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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

climatedrift.substack.com

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#551

Post by yabones »

gertrunde wrote: post #527
jl6 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway from observing “tech in developing world” projects is that the key gap is usually maintenance . That is, continuous small investment to prevent things from breaking in the first place. To be fair, that’s not exactly a solved problem in developed countries either! Sometimes development projects just throw solutions at rural communities then move onto their next project, leaving no legacy of training or con…

I knew a charity group many years ago that targeted this issue. They noticed that aid charities would give modern motorcycles to rural medical workers that rapidly ended up in a non-working state. So they gathered older motorbikes, more suitable and more repairable in the destination country, and spent time training the end users in maintenance and upkeep, and ongoing support.

That was exactly the goal with the Buffalo Bicycle project, and I'd say it worked pretty well. Make a bike that's mechanically simple & reliable, maintainable with common tools, and train technicians to fix and upkeep them. Basically create the Toyota Landcruiser of bikes. I kind of want one, even though it's a "bad" bike by the standards of most western audiences (heavy, slow, ugly, etc)

https://buffaloride.org/buffalobicycle https://worldbicyclerelief.org/product-development/

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#552

Post by Scoundreller »

zdc1 wrote: post #488
jl6 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway from observing “tech in developing world” projects is that the key gap is usually maintenance . That is, continuous small investment to prevent things from breaking in the first place. To be fair, that’s not exactly a solved problem in developed countries either! Sometimes development projects just throw solutions at rural communities then move onto their next project, leaving no legacy of training or con…

I don't understand this space very well, but I wonder if an iFixit-esque solution would work there: publish DIY guides on identifying and fixing common faults, and have a network of sellers for replacement parts and tools.

I’m confused by everything tbh.

I maintain a 20 year old Corolla, which is incredibly common throughout Africa (exported 2nd/3rd/4th hand).

But users from there rarely pop up in the forums or anywhere else I’ve found.

I dunno how they diagnose obscure condition XYZ without the like 9 retired mechanics on the forum.

Do they all use closed WhatsApp groups? Do they just consume tech info but not produce?

I appreciate they don’t all speak English, nor a language that Google Translate is good at.

They’ve gotta be dealing with the same problems we do fixing these, if not more.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#554

Post by tgtweak »

Overall, democratization of utility and finance is great, but this article is so inconsistent with the pricing and statements it really reads like a sycophantic llm wrote the entire thing.

Here is the actual numbers from Sun King on their entry level system (Home Plus):

Basic (dc-only) panel for lighting and cellular/usb use:

  Lighting: 1 x 240-lumen LED tube light, 2 x 120-lumen LED hanging lights.  Up to 43 hours of light on a single charge on low-power mode

  Battery: 3.2 V, 19.2 Wh lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) battery.  10-year battery lifespan with typical daily use (over 2,500 cycles)

  Solar: 7 Wp, 9 V solar panel with 8-metre rodent-resistant cable

  Output ports: 2 x 12 V DC output ports for lighting (550 mA max. total), 1 x USB-A phone charging port (5 V, 1 A)
>₦2,000 per week ($1.39 USD/week) x 60 weekly payments, ₦3,500 down payment ($2.43 USD) = $85.83 =~ 20kWh over that 60 week period (Just over 1 year), over 10 years = ~200 kWh... ~$0.429/kWh (reasonable given the lighting hardware is included, and the only thing that should need changing during that time is the lfp battery which the price is dropping very quickly on).

Larger dc system:

Home 500X + Pedestal Fan

  Lighting: 4 x LED tube lights with individual wall switches, 200 lumen per tube light on max setting, 20 times brighter than a kerosene lamp, One motion-sensing 100 lumen security lamp

  Battery: 141 Wh lithium-ion NMC battery, Up to 19 hours of runtime on low power mode. 5-year battery lifespan with typical daily use

  Solar: 50 W, polycrystalline solar panel with aluminium frame and a 6 m cable

  Charging Ports: 2 x 5 V/1.8 A USB ports for charging mobile devices, 4 x 12 V(+/-3 V) ports. One port is specially designed to power Sun King DC appliances
>₦5,600 per week ($3.82 USD/week) x 60 weekly payments, ₦15,500 down payment ($10.78 USD) = $239.98 =~ 147kWh over that 60 week period (Just over 1 year), over 10 years = ~1300 kWh... ~$0.184/kWh (again very reasonable given the lighting hardware is included, and again the nmc battery at 5 years which the price and quality of is improving very quickly on).

So yes, this does seem pretty viable in terms of Upfront, TCO and payment options.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#555

Post by tgtweak »

tgtweak wrote: post #554

Overall, democratization of utility and finance is great, but this article is so inconsistent with the pricing and statements it really reads like a sycophantic llm wrote the entire thing. Here is the actual numbers from Sun King on their entry level system (Home Plus): Basic (dc-only) panel for lighting and cellular/usb use: Lighting: 1 x 240-lumen LED tube light, 2 x 120-lumen LED hanging lights. Up to 43 hours of…

The larger systems (solar + AC Inverter + home-scale battery):

PowerHub Core (2 kW AC inverter 230VAC, 2.5kWh lfp battery storage, 1800-2700W solar panels - ₦48,000 per week, 80 weekly payments, ₦240,000 down payment ₦4,080,000 ($2,836.94 USD) financed or ₦2,400,000 ($1668.79 USD) buy outright

PowerHub Plus (3.3kW AC inverter 230VAC, 5.0 kWh lfp battery storage, 1800-3600W solar panels - ₦64,000 per week, 80 weekly payments, ₦320,000 down payment ₦5,440,000 ($3782.58 USD) financed or ₦3,200,000 ($2225.05 USD) buy outright

= yields ~47,600kWh over 10 years, =$0.0350-0.0795/kWh (2.5kWh/1800W system bought outright vs 5kWh/1800W system on finance), very competitive, with storage included.

These are the "starting from" costs - so likely the with 1800w of panels on both systems.

Pretty crazy cost of financing, but still pretty reasonably priced for an installed, warrantied system. For reference, that's cheaper than most of these ecoflow-style "solar generators" with ~3.3kWh batteries, 3000W output and 4x400W solar panels cost here (typically $4500-5000 USD).

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#556

Post by marcosdumay »

carlosjobim wrote: post #547
marcosdumay wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If nobody is offering cell phone repair services, that means repairing cell phones is not profitable enough compared to other things the person can do with their time. Otherwise people would offer these services.

Two economists were walking when they spotted a $100 bill. One asked the other "should one of us pick it up?", the other replied "no, if there was a $100 bill there, somebody would have picked it up already", so they kept walking.

Not even the joke is funny. People repeating it seriously is even less so.

Anyway, you would be right if you are trying to claim that the repairmen isn't the party maintaining the irrational situation, so they are powerless to fix it.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#557

Post by cogman10 »

zdc1 wrote: post #488
jl6 wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway from observing “tech in developing world” projects is that the key gap is usually maintenance . That is, continuous small investment to prevent things from breaking in the first place. To be fair, that’s not exactly a solved problem in developed countries either! Sometimes development projects just throw solutions at rural communities then move onto their next project, leaving no legacy of training or con…

I don't understand this space very well, but I wonder if an iFixit-esque solution would work there: publish DIY guides on identifying and fixing common faults, and have a network of sellers for replacement parts and tools.

Absolutely a possibility. Solar systems, especially when not connected to a grid, are fairly simple beasts at the end of the day. Simple enough that I've seen more than a few youtube videos where guys build out their own custom solar system on a van.

There's only a few parts that go bad (it's probably a capacitor somewhere).

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#558

Post by cogman10 »

randomtoast wrote: post #490
mtrovo wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you have some bias for the education solution, but I can't see why this is not a market problem. You have broken devices; you send them to get fixed; you have to travel one day to get them fixed; you have someone take them for a fee. You would be surprised at the amount of product repairs that are deemed not worth solving in a developed country that you can sort out in a couple of hours in a developing country…

It depends. If the quality of the panels is similar to Temu products and not design with any repairablity in mind, then even with almost no labor costs, it still might be more cost-effective to simply replace the entire thing.

It's almost certainly not the panels that failed.

The most likely part to fail is the charge controller. That's got enough brains and parts that are ultimately likely to fail due to something like a bad capacitor. Next up is the batteries. If they are lead acid, then simply letting them under charge or dry out could have damaged them. Then the transformer/convert would be my next guess. It's got the right set of parts to go wrong. Panels is the last thing that might fail. They have no real parts to them, just cells and wires. About the only thing that could go wrong is if the wires somehow corrode (someone removes or scratches off the protective layer). Otherwise, the panels will likely just lose efficiency over time. They'll still generate power, but like 70% of their new condition.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#559

Post by cogman10 »

MrsPeaches wrote: post #414
MrsPeaches wrote: post #372

This revolution also has a dark side: People are paying off these devices and then once they have paid them off, they break and people in these areas don’t have the skills or resources to fix them. This has led to over 250 million of the units lying around broken in peoples homes, leading to solar being one of the fastest growing e-waste streams in the world. It’s hardly solar punk to sell people cheap crap at a 10x…

Those who are talking about market opportunities, yes it’s big! Bottom up calculation: average $10/repair x 250 million potential repairs = $2.5B market. Problem is labour shortages and supply chain, as stated in the report. Both hard problems to solve. We’ve been working on getting the labour shortages fixed and I personally believe that you can also skip some of the supply chain problems by localising labour. For e…

Yeah, I'd imagine so. Especially since Solar systems are relatively simple. People are doing more complex repairs on car electrical systems.

What sort of repairs are you training them to do? Is it just simply testing and swaps of parts? Or are you training them on how to find and replace a bad capacitor?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#560

Post by bluesnowmonkey »

tomalbrc wrote: post #277
skandergarroum wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there, author (Skander from Climate Drift) here. So for the record: This isn't a chatgpt article, it's something I wrote over the weekend while I was down with a flu (although the idea has been running through my head for a while). @America's 1930s: Most of US rural electrification happened at this point (90% of urban homes hat electricity, only around 10% of farms). Rural Electrification Act from 1936 changed th…

> It worked because it solved a real problem: Kenyans were already sending money through informal networks. M-PESA just made it cheaper and safer. Here’s why this matters: M-PESA created a payment rail with near-zero transaction costs. Which means you can economically collect tiny payments. $0.21 per day payments. Why are you lying about this, its clearly written by an LLM

Agreed it clearly is.
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