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Solarpunk is happening in Africa

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Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#591

Post by nativeit »

mschuster91 wrote: post #455
jjcob wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So you are looking at powering DC only appliances! Is there anything you actually need AC for? The big advantage of AC is that you can easily transform it for long range transmission. If you don't need that, AC is not really necessary, is it? I guess the bigger issue is the limited power -- you probably can't use a small scale solar installation for cooking or washing, not because it's DC, but because it just wont…

> I guess the bigger issue is the limited power -- you probably can't use a small scale solar installation for cooking or washing, not because it's DC, but because it just wont offer 1000W power. Your average lead-acid starter battery can easily do that - 1 kW is less than 100 amps at 12V, less than 50A if you wire two in series. 200 Ah means about four hours worth of runtime. The problem is switching off higher DC v…

Could it easily do that for several minutes at full chap? Under the load of a full washing machine?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#592

Post by fouc »

testdelacc1 wrote: post #364
titanomachy wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

another comment clarified the $100 downpayment is for the agriculture solar (SunCulture) not the residential solar (Solar King)

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#593

Post by typpilol »

nandomrumber wrote: post #349
typpilol wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I agree. But I'd say trust is the wrong word They're reliable, but would you really trust them? I think there's a bit of nuance there to differentiate the 2 though. Maybe I'm jaded from working with overseas factories though in ways others wouldn't be.

Are you saying you don’t reverse engineer your competitors, and friends, products?

I'm not contracted out to build a product for these companies or people like a factory would be

So not really a good comparison

When you have the design it takes away alot of the need to even reverse engineer in the first place

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#594

Post by mensetmanusman »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #575
mensetmanusman wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rate is at a ten year high. https://www.carbonbrief.org/chinas-construction-of-new-coal-...

That is construction of new plants. In terms of actual coal burned in those and already existing plants it is declining.

China burned more coal at power plants between January and July of 2025 than at any time since 2016.

https://www.realclearenergy.org/2025/08/29/china_burning_coa...

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#595

Post by safety1st »

baq wrote: post #392
TeMPOraL wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Dead Internet and the triumph of quantity over quality loom always_has_been.jpg The Internet has drowned to death in garbage back when they coined the term "content marketing". That was long before transformer models were a thing. People have this weird impression that LLMs created a deluge of slop and reduced overall quality of most text on-line. I disagree - the quality arguably improved , since SOTA LLMs wri…

I’m old enough to remember people complaining about the exact same thing except they called it eternal September.

I am too, and the wisdom of old age has taught me: once Eternal September hits a community, it's time to walk away.

I dunno if HN is at that point yet, but it's certainly creeping closer compared to where it was 5-10 years ago. Reddit passed the point of no return within the last few years.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#596

Post by jodrellblank »

testing22321 wrote: post #589
amluto wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Battery powered induction stoves exist, although they are not cheap enough yet. They are, however, truly excellent products. The one from Impulse Labs is not a case of “wow, I can get decent performance without the monster electric hookup it used to require” — it’s “wow, this seems to be the best stove of any sort on the market by a considerable margin, and it’s nifty that it happens to run off an integral battery, t…

For what it’s worth, cooking a large meal for three (big pot of pasta or rice, brown onions and garlic, brown mince meat, vegetables, simmer sauce) on my induction in my round the world vehicle uses smack on 40Ah of a 12v lithium battery - so about 0.5kwh. It’s connected with a 3000W inverter. 600W of solar helps a lot.

> so about 0.5kwh

It takes 1.16 Watt-hours to raise a litre of water by a degree. Say 85Wh for 15C room temp to 100C boiling. Assuming your large meal for three is 3 litres, that's 255Wh to get the water boiling. There's energy loss from battery through inverter, through induction. Loss in the pot losing heat to the air. This doesn't count keeping it simmering, or heating the other ingredients.

I don't have any idea if that's very good, to be only twice the theoretical minumum, or quite a room for improvement - have you ever experimented with a 'pot cosy' to insulate the pot and stop radiated heat loss so you can keep it simmering with less power input, or turning the heat off once it's boiling to let pasta or rice cook in the residual heat, or anything?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#597

Post by ta20240528 »

prmph wrote: post #586
ta20240528 wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So any country could go to the moon, build 2nm chips? In your opinion its just motivation. In the real world: there are - sadly - such things as failed states and failed societies.

I'm not sure your argument is making any sense. Are you saying the reason roads are bad in some parts of Africa is that the people there are too dumb to know how to repair the roads? That their problem is figuring out how to mix and pour asphalt, cement, or gravel on their roads? That would be very dumb, if that's what you are saying.

No, I'm saying their/our societies are broken. Wrong values, wrong incentives w.r.t. to the skills required to build modern, well-maintained cities with roads, schools, hospitals, etc. when compared to similar peers in e.g. Asia.

Of course they are intellectually capable of laying asphalt, but they end up spending it on salaries, ridiculously enriching small elites, etc. Its not unique to Africa, but its certainly endemic here.

And not all of the citizens like it like this - hence the massive diaspora. Which is why I used the word "failed", not "dumb".

But thanks for taking my comment in the best possible interpretation - perhaps you should refresh yourself with the HN guidelines if these kinds of serious conversations distress you.

Footnote: I se you say you are from Ghana. Well Ghana and Singapore become independent at about the same time. Both got to run their country themselves. Only one decided it was important for their families and grandchildren to pour said asphalt.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#598

Post by beeflet »

r14c wrote: post #588
beeflet wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People buying and selling things with minimal interference from protection rackets

Afaik markets predate joint-stock companies. The concept of "raising capital" is much newer than the concept of a market economy. Did capitalism exist under feudalism? How do modern capital markets differ from historical markets under various other economic systems?

> Did capitalism exist under feudalism?

I would say it's more of a matter of the level of interference of the fief on trade. When 100% of the economy is controlled by the monopoly on violence I would say that is complete communism, and when 0% of the economy is controlled by the monopoly on violence that is complete capitalism. This is a kind of asymmetric definition of communism/capitalism because "complete capitalism" is a pretty unstable configuration.

Joint-stock companies are not a prerequisite in my opinion; You can have an capitalist economy of merchants that run everything as sole proprietorships. Socialists will try to define capitalism around ownership of the means of production but I am not sure this is a useful definition.

Modern industry is more capital-intensive than labor intensive historical industries. So the sort of pro-labor communist movements that design systems that ignore the value of capital have pretty much gone extinct in the current era.

The "communist" party of china has adopted a number of capitalistic practices since deng xiaoping. At the same time, the "capitalist" american economy looks awfully communist under my definition as a significant chunk of the economy flows through the government, the military-industrial complex and such.

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#599

Post by prmph »

ta20240528 wrote: post #597
prmph wrote: post #586

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure your argument is making any sense. Are you saying the reason roads are bad in some parts of Africa is that the people there are too dumb to know how to repair the roads? That their problem is figuring out how to mix and pour asphalt, cement, or gravel on their roads? That would be very dumb, if that's what you are saying.

No, I'm saying their/our societies are broken. Wrong values, wrong incentives w.r.t. to the skills required to build modern, well-maintained cities with roads, schools, hospitals, etc. when compared to similar peers in e.g. Asia. Of course they are intellectually capable of laying asphalt, but they end up spending it on salaries, ridiculously enriching small elites, etc. Its not unique to Africa, but its certainly en…

> Wrong values, wrong incentives

> Of course they are intellectually capable of laying asphalt, but they end up spending it on salaries.

> Only one decided it was important for their families and grandchildren to pour said asphalt.

Are these statements not supporting what I originally said: that there is a difference between ability and motivation?

Re: Solarpunk is happening in Africa

#600

Post by TeMPOraL »

safety1st wrote: post #595
baq wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m old enough to remember people complaining about the exact same thing except they called it eternal September.

I am too, and the wisdom of old age has taught me: once Eternal September hits a community, it's time to walk away. I dunno if HN is at that point yet, but it's certainly creeping closer compared to where it was 5-10 years ago. Reddit passed the point of no return within the last few years.

Eternal September is a different, unrelated problem. Slop isn't next generation of clueless kids - it's marketing communication.
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