Its only for residences ( not business )
Only available in some parts of Australia
Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
201–210 of 317 posts
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's speculation, and probably good speculation. On the concrete side we do know that they also care deeply about local pollution. They made massive efforts to clean the air for the Beijing Olympics, amongst other many other moves to reduce local air pollution.
I'm in Beijing right now. I was also here 20+years ago. The difference is astonishing. Back then the air was filthy, it was hard to breathe, you never saw the sun. Today it is blue sky most days, EVs everywhere, electric scooters, busses, even garbage trucks. The roads are quiet. The air is clean. The high speed rail system is astonishingly good. This really feels in some ways like living in the future. The West is y…
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Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#203Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took a job with Atlassian out there and got my citizenship. Best 5 years of my life. I'm back in the US now temporarily, but there's zero doubt in my mind I will end up back in Aus. I've lived in 8 cities now(1), and Sydney was the highest quality of life I've had out of any of them. Great infrastructure, great work-life balance, great culture, and fantastic weather. Only downsides are the distance and the lack of…
What about the spiders?
I've seen more spiders in my house when I lived by the river in the UK than for years in Australia.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took a job with Atlassian out there and got my citizenship. Best 5 years of my life. I'm back in the US now temporarily, but there's zero doubt in my mind I will end up back in Aus. I've lived in 8 cities now(1), and Sydney was the highest quality of life I've had out of any of them. Great infrastructure, great work-life balance, great culture, and fantastic weather. Only downsides are the distance and the lack of…
What about the spiders?
Not sure if this is a joke or not, but this is much like saying “don’t all Americans carry guns?” Almost none do, it’s more common in rural areas, you will see it in an urban area once or twice in your life. Same for super deadly animals in Australia. But no one in Australia has died from a spider bite since anti venom was invented.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#205Ignoring the politics, we have to say that China has done the world collectively as a whole a major service in strategically developing and mass producing super cheap solar panels.
> China has done the world collectively as a whole a major service
I doubt the Uyghurs would agree:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/in-broad...
https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/gb-energy-blocks-use-...
https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/solar-companies-linked-to-...
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest bottle neck to really solving the energy problem is now the price and fragility of high voltage DC long haul connections. Between those and solar you can have energy anywhere any time.
Great point, you might dream of long range connections sending solar energy from the day into the night around the world. But, what exactly do you mean by fragility? In what way are they fragile?
That they carry massive amounts of power so they'll help you to destruct themselves once the barrier is penetrated, are actually quite complex and can be sabotaged easily.
This is a nice text on the underwater version:
https://europacable.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Introducti...
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think India is a bad example. It's very densely populated, with high density in most of the country, and as such it's not a good target market for Starlink. See for yourself: https://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen India has 1.4B people on 3 million km^2, Africa has 1.4B people on 30 million km^2 (out of which 9 million is Sahara). Starlink's use case is low population density areas, and Africa has plenty of those. Ve…
How much is a Starlink setup? They are pretty expensive in Europe, are they cheaper in Africa?
I checked a random Kenyan address on starlink.com, and it would be around 386 USD for the dish there (with service for 50 USD/mo), so not cheap. In Poland I see that they're giving the dish for free with some 1-year contract (58 USD/mo). Maybe it'll become cheaper, they're making millions of them. And you could share it with neighbors - if you can get 300 Mb/s, you could connect like 5 families if the alternative is nothing.
I found a nice website with prices by country: https://www.starlink-prices.com/personal/residential/usd/low
But it may be outdated, because it shows $90/mo price in Poland, while it's much cheaper as I said, even with the free dish.
And some recent articles about Starlink prices in Africa:
https://techlabari.com/average-starlink-prices-across-all-af...
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualized-starlink-vs-lead...
Anyway, Starlink is mostly for places where you have no ISPs or cell service (or they are very bad), so not for 95% of Europe, and probably not for most of India, especially in the future.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
The biggest bottle neck to really solving the energy problem is now the price and fragility of high voltage DC long haul connections. Between those and solar you can have energy anywhere any time.
If only there was a way to deploy solar production at the point of consumption so power didn’t need to be transferred. We’d need large chunks of unused flat surface pointing towards the sky, preferably at an angle. Oh wait we have that on top of every home (coincidentally the south or west face of every roof provides about enough surface area to power most homes). Now we need some cheap way of storing energy produced…
You missed the point entirely. If you can distribute the energy you don't need the storage and the storage is the problem right now.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
Man as someone paying a premium for power in the US, Australia is sounding really nice
I took a job with Atlassian out there and got my citizenship. Best 5 years of my life. I'm back in the US now temporarily, but there's zero doubt in my mind I will end up back in Aus. I've lived in 8 cities now(1), and Sydney was the highest quality of life I've had out of any of them. Great infrastructure, great work-life balance, great culture, and fantastic weather. Only downsides are the distance and the lack of…
I’ll add Texas, UK, and the Netherlands to that list as places I’ve lived that Sydney far surpasses.
But I’ll add to the downside that housing prices are actually laughable here. How anyone affords to buy a house here is beyond me.
Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity
#210Ignoring the politics, we have to say that China has done the world collectively as a whole a major service in strategically developing and mass producing super cheap solar panels.
> China has done the world collectively as a whole a major service I doubt the Uyghurs would agree: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636 https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/in-broad... https://sustainabilitymag.com/articles/gb-energy-blocks-use-... https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/solar-companies-linked-to-...
I agree their treatment of the Uyghurs is deplorable but the way you had to chop that quote like a creationist undermines your point. It’s possible to say China has done both good and bad things, and recognizing the cost rather than denying something factual is probably a more effective.