Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year • Hacker News Board

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#251

Post by phil21 » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 12:16 AM UTC

gpm wrote: post #230

phil21 wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Seasonal energy storage is uninteresting, you just overbuild the energy production instead. This is already done for every existing type of energy production to account for seasonal variation in demand. It’s the only thing that is interesting, considering you just hand-wove that last 3% of reliability away with vague “backup generators” and “transmission lines to other places”. Both immensely expensive items if the…

You understand that fossil fuel and nuclear plants are typically less reliable (have a lower availability factor) than that right? Every form of power generation has downtime, and needs balancing with other types or accepting that downtime. Solar tradeoffs low mechanical complexity for higher environmental dependence, but ends up with similar (in fact less) downtime here under unfavorable assumptions (100% of energy…

Pretending scheduled downtime and rare emergency shutdown of dispatchable power sources are the same as intermittent sources of power is getting to the point of a disingenuous argument. They are not remotely comparable, and they are typically not correlated outages. You simply overbuild these sources by a tiny percentage to account for such things - no one cares if 5% of your nuclear goes offline randomly. It’s not the same thing as 100% of your solar going away at exactly the same time.

Cherry picking Las Vegas - a desert - for solar is also somewhat silly. The midwestern US would be much more like a global average. I could also choose Alaska if you want silly arguments.

Seasonal also doesn’t mean seasons - it means seasonal in the mathematical statistical sense where every 5-10 years in a spot you get a week or two of both sun not shining and little wind output. No amount of overbuilding capacity will ever solve for that - you need energy storage or available dispatchable sources in the form of chemical, hydrocarbon, hydro, or nuclear.

The last 3% is almost all that matters when you are talking grid reliability for the masses and industry. Factories cannot operate without reliable sources of power, and asking every major consumer of power to have backup generation on-site is a massive amount of capital overhead. And completely untenable for perhaps 60% or more of residential consumers.

I’d love to be wrong, but watching everywhere that is getting close to solar and wind saturation is pretty telling. Basically every watt of solar at this point needs to be backed by a dispatchable power source or it’s going to end horribly. It’s great that we were able to replace burning fossil fuels when conditions are favorable - but we need to be real and recognize the costs involved here.

Investing in the natural gas power industry was the easiest layup I ever had investing since this was so predictable in the 2020-2021 green power delusion era. It was obvious to anyone that if solar projects went ahead as projected that natural gas was coming along with it.

I love solar and wind generation and want to see it spammed everywhere possible. I just hate the grifters that currently are endemic to it.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#252

Post by pfdietz » Sun, Nov 30, 2025, 10:10 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #52

andor wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really not expensive anymore. There's a Black Friday deal on amazon.de for an entry-level Anker Solix system with 4x500W panels and a 2.6 kWh battery. 1200 EUR. For those that don't have the cash, financing is available. Have you read this, about SunKing and SunCulture in Africa, recently posted on HN: https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already... Their smallest solar products are small lantern…

Oh I’m sure, Pakistan has alot of trade with China also so it’s probably cheaper than in the west. But it would still be expensive for the poorer Pakistanis, and would require some investment, they simply have less ability to do that than a richer middle class Pakistani, so the poor pay the poor tax because they can’t invest capital to bring their costs down. Low Chinese prices are making it more and more possible th…

We're seeing solar with batteries going in in sub-Saharan Africa, so don't tell me something can't be made to work even with the poor in Pakistan.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#253

Post by triceratops » Mon, Dec 01, 2025, 2:32 PM UTC

spwa4 wrote: post #241

triceratops wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The state can default on the loans too. It sucks and it will make future financing more difficult. But it remains an option. No such thing as risk-free lending.

... which would cut off imports in a non-self-sufficient state (Pakistan is a country that if it ever were isolated internationally, the people would just start dieing). For the poor the situation is simple: either they pay the loans or they lose everything they have and probably even die of hunger. A lot of muslim and African states are in that boat. If the US, yes, the international monetary system is under US cont…

Idk there have been other examples of bigger sovereign defaults - Argentina (multiple times), Thailand, Mexico - that didn't have anything like that effect. I'm not an economist or an expert on this topic. But investors losing their money due to changing market conditions is pretty common.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#254

Post by cheema33 » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 7:54 AM UTC

triceratops wrote: post #144

cheema33 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utility-scale solar needs land and has to deal with line losses. Rooftop solar does not have to deal with either.

Utility scale is 2x cheaper despite all that.

> Utility scale is 2x cheaper despite all that.

I think you mean cheaper for the utility. It is certainly not cheaper for me, the homeowner.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#255

Post by pfdietz » Tue, Dec 02, 2025, 7:25 PM UTC

_trampeltier wrote: post #15

pfdietz wrote: post #3

What this shows is solar is increasingly threatening the electric utility business model. Even without net metering, demand destruction will cause the traditional model to stop working.

I think in most countrys, you already pay one bill for the grid and one for the used electric power.

The bill you pay for the grid in such cases typically doesn't cover the fixed costs, and would have to be much higher if solar demand destruction becomes big.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#256

Post by mannanj » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 6:33 AM UTC

torginus wrote: post #248

fragmede wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just missing water and sewage and garbage/recycling, but a rural community does gain some independence via those things you mentioned.

I used to have a wooden cabin that was kind of on the edge of the forest. It did get municipal electricity and running water (which wasn't drinkable, it came from a nearby creek). For waste, you have a septic tank, you get bottled water from the store next village (and gas canisters for cooking). For garbage, we needed to collect it and take it to a recycling point a couple km away every week or so. It was a surprisi…

right. I lived in a community in Hawaii, and I made regular trips into town for food and water. We got rain water but I still preferred spring water. We grew food but I still preferred the societal trips and benefits. I contributed to society and worked a full-time societal time remotely, and paid my taxes.

I believe the future will be a return to efficiency via reducing dependence on the wasteful aspects of civilization which are many. I think we will see a constriction in our wasting and over consumption as a species but especially as Americans - maybe you agree we are seeing that right now.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#257

Post by mannanj » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 6:35 AM UTC

markdown wrote: post #134

mannanj wrote: post #114

Unpopular opinion: this is so contentious because it’s more about control.

Nah, it's about power (heh!). Politicians need votes to remain in power. They lose votes if electricity is expensive. Lower demand and therefore low revenue in the face of fixed grid maintenance costs mean prices have to rise. Higher costs to voters terrifies politicians.

The politicians do get paid by captured corporate interests though. And some of those are energy generation interests. Until solar companies captured some of that interest, solar subsidies and cost remained high and unsupported by regulatory interests - when capture is there regulatory interest support the alternative power.

Sometimes these captured interests can even block and harm progress that's better for society. I'm sure I don't have to break this down for you further. Surely you can identify examples.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#258

Post by pfdietz » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 11:54 AM UTC

cheema33 wrote: post #254

triceratops wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utility scale is 2x cheaper despite all that.

> Utility scale is 2x cheaper despite all that. I think you mean cheaper for the utility. It is certainly not cheaper for me, the homeowner.

The only reason for that is that you still have access to the grid and are gaming the system via a rate structure that allows you to free ride.

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#259

Post by markdown » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 4:17 AM UTC

mannanj wrote: post #257

markdown wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it's about power (heh!). Politicians need votes to remain in power. They lose votes if electricity is expensive. Lower demand and therefore low revenue in the face of fixed grid maintenance costs mean prices have to rise. Higher costs to voters terrifies politicians.

The politicians do get paid by captured corporate interests though. And some of those are energy generation interests. Until solar companies captured some of that interest, solar subsidies and cost remained high and unsupported by regulatory interests - when capture is there regulatory interest support the alternative power. Sometimes these captured interests can even block and harm progress that's better for society…

Fair point

Re: Pakistan says rooftop solar output to exceed grid demand in some hubs next year

#260

Post by kragen » Thu, Dec 04, 2025, 6:28 AM UTC

bofadeez wrote: post #243

kragen wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They surely were not the best use of scarce resources. However, I don't know if you've ever tried to run a business in a poor country. It turns out that the decentralized economic systems they have are also not economically rational, systematically failing to provide functioning market mechanisms that support long-term investments such as highway systems, reliable electric grids, municipal water treatment, etc., even…

Sure, running a business in kleptocratic hellholes is a nightmare. Confiscation risks kill private investment, especially for big infrastructure that needs stable property rights and enforceable contracts to make sense. But that's not a bug of decentralized markets; it's the poison of political interference and weak institutions, which state capitalism only doubles down on by swapping entrepreneurial discovery for bu…

This is the right way to think about the problem if you're faced with the problem of what country to start an electric power company in. But it's not very helpful if you're faced with the problem of how to govern Pakistan, which is certainly not a hellhole but does suffer major corruption problems. The political interference, weak institutions, concentrated power, and official corruption are largely givens; you can work to change them incrementally, but you can't just import the government of Hong Kong. Even if you could, you couldn't convince investors that the reforms would stick this time, for real.

Perhaps, if you could obtain political power that you could retain stably for decades, you could make pretty big changes there, but only at the cost of further concentrating power, creating opportunities for even greater corruption profits for whoever can wrest power away from you. Nobody has ever held power for decades in Pakistan's history. Even Nawaz Sharif didn't make it to 10 years in power over his three (non-consecutive!) terms. If you simply liberalize economically without eliminating the confiscation risks that kill private investment, private investment will not magically materialize without the private investors, who are sensibly investing their savings in a 7-11 franchise in Cleveland, Ohio.

So, what can you, hypothetically governing the country, do under these constraints?

A proven strategy is public investment, like Airbus, like the military contracts that sustain Boeing, like the Hoover Dam, like the Rural Electrification Administration, like federally guaranteed student loans, like the interstate highway system, like Volkswagen, like Tupolev, like Rosatom, like Industrias Aeronáuticas y Mecánicas del Estado, like the Apollo Program, like Huawei, like Westinghouse's nuclear power division, like the ARPANet and NSFNet. Certainly the money won't be invested as wisely as if savvy entrepreneurs like Warren Buffett were directing it, and neither Warren Buffett nor Juan Perón is going to do a good job at investing in unforeseen innovations; but, even if most of that investment is wasted like Project Huemul, it can still dramatically augment the economic productivity of the country, under circumstances when private investment is unavailable. Often such productive capacity will eventually make the country more appealing to private investors, but that can take a long time.

In this situation, you aren't faced with the choice between state capitalism and regular capitalism. You're faced with the choice between state capitalism and no capitalism.

Thus, state-guaranteed loans to build power stations.