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

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…

Africans have more repair skills than westerners. Due to cost of things being expensive, repair culture is really big over there and in other 3rd world countries. You would be surprised at what folks can fix over there.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#519

Post by glenstein » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:32 PM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #351

glenstein wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It’s not like I’m discovering the concept for the first time. I just think when people say things like “solar is cheaper than gas” they should say for who. Solar is cheaper than gas for the capitalist. And there’s no guarantee the capitalists savings will ever be passed on to the consumer. In my market, Australia, the energy retailers are regulated to increase prices once a year. Increase prices. Never a saving for t…

It sounds like what you are talking about is the "Default Market Offer", aka the Australian equivalent to the "standard offer" in the United States. I cannot possibly stress this enough: nothing about the existence of the standard offer has anything to do with the relative economics of solar to other energies, so it's bizarre that you're showing up in a middle of a thread about solar power specifically, and treating a phenomenon that applies to the energy market as a whole like it's only a problem for solar.

And remember what this thread is about - Solarpunk in Africa, off the grid, which is a case that has nothing to do with regulated utility grids, so it couldn't possibly have less to do with the article that this thread is about.

You're insisting you're not discovering the concept for the first time, yet even in this comment you're still doing the same thing, treating systemic regulations that apply to energy markets writ large like they somehow only apply to solar. You wouldn't be doing that if you understood beforehand that these systemic problems had nothing to do with solar in particular, you would be doing it if you were just starting to look into solar and discovered those issues for the first time, which I what I think is happening.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#520

Post by lo_zamoyski » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 3:38 PM UTC

red-iron-pine wrote: post #492

jl6 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

ain't just tech in the developing world. 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

> it's not enough to have, or to build, you gotta maintain, fix, replace, and eventually, remove.

Indeed. I think many in the West fail to appreciate - and take for granted - the cultural dimensions (which include cultures of knowledge, skill transmission, cultivation, and development, and also worldview[0]) as well as the economic ecosystems and supply chains involved.

Dropping off a tractor in Africa or a bulldozer in rural India and calling it a day is superficial and worthless. Imagine shipping something suitably technologically advanced to some Germanic tribe during the Roman conquest of Europe if you need an analogy.

[0] The worldview bit might surprise some. As some have argued, there are reasons why enterprises like modern science arose and flourished only in the West, whereas everywhere else scientific development was historically quite limited. These reasons include a culture formed under the notion of the Logos which entails the belief in a thoroughly intelligible universe that can be fully known in principle; a rejection of pantheism with a distinction made between the transcendental and the immanent, allowing for exploration; a rejection of pantheism and so a world infested with capricious, personified natural phenomena; an omniscient and omnibenevolent God who is not capricious or voluntarist. Without these elements, the confidence and motivation needed to confidently exercise and develop intellectually, to try to understand the world - which contribute to the formation of a robust scientific culture - is stifled.