571–580 of 616 posts
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Right, but you can switch an EV to a clean source of energy in the future, which you can't do with a petrol car (until carbon-capture fuel becomes viable)
https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
Isn't it a shame that 90% of the comments here are complaining that AI was involved in producing this article, and none of the comments are from a tech nerd kid in Africa who has electricity because of the solar schemes mentioned in the article? I want to hear from the people affected.
I worked in this industry, visited several rural areas. Spoke to many people. Sunculture used to be a customer of our software company. The article doesn't quite do justice to the introduction of electricity; it claims that people replace kerosine or diesel with electricity. From what i've seen this is rarely true. Most people just sit in the dark. This means you go from total darkness at night to electricity. Even t…
Too easy to forget that there are ~10 billion people in the world. I live in the US, and it always gives me awe when I realize we represent <5% of humanity.
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Thought provoking question! I am not an electrical engineer, but arguments I heard went along these lines: Almost all existing appliance markets are AC. Are we really going to be building a complete parallel appliance market? You wouldn't be able to sell a TV from the city in the country side and vice versa. I would be keen to hear what an electrical engineer on hackernews has to say! Interestingly, when I visited th…
I'm sort of an electrical engineer. Increasingly things don't run directly off 120/240V directly. Anything with a power supply could be designed to run of 48V DC nominal. My slight obsession is that really the world needs a low voltage standard. Things like lighting, low power appliances don't need 120/240V.
>> the world needs a low voltage standard we have high voltage standard because it means we can have low amperage to transit same VA.
Because voltage doesn't kill, amperage does. It's for safety.
DC is far more safer then AC, but it's not that much safer. If we convert 20A 240V AC (very bad, you can't move your hands away) to 48V DC we get a wooping 110A (instant death)
But if we convert 20A 120V AC, we'd get 55A 48V DC. It's on the same level and has the same problem with moving your hands away.
My country used 220V (as most do!) so switching to DC would mean huge safety threat, but for 120V countries I'd say – go for it!
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> Making heat from electricity is hard! Why? All you need is resistive wires, and minimal, dirt cheap electronics for regulation and shutdown/safety. You can find this in literally any $20 kettle or toaster, no need to supply Africans with induction cooktops for thousands of dollars...
You also need a buttload of electric power, which is the bottleneck.
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Since the beginning of 2025 coal usage has started to decline in absolute numbers in China. China builds enough renewables and storage to both absorb grid growth and displace existing coal plants.
Rate is at a ten year high. https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...
In terms of actual coal burned in those and already existing plants it is declining.
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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?
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AC makes power distribution easier (because you can have modulated phases). So it's correct to say it's easier to move it over a long distance. Additionally, and i'm really simplifying, at parity of nominal voltage, you can move a lot more power, at a lower dissipation cost. This has resulted in few high power electronics to be AC native (ie.: no AC - DC - AC conversion). Think about motors in the various appliances,…
That wheel has turned. The king of long distance transmission is now HVDC, to be point of sometimes being used intra-grid and not just for interconnects.
There are currently enough production of electricity that is motor based (think about gas turbine, water turbines, etc), so there is a nice benefit of having AC at source and distribution.
The infrastructure needs to change. With an average lifetime of a substation in the 50-75years, it's hard to expect we'll overhaul completely the distribution system over night.
It's also hard for me to understand the power loss between the two scenarios (AC production, ac distribution, ac/dc conversion , dc consumption) and DC production, dc stepup to HVDC, dc distribution, DC stepdown and DC consumption). Even 1% at national scale means millions, so the entire business case might be anchored there. I'm sure there are smarter people than me here that can cast some light on this
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"Africans have more repair skills than westerners." … which is why our roads are so much better than those in Switzerland.
There's a difference between being able to do something and being motivated to do it.
In the real world: there are - sadly - such things as failed states and failed societies.
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You also need a buttload of electric power, which is the bottleneck.
Not really, my old microwave has 500 Watts, this should be also enough for slow resistive cooking while being insulated.You will find 12V/24V 2.8L/5L Dc Electric Pressures Cookers with 250W-300W on AliExpress. (1l needs roughly 0.1kwh of energy to go from 20 to 100°C) Additionally, you might save a lot of energy by using a hay box after it starts to boil. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haybox
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I'm sort of an electrical engineer. Increasingly things don't run directly off 120/240V directly. Anything with a power supply could be designed to run of 48V DC nominal. My slight obsession is that really the world needs a low voltage standard. Things like lighting, low power appliances don't need 120/240V.
I worked as an electrical civil engineer for few years. >> the world needs a low voltage standard we have high voltage standard because it means we can have low amperage to transit same VA. Because voltage doesn't kill, amperage does. It's for safety. DC is far more safer then AC, but it's not that much safer. If we convert 20A 240V AC (very bad, you can't move your hands away) to 48V DC we get a wooping 110A (instan…