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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

climatedrift.substack.com

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#361

Post by jillesvangurp »

Charging phones and "studying at night" are cliches in this context. It completely misses the point. Yes, it's important. And obviously happening.

The article zooms in on cliche 2-3 use cases that while important show a lack of imagination and awareness of what's actually happening. Here are two more not mentioned in the article, at all. And they are transformational.

1) EVs. By that I don't mean the luxury four wheel road yachts common in the rich part of the world but its much more common two wheel variant: the e-bike. These are being produced by the hundreds of millions. The four wheel versions are are a rounding error. They show up all over Asia and Africa. We in the west have no concept of how important these things are to the local economies there.

You can charge those for next to nothing with solar. Most of these things only have a few hundred wh of battery on board. A single solar panel can top them up in an hour or so. What's the impact of that on in a place where subsistence farming is common and people have to walk hours to find a generator powered point to charge their phone or get some water? Well the obvious thing happens: lots of people now have affordable transport that doesn't require an arm and a leg to power.

2) AI. I know, we're all tired of the daily dose of AI utopia on HN. But like world + dog in the west has access to ChatGPT for free, so does all of Africa. "Hey chatgpt, what's a water pump and where can I find water here?". That's already a thing. AI usage is widely spread across Africa; and not just among the elite. Every subsistence farmer with a smart phone (most of them at this point) can now ask questions like that. That's massive. Knowledge is power. This is hugely empowering. People are naturally curious and now they can ask AIs for information instead of having to ask the local witch, village elder, or the nearest white person that actually had an education. That's very liberating.

Solar panels are going to be like smartphones were 15 years ago, everybody will have access to cheap power. And yes you can power one with the other. But it's really about what else you can power? IMHO this will transform some of the poorest/undeveloped regions in this world in a few mere years/decades.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#362

Post by Ray20 »

griffzhowl wrote: post #29
baq wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I read the article and couldn’t shake the feeling that this is exactly how capitalism lifts whole countries out of poverty.

It's not capitalism, it's technology. That can often go together with capitalism, but Russia from 1917-60 and China from 1960-2025, say, are big counter-examples. As are the many poor countries with capitalist economies. Growth in electrification, transport infrastructure, manufacturing and mechanized agriculture will grow any economy, capitalist or socialist

> It's not capitalism, it's technology.

Seems like it's completely capitalism

> but Russia from 1917-60 and China from 1960-2025, say, are big counter-examples.

Russia and China are good examples of that.

We have Khrushchev's memoirs about how, before the communist revolution, he, as a simple worker, lived better than workers live 40 years after the revolution. That is, the period from 1917 to 1960 in the USSR was one of complete stagnation, despite all the technological progress.

And in the example of China in the second half of the 20th century, we see yet another confirmation: their standard of living was literally directly proportional to the level of implementation of capitalist mechanisms.

> As are the many poor countries with capitalist economies.

As far as I understand, there is not a single poor capitalist country. Name a single poor country where private property is reliably protected and people enjoy economic freedom. There is no such country. As soon as even the poorest country begins to protect private property and guarantee economic freedom, it becomes rich within 10 years or something.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#363

Post by Ray20 »

griffzhowl wrote: post #184
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly disagree, you're example is nonsensical as it's normally used to prove the exact opposite. Nearly every quality of life improvement and economic boom in China and Russia during those periods are directly tied to adopting some parts of capitalistic systems.

What quality of life improvements are you thinking of that weren't based on mass electrification and mechanization of agriculture?

Those that happened in the USSR and China, no? After the start of electrification and active mechanization of agriculture, more peasants died of hunger there than in the previous 100 years (in Russia more than in the previous 200 years).

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#364

Post by testdelacc1 »

titanomachy wrote: post #87
TrainedMonkey wrote: post #16

I think this is really cool, but math seems off: > A company (Sun King, SunCulture) installs a solar system in your home > * You pay ~$100 down > * Then $40-65/month over 24-30 months But also: > The magic is this: You’re not buying a $1,200 solar system. You’re replacing $3-5/week kerosene spending with a $0.21/day solar subscription (so with $1.5 per week half the price of kerosene) $1.5 week is $6 a month, not $60…

And earlier they say “$120 upfront might as well be a million when you’re making $2/day”. The whole article reads like it was vomited up by an LLM trained exclusively on LinkedIn posts. The math errors are consistent with that.

They say $120 might as well be a million and they immediately follow that up with “$100 down payment to get started”. But I thought it was like a million dollars??

LLM slop. Author couldn’t even be bothered to read the slop before clicking publish.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#365

Post by chithanh »

w10-1 wrote: post #38
epistasis wrote: post #9

The grid is HUGELY expensive, an absolutely massive cost for our electricity. And it would still be expensive in a well-regulated environment where you can quickly and easily get permission to build, without, say, voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission line for years [1]. Here in the US we have a very very poorly regulated environment for adding to our grid, it moves slower than molasses and ther…

> Thanks to all the entrepreneurs and engineers over the past decades Hat tip also to China's ideological commitment to independence from external oil supplies, as nicely coupled to reducing pollution and greenwashing their image. It's their citizens who sacrifice to make solar power cheap enough.

> It's their citizens who sacrifice to make solar power cheap enough.

No. Manufacturing labor cost in China is not cheap. In fact since 2012 or so, it is more expensive than in most of Asia. Companies who want cheap labor look elsewhere.

https://www.economist.com/business/2023/02/20/global-firms-a... (Archive link: https://archive.fo/tdhXJ )

China is also the only major economy where wages have increased at the same rate as GDP in the last 40 or so years.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#366

Post by epistasis »

Steven_Vellon wrote: post #236
pfdietz wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I go to https://model.energy/ and ask it to solve for providing steady output in China from 100% renewable energy (wind/solar/battery/hydrogen) at minimum cost using 2030 cost assumptions and 2011 weather data, the solar curtailment is just 7.3% (and most of the energy is coming from solar, not wind). If I remove hydrogen and solve again, solar curtailment increases to 16.7%. "200% overcapacity" is completely bo…

And what was the storage requirement? I just ran those parameters myself with China's 2.9 TW of constant electricity demand, and the storage requirement was over 70,000 GWh of battery storage. By comparison, global battery production is around 1,000 GWh per year.

Battery production capacity grows by 10x every five years. In 2021 there was ~100 GWh of batteries produced a year. In 2031, it's going to be 20-30TWh per year. Current batteries have 10+ year warranties, and last 20-25 years. We're likely to see 30 years+ for the newer sodium ion batteries.

For something like 20 years, people have been looking at the exponential growth in the annual solar deployments and saying "well that's it, starting next year we're only going to deploy exactly as much as last year, plus 5%-30%". And every year these predictions are proven wrong. And every year they do the same dumb thing again:

https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/07/12/has-the-international...

Let's not repeat the same projection mistake with batteries that's been going on with solar for so long.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#367

Post by blitzar »

typpilol wrote: post #284
nandomrumber wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And trust, probably the most valuable commodity. Three or four decades of proven ability to deliver, trusted relationships. Even despite all the political noise.

The industry basically treats any designs sent to China as a loss since they know it will be duplicated I don't think trust has much to do with it

China sent tiktok the the US, the gifted geniuses of silicon valley duplicated it and when their clones were garbage they just took it and said "we own this now"

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#368

Post by ViewTrick1002 »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #244
w10-1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Thanks to all the entrepreneurs and engineers over the past decades Hat tip also to China's ideological commitment to independence from external oil supplies, as nicely coupled to reducing pollution and greenwashing their image. It's their citizens who sacrifice to make solar power cheap enough.

[flagged]

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.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#369

Post by jimnotgym »

teiferer wrote: post #347
bobthepanda wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real estate was at one point 25-30% of Chinese GDP. AI is not anywhere close, at least not yet.

Just Nvidia has a larger market cap than all German public companies combined. Just Nvidia.

But much less revenue I suspect? Looks like a bubble, smells like a bubble, it's a bubble

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#370

Post by bongodongobob »

epistasis wrote: post #9

The grid is HUGELY expensive, an absolutely massive cost for our electricity. And it would still be expensive in a well-regulated environment where you can quickly and easily get permission to build, without, say, voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission line for years [1]. Here in the US we have a very very poorly regulated environment for adding to our grid, it moves slower than molasses and ther…

Sorry, it's not. The only proof I need to show is 100 year old wooden power poles that are literally everywhere. I have no idea why this is so highly upvoted. I guess it takes some shit in the tech tree to get you there, but maintenance of the lines and infra is not expensive. You ate the bait.
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