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In Lebanon, solar power is booming

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Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#61

Post by rowtheway »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #54
ycombinete wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly the same situation in South Africa, where "solar power is [also] booming". We had world class infrastructure that not only wasn't updated, but has been looted, or left to rot. Now the water systems are also failing. Expect bore-holes and home-filtration to be "booming" in South Africa too in the near future.

Seems the west exports state service failures as a privatization product.

South Africa’s infrastructure failures have little to do with privatization or “the West,” and far more to do with self-inflicted brain drain, a general lack of expertise and project management skills, theft, crime, and corruption:

https://saice.org.za/downloads/SAICE-2022-Infrastructure-Rep...

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#62

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

rowtheway wrote: post #61
qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems the west exports state service failures as a privatization product.

South Africa’s infrastructure failures have little to do with privatization or “the West,” and far more to do with self-inflicted brain drain, a general lack of expertise and project management skills, theft, crime, and corruption: https://saice.org.za/downloads/SAICE-2022-Infrastructure-Rep...

Its not only south africa. Its england, its europe, the concept of failing state services via lobbyism, then privatization of basic services, seems to be part of the us colonial model.

Cant argue with it being good for buisness, its just bad for the people living in such a society.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#63

Post by culebron21 »

Laaas wrote: post #27
micromacrofoot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what’s the cheapest storage someone can get these days?

Non-lithium energy storage is probably the best theoretically, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery

I did mathhs on it. To cope with daily peaks of generation and usage, a family that spends modest 100-150 kW*h/mo will need a 30-meter tall tower and a 5*5*5 meter cube of concrete inside as a load. Not to mention mechanisms to drive this up and down. Just one household! Which is completely unfeasible for an apartment building.*

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#64

Post by llampx »

culebron21 wrote: post #63
Laaas wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-lithium energy storage is probably the best theoretically, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_battery

I did mathhs on it. To cope with daily peaks of generation and usage, a family that spends modest 100-150 kW*h/mo will need a 30-meter tall tower and a 5*5*5 meter cube of concrete inside as a load. Not to mention mechanisms to drive this up and down. Just one household! Which is completely unfeasible for an apartment building.*

Pareto principle - optimize for 80% of the load and you probably can get by with 20% of the effort.

Connect a few V2G cars to the apartment building as well to soak up the excess supply in the daytime and demand at night, and pretty soon we have a robust solution.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#65

Post by alex_smart »

ajcp wrote: post #38
anonu wrote: post #13

Basically, Lebanon had 30 years to figure out how to build basic infrastructure like a proper electrical grid and production (from 1990, the end of the civil war to present). Instead, crooks, thieves and fraudsters figured out how to bilk the nation of billions while leaving subpar services in their wake. My parents have had solar thermal collectors for hot water on their roof in Lebanon for 3 decades now... other th…

"Lebanon had 30 years to figure out how to build basic infrastructure" "My parents have had solar thermal collectors for hot water on their roof in Lebanon for 3 decades now" For 30 years now your parents have circumvented the state. Welcome to Lebanon.

Welcome to any third-world developing country basically.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#66

Post by darkwater »

archon1410 wrote: post #42
redtriumph wrote: post #30

I hail from a Tier 3 city in India [a]. Due to mismgmt. or exorbitant electricity prices, several folks would end up stealing electricity from the main line. Electricity distribution companies would keep on increasing prices to make up for lost revenue from stealing. On other hand, stealing kept on increasing. In recent years, huge chunk of public have pivoted to installing solar panels for water heater etc. When I w…

>Footnote 1 I have never heard that before, cities like Ranchi can hardly be described as "Tier 1". The HRA classification given on the Wikipedia page[1] is much better guide to what my intuitions are on what people mean by tier 1-3. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Indian_cit...

> [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_Indian_cit...

Finally someone starting from the bottom of the latin alphabet to categorize something that can grow over time (i.e. Delhi becomes even bigger, much more bigger than other X cities, it will move to a W category).

Yes, I'm looking at you, European energy classes system and yours A+++++++++ classes.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#67

Post by Arnt »

pmezard wrote: post #50
DoreenMichele wrote: post #11

Nearly half of Lebanon's national debt of $85 billion has been spent on the electricity sector and the state can now only provide 2 hours of electricity per day, thus the solar power boom. A much more interesting piece than I expected, though I will note that some European countries have been hard hit in the energy sector of late as well, what with France rationing power this winter, for example. Edit: Let me once ag…

> what with France rationing power this winter Said like that it sounds like rolling blackout and the state enforcing energy consumption at gun point. There was a lot of noise because the government planned some of these things. But in practice it meant reducing the temperature of public swimming pools a bit, reducing/shutting down public lighting deep in the night, reducing temperatures in office building by one or…

The maintenance plans weren't bad. "Inspect [x] thoroughly every [y] years": Good. "Take plants offline for repairs immediately if problems on [long list] are seen": Good. "Build a few extra plants because some will be down for maintenance": Good. "Arrange for gas-fired power in case lots of plants are down": Good.

IMO what's bad is some people's expectations. One of the countries within the power grid is at war. Some people expect that to have no impact on the grid.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#68

Post by robertlagrant »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #62
rowtheway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Africa’s infrastructure failures have little to do with privatization or “the West,” and far more to do with self-inflicted brain drain, a general lack of expertise and project management skills, theft, crime, and corruption: https://saice.org.za/downloads/SAICE-2022-Infrastructure-Rep...

Its not only south africa. Its england, its europe, the concept of failing state services via lobbyism, then privatization of basic services, seems to be part of the us colonial model. Cant argue with it being good for buisness, its just bad for the people living in such a society.

You're imposing a completely inappropriate explanation.

South Africa is not falling victim to US lobbying. Its problems in this area are as listed by previous poster.

As for the other countries: it's very difficult to keep any state services running well. They have to constantly resist bloat; budget defence strategies; policies that make it impossible to remove low-performing employees; and they have little or not incentive to do any of those things. The only way they ever worked was when run by personally motivated leaders who wanted to run them leanly, or (more often) on fabulously wealthy economies that can afford them. Sadly those economies have taken huge strain for various reasons.

There's no need to invoke silly anti-US conspiracy theories.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#69

Post by jcbrand »

qikInNdOutReply wrote: post #62
rowtheway wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

South Africa’s infrastructure failures have little to do with privatization or “the West,” and far more to do with self-inflicted brain drain, a general lack of expertise and project management skills, theft, crime, and corruption: https://saice.org.za/downloads/SAICE-2022-Infrastructure-Rep...

Its not only south africa. Its england, its europe, the concept of failing state services via lobbyism, then privatization of basic services, seems to be part of the us colonial model. Cant argue with it being good for buisness, its just bad for the people living in such a society.

Eskom in South Africa provides about 90% of the electricity and is a state owned enterprise.

It's not privatized at all, it's a state-owned monopoly. So basically the exact opposite of what you're complaining about.

Privatization, i.e. selling off individual power plants to private entities and allowing private entities to generate more power is probably the best way out of their electricity crisis.

Re: In Lebanon, solar power is booming

#70

Post by BlueTemplar »

anovikov wrote: post #60

I hope we all won't have to live through the "green transition" in the similar way...

A bit too late for that, we picked the wrong road in the 80's and the debt is starting to come due...

I expect the worst of it to be when (former) middle class residing in suburban sprawl realise they cannot afford a car any more : think yellow vests (aka "roundabout folks"), but worse.

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