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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#581

Post by seec »

AuthAuth wrote: post #187
samtheDamned wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

besides toomuchtodo's nicely made argument, I would like to point that that many "major" nations (I'm assuming that refers to mostly western countries, correct me if I'm wrong) were able to focus on committing to emissions because they gave their dirty work (ie: mass manufacturing, waste disposal, resource extraction) to other countries, especially China.

toomuchtodo's arugments are deluded and ill respond to those in a bit. But I want to be clear that no one "gave" their dirty work to china. Industry in all these countries were priced out. The Western and Asian governments increased environmental regulations and the cost to do business rose. In China the government ignored its climate obligations and slashed environmental regulations and increased coal investment to…

I agree and find it disturbing people downvote this point of view because that is actually the most reasonable one when you look at the actual facts.

It's completely stupid to pretend China is going green when their emissions have continuously increased and the rate has even accelerated the richer they got.

It was all done so they could capture the business of western countries and run a silent economic war. Now most of europe is so dependent on China it's hopeless and they are not even cheaper because all kinds of costs have been added.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#582

Post by fn-mote »

marcosdumay wrote: post #545
carlosjobim wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers are down voting my comment. My question to them: If you could get paid twice the salary per hour to repair expensive machines, would you spend your time repairing mobile phones? Everybody wants that juicy, juicy cheap labour, but nobody wants to be the cheap worker.

Do you think US people capable of fixing phones make more than the ~$600/hour they can add in value by fixing phones there?

No. Fixing modern phones requires a lot of specialized equipment.

You need to be able to fix microscopic flaws in soldering.

There are locked-down components that you cannot replace.

Here is a referenece: https://www.ipadrehab.com/index.cfm?Page=About

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#583

Post by SJC_Hacker »

brohee wrote: post #528
snickmy wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Long distance yes. But medium distance AC is stíl cheaper.

You also need to step down that voltage to 240/220 for residential use, much easier to do with AC

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#584

Post by SJC_Hacker »

snickmy wrote: post #577
brohee wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is correct. When that will be available is the hard thing to guess. 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…

DC is hard to step down. You dont want 10,000 volts going into every house.

AC sill be used for distribution that isnt very long distance

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#585

Post by nextaccountic »

skywhopper wrote: post #215
nextaccountic wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Permitting hassle? What do you need permits for?

To build meaningful solar on your house/property would require permits most municipalities.

But why? Does building roofs also require permits?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#586

Post by prmph »

ta20240528 wrote: post #578
prmph wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between being able to do something and being motivated to do it.

So any country could go to the moon, build 2nm chips? In your opinion its just motivation. In the real world: there are - sadly - such things as failed states and failed societies.

I'm not sure your argument is making any sense.

Are you saying the reason roads are bad in some parts of Africa is that the people there are too dumb to know how to repair the roads? That their problem is figuring out how to mix and pour asphalt, cement, or gravel on their roads?

That would be very dumb, if that's what you are saying.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#587

Post by mrWiz »

looofooo0 wrote: post #574
mrWiz wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

IMO 500 watts of sustained electrical power is a fair bit, especially compared to every other electric device these households are likely to have.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#588

Post by r14c »

beeflet wrote: post #185
r14c wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's capitalism to you?

People buying and selling things with minimal interference from protection rackets

Afaik markets predate joint-stock companies. The concept of "raising capital" is much newer than the concept of a market economy. Did capitalism exist under feudalism? How do modern capital markets differ from historical markets under various other economic systems?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#589

Post by testing22321 »

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…

For what it’s worth, cooking a large meal for three (big pot of pasta or rice, brown onions and garlic, brown mince meat, vegetables, simmer sauce) on my induction in my round the world vehicle uses smack on 40Ah of a 12v lithium battery - so about 0.5kwh.

It’s connected with a 3000W inverter.

600W of solar helps a lot.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#590

Post by nativeit »

TheTxT wrote: post #580
lesostep wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Not an electrical engineer, but doesn’t the voltage combined with the bodies resistance dictate the amperage? So anything under 50VDC just can’t transmit enough amps through the body to be harmful?

This is correct.
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