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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#561

Post by robocat »

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…

Yet it still might be marginally better off.

The article talks a lot about replacing generators: they need complex maintenance.

There will be a new waste stream... But the question is whether the waste stream is smaller than the current status quo.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#562

Post by carlosjobim »

marcosdumay wrote: post #556
carlosjobim wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 irrationa…

Then put your money where your mouth is and open as many cell phone repair shops in Europe as you please. You can mortgage your house and borrow a bunch of money if you need to get started.

But I think that there is always some reason or another why nobody is offering a service which seems to have great demand among customers.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#563

Post by fwipsy »

kulahan wrote: post #540
gertrunde wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not an uncommon problem with charities working with foreign nations. They fail to capture the local populations because they think of these problems in a vacuum. Person lacks reliable transportation -> give them some -> problem solved There's another example - a charity provides treated mosquito nets for free to millions of families in Africa. Great! People lack reliable mosquito protection -> give them treated nets…

Givewell did an analysis and concluded that while this is a problem, it's not nearly enough to offset the benefit which comes from using the nets for their intended purpose: https://www.givewell.org/international/technical/programs/in...

Certainly improving public health in developing countries is a hard problem! But it's not impossible and existing efforts have had an effect.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#564

Post by aussiegreenie »

The figures quoted are way out of date. Solar is already USD 0.11 per Watt and has been for over a year.

Solar is scalable. The cheapest system 10W with a powerbank and phone charger and 3 x 3W LED lights as about USD 20. Next level is more lights and a fan and the high end is a TV and fan powered by solar.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#565

Post by more_corn »

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…

What? No. I call bullshit on your whole premise.

Solar is dead simple. The cell puts out 12v. Theres some maths around parallel and serial but you don’t need to know that for repairs. The cells connect into a box that puts out ac. If the box fails you buy a new one (no user serviceable parts inside is what the sticker says). If the wires break you splice them.

If something hard breaks and you decommission a system the cells are still good and can be trivially reused. If a cell fails it’s obvious and it can be pulled out of rotation.

In conclusion, bullshit.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#566

Post by Gibbon1 »

KeplerBoy wrote: post #501
Gibbon1 wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sort of an electrical engineer. Increasingly things don't run directly off 120/240V directly. Anything with a power supply could be designed to run of 48V DC nominal. My slight obsession is that really the world needs a low voltage standard. Things like lighting, low power appliances don't need 120/240V.

I'm slightly afraid of a world where USB-C PD is going to be that standard.

Perish the thought.

You plugged your class EVTF television into a class ETVF receptacle and your TV caught fire? Shame shame on you.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#567

Post by lo_zamoyski »

soperj wrote: post #541
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's not enough to have, or to build, you gotta maintain, fix, replace, and eventually, remove. Indeed. I think many in the West fail to appreciate - and take for granted - the cultural dimensions (which include cultures of knowledge, skill transmission, cultivation, and development, and also worldview[0]) as well as the economic ecosystems and supply chains involved. Dropping off a tractor in Africa or a bulldozer…

> As some have argued, there are reasons why enterprises like modern science arose and flourished only in the West Majority of inventions came from Asia... as they're currently doing.

Before the so-called scientific revolution and the later industrial revolution, that may be true - arguably for largely uninteresting reasons - but afterward, this is patently false.

Modern science arose only a couple of centuries ago in Europe. Prior to that, we see a long period of great European intellectual ferment, most notably the Scholastic period, that supplied the intellectual foundations and vocabulary that made modern science possible.

You're also reducing science to technology production, but even here, the sophistication of technology that modern science made possible far outstrips anything pre-scientific.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#568

Post by defrost »

manmal wrote: post #457
defrost wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err, no, it's an actual system we built here to service an actual town to soak excess energy from midday solar and buffer an actual real town from blackouts. The battery banks in Adelaide an elsewhere are real - you can kick them. You can price these against gas peaker turbine plants, and then compare the robustness of mini distributed storage nodes against larger single point of failure fossil fuel gas plants. I und…

Yes, for one town that’s a solution, but not one for the whole of a nation.

The point you appear to miss is that it works and can be easily distributed across a nation cheaply and robustly.

Single massive peaker plants Vs. many smaller battery parks and pumped hydro nodes.

It depends upon the population distributions, topologies, power grid, etc.

Adelaide is a state capital with massive battery banks and large amounts of renewable energy, they have long periods of self suffiency and export excess power to neighbouring states.

This is dull power infrastructure engineering reality, not woo woo imaginary hype.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#569

Post by worik »

rswail wrote: post #477
worik wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This I recal, the 1980s when Japanese manufacturing was dogy as. By 2000 it was the best The same thing is happening in China They are very good at everything they do, and getting better. Good.

Japan was making tin toys in the 60s, by the 80s, they were one of the largest car manufacturing nations and were buying out US factories. They boomed through the 80s/90s, but then lost their edge as China moved itself up the car manufacturing hierarchy, particularly in EVs. Same with competing with South Korea, but Japan are coasting a bit. China is at the start of that curve. They'll end up diversifying into the re…

In the 1980s the cars were not good.

They were not built to last so became unreliable after ~5 years.

That was because in the Japanese market five years as a long time to run a car. Not so in the west

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#570

Post by mensetmanusman »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #368
mensetmanusman wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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.

Rate is at a ten year high.

https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...

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