[HN Gopher] Solarpunk is happening in Africa
___________________________________________________________________
Solarpunk is happening in Africa
Author : JoiDegn
Score : 1121 points
Date : 2025-11-05 20:00 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (climatedrift.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (climatedrift.substack.com)
| r14c wrote:
| solarpunk is just socialism with afrofuturist aesthetics. happy
| for them!
| dingnuts wrote:
| why are you happy? many African nations attempted socialism in
| the 20th century, and all of those states have since collapsed.
| trying the same failed strategy over and over doesn't bode
| well.
|
| anyway, I hope they get electricity. the article said a lot
| about markets for something related to an ideology that rejects
| them.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| > many African nations attempted socialism in the 20th
| century, and all of those states have since collapsed
|
| This is false. Senegal attempted small-s socialism under its
| first postcolonial regime (under Leopold Sedar Senghor,
| 1960-1980) and has had democratic political succession to the
| present day.
| baq wrote:
| Funny. I read the article and couldn't shake the feeling that
| this is exactly how capitalism lifts whole countries out of
| poverty.
| czbond wrote:
| Agree - I am an ardent capitalist, but a conscious
| capitalist. I believe the purpose of capitalism redirected
| can be used as a vehicle for massively changing economies and
| lives - such as in this case.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| 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
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| 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.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| What quality of life improvements are you thinking of
| that weren't based on mass electrification and
| mechanization of agriculture?
| Ray20 wrote:
| 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).
| baq wrote:
| At least some of them died because they weren't allowed
| to consume what they produced.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
| Ray20 wrote:
| That is simply how socialism works. Land as a mean of
| production is no different from a factory, so naturally,
| the products created on the land belong not to the
| peasants (Petite Bourgeoisie), but to society as a whole.
|
| And guess what this bourgeoisie did when they found out
| that the grain they produced would now become common
| property (they sharply reduced the amount they
| producing).
| Ray20 wrote:
| > 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.
| griffzhowl wrote:
| You make some reasonable points. But you're wrong to
| discount technology. Consider what Russia and China would
| have looked like if they hadn't electrified and
| mechanized.
| r14c wrote:
| What's capitalism to you?
| baq wrote:
| an economic system which rewards winners and tears itself
| apart in a winner-takes-all tragic finale without an
| impartial regulator/judge.
| beeflet wrote:
| People buying and selling things with minimal interference
| from protection rackets
| worik wrote:
| A system based on ownership
| manoDev wrote:
| Sure, capitalism has been working great for Africa since the
| 1700! The poverty was caused by not enough capitalism.
| beeflet wrote:
| I find that arguments against capitalism like this are
| unconvincing.
|
| It is like saying that a sword is useless technology. It's
| directional: the pointy end goes in the other guy.
| p1necone wrote:
| How is small businesses selling solar panels to people
| socialism?
| jandrese wrote:
| It's Power to the People.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| It's part of modern double speak
|
| Capitalism is really centralized monopolistic oligarchical
| control in modern media parlance.
|
| Distributed empowering democratic grassroots level
| capitalistic allocation of resources that don't provide
| centralized control and administration is "socialism".
| Avicebron wrote:
| I think this is really insightful definition, username
| aside, I think forcing the conversation to include
| "oligarchical control" (the part people usually have issue
| with) prevents the lazy "but muh free market!" arguments
| when discussing our modern economic system
| onraglanroad wrote:
| You're attempting to be sarcastic but that's actually
| accurate:
|
| > Capitalism is really centralized monopolistic
| oligarchical control in modern media parlance.
|
| Of course, because the Capitalists try to control the
| industry they've invested in.
|
| > Distributed empowering democratic grassroots level <word>
| allocation of resources that don't provide centralized
| control and administration is "socialism".
|
| Yes, it is. When the people who actually do the work own
| it.
| beeflet wrote:
| >Of course, because the Capitalists try to control the
| industry they've invested in.
|
| But does the system eventually result in a small number
| of capitalists taking power or is it distributed over
| many capitalists? Not all monopolies are natural.
|
| What is the "work" being done here? Manufacturing or
| installation? It's not like all of the solar companies
| are co-ops and contractors.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Solar is inherently distributed in non-centralized.
|
| Because it's based on sunlight which is distributed and
| noncentralized and free.
|
| With battery storage, the intermittency is solved
| largely. Maybe you have your own gasoline peaker.
|
| With enough solar, and an electric vehicle, you have
| transportation independence.
|
| And I'm no expert on the historical and political nature
| of agriculture and centralized control, but I could argue
| agriculture is also fundamentally decentralized,
| certainly within the modern standards of deep
| technological stack control.
|
| So if you can get your food, energy, transportation,
| water by yourself or within a local network... Then while
| I wouldn't call that socialist, I would call that highly
| democratilized, is that a word?
|
| Now traditionally you also needed centralized power for
| defense.
|
| And I'm wondering if drones will provide a fundamental
| advantage to guerilla defense.
| manoDev wrote:
| If the value is staying with local workers (social
| ownership) instead of being captured by some multinational,
| that's closer to a textbook definition of socialism than
| capitalism. How's that double-speak?
| beeflet wrote:
| The solar panels are produced by outside of the country
| with companies applying massive economies of scale. I
| don't know what about this is socialist.
|
| I guess it is vaguely leftist in the sense that poor 3rd
| worlders are benefiting. But whether a system is
| capitalist or not does not hinge on this sort of
| grievance-based thinking.
| manoDev wrote:
| Are you confused by the idea that socialism and market are
| incompatible ideas, or is this a critique that they're merely
| selling and not manufacturing (therefore not fully owning the
| means of production)?
| czbond wrote:
| Really, really great article.
| qayxc wrote:
| [flagged]
| czbond wrote:
| I guess that is the negative view - but I didn't view it as
| that way
| skandergarroum wrote:
| haha author here, and this was my favorite interaction so
| far. Thanks czbond.
|
| So no, not fake, not AI, just written under the flu over
| the weekend.
|
| @qarzxc: Not fictional, spoke to users & investors of both
| companies, see my breakdowns on them for a deeper dive.
| qayxc wrote:
| > So no, not fake, not AI, just written under the flu
| over the weekend.
|
| Well, my apologies then. On the bright side you
| definitely have a super power when under the flu: the
| ability to perfectly emulate a chatbot in your writing :D
|
| I hope you're back to full health and doing well.
| czbond wrote:
| @skandergarroum
|
| Do you have more on climate companies? I have been quite
| interested in the area (for profit, for good... where
| profit is returned to more "for good")
| tomasz_fm wrote:
| This article has ChatGPT written all over it
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I don't get how it makes this jump
|
| > Then $40-65/month over 24-30 months
|
| > replacing $3-5/week kerosene spending with a $0.21/day solar
| subscription (so with $1.5 per week half the price of
| kerosene)" in the next paragraph.
|
| If it's $40-65/month that's $1.33 to $2.17 per day, not
| $0.21/day (assuming month with 30 days)
| hatthew wrote:
| Similarly
|
| > Crop yields increase 3-5x
|
| > Farmers go from $600/acre to $14,000/acre revenue
|
| Wouldn't that revenue jump require a 23x increase in crop
| yield?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Let's be very charitable and figure out a scenario where
| this could be true.
|
| Suppose, a farmer has a farm which produces 1 unit of crop.
| Farmer uses 0.8 of the crop for subsistence and sells 0.2
| of the crop. They get $600/acre.
|
| Now, crop yields go up 5x, so now the farm produces 5 units
| of crop. Subsistence needs are the same, so the farmer is
| now able to sell 4.2 units of crop. This is 4.2/0.2 = 21
| times more revenue or $12,600/acre.
| hatthew wrote:
| Hmm yeah I didn't consider that they might use part of
| their yields in ways that don't generate revenue. However
| that would mean they use $2,400/acre/month of their crops
| for subsistence which doesn't seem very plausible, so I
| agree that's a very charitable interpretation. Would only
| make sense if their field is only a few square meters, in
| which case the framing of "revenue per acre" is extremely
| misleading.
|
| Edit: looks like those numbers might be per year (it
| doesn't seem to specify explicitly), so it actually might
| be vaguely plausible (though misleading) if we make
| several charitable assumptions.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > $2,400/acre/month
|
| You've added the per month part. The article itself
| doesn't provide a time period but the two reasonable ones
| are month and year. For a year, that could actually be a
| reasonable amount of crops kept by a family for their own
| consumption and storage for later consumption.
|
| If it's monthly, that is pretty high.
| throwaway201606 wrote:
| They stop growing a full amount of low value subsistence
| crops needed to survive and start growing cash crops on
| some portion or on all of the land. Those cash crops have
| a higher value.
|
| An example - say you have 4 acres of land and have a
| family of 4.
|
| In the old world, say you needed one acre per person to
| grow enough food to the next crop harvest. This would be
| something like corn or potatoes that can keep. So all
| your land goes to growing food to survive and you cant
| make any money.
|
| In the new world, with irrigation, you can do much more -
| say for the sake of argument, 4 times the crop, in the
| same space. Now, you only need 1/4 of an acre per person
| or an acre for everyone. So you grow vegetables that sell
| for 10 times as much on the 3/4s of land you have that
| you no longer need to use to survive.
|
| Or even better, you grow high veg on the entire piece of
| land for income and use the cash to buy your corn and
| potatoes or whatever as you need them.
|
| Just as all other commercial farmers do across the world.
|
| In other words, solar allows them to become small
| business owners.
| fakedang wrote:
| ChatGPT math.
| wiz21c wrote:
| maybe over the lifetime of the installation ? But then they
| say the battery must be replaced after 5 years... So 5*12 -
| 30 months = 30 months without paying. So one pays about half
| 2.17 per day over the 5 years. But that's still about 5 times
| more than 0.21$/day... I'd love to believe the article, but
| you're right, the maths seem wrong.
| epistasis wrote:
| That's in a "bear case" section and honestly is far too
| bearish, warranties are typically 10+ years for. Unless you
| buy something super cheap that goes bad and the
| manufacturer is no longer around.
| Romario77 wrote:
| It's an AI generated article full of errors. Simple
| arithmetic errors. Probably copied from a video or another
| article.
| djmips wrote:
| It has a voice don't it...
| drmath wrote:
| I could handle this style when it wasn't everywhere. But now
| I've developed a hypersensitivity and can't bear it. It's like
| suddenly most of the internet is in a language I can't read.
| neom wrote:
| I hand wrote something recently that I re-read the next day
| and I'm worried I sound like an LLM now, I'm pretty sure I
| always sounded like one because I like it to make exhaustive
| lists in my sentences, but it makes me wonder if the bot is
| rubbing off on me.
| w_for_wumbo wrote:
| It's part of our ecosystem now, we unconsciously mirror the
| patterns that we notice around us. This will include the
| language of LLMs because it has been invited in. We always
| affect the environment, and it always affects us. I hope
| that the consequence will be that we reduce the fluff, we
| stop writing to sound important or to justify a position,
| but instead use language to operate on the level of insight
| and shift our future into one that benefits us all.
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| I always wonder now if an article was written by GPT, or by
| someone who spent so much time chatting with GPT that they've
| started sounding like an LLM.
| glenstein wrote:
| I have genuinely wondered if I've picked up an elevated
| tendency to say "it's not just X, it's Y". No smoking gun
| that it's affected me just yet, but it's at least a live
| enough issue that it raises the question.
| mikepurvis wrote:
| "Modular. Distributed. Digital. Financed by the people using
| it, subsidized by the carbon it avoids."
|
| Every second paragraph thinks it's Steve Jobs introducing the
| iPhone.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| >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.
| ZeWaka wrote:
| Even if it's not written by ChatGPT, it's the /exact style/
| used by the linkedin AI evangelists
| antoniojtorres wrote:
| Yeah it's all the punchy mini paragraphs.
|
| Just one sentence here.
|
| Then I realized.
|
| That another sentence came after that.
| Affric wrote:
| Yeah pure shit for us to eat.
|
| I always wonder what the point is.
| hexator wrote:
| Solarpunk with capitalism is kinda missing the point IMO.
| lanfeust6 wrote:
| It's not solarpunk, unless "lots of solar installations"
| qualifies. They just used the term to convey an aesthetic, or
| as bait. Being "punk" or socialist is not the point.
| epistasis wrote:
| 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 there are so many
| parties that have unilateral veto points. The advent of a new
| transmission route in the US these days is pretty much a miracle
| event.
|
| Now imagine a world where there's tons of bribes to government
| officials all along the way to get a grid going (in the US you
| just need to bribe landowners and hold-outs). Or there's bribes
| to get a permit for the large centralized electriticy generator.
| And you have to deal with importing a whole new skill set and
| trades, on top of importing all the materials, fuel, etc.
|
| Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than
| electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The only
| thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the contractor
| hassle.
|
| Out in greenfield, solar plus storage is so revolutionary. This
| is bigger than going straight to mobile phones instead of
| landlines.
|
| Africa is going to get so much power, and it's all going to be
| clean, renewable energy. Thanks to all the entrepreneurs and
| engineers over the past decades that have continuously and
| steadily improved this technology, it's one of the bright lights
| of humanity these days.
|
| [1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/maine-jury-clears-
| avangrids...
| whatever1 wrote:
| Poor countries have different problems that don't let
| decentralization to work.
|
| Local gangs go around and demand protection money and if you
| don't pay up your solar panels will unfortunately suffer some
| "accidental" catastrophic damage.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Apparently solar panels that have fake cracks are moderately
| popular in some parts of the world to deter theft and similar
| behavior.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Counterfeit panels are also a huge problem
|
| https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/507496-knock-off-
| solar...
| skissane wrote:
| Poor countries have these problems, yes, but they don't stop
| whatever, they just add some expense to it. In certain areas
| of Mexico, businesses have to pay taxes to the local cartel,
| but if you do, they'll leave you alone-and they know that if
| they demand too much, that's actually undermining their own
| self-interest. Effectively, the cartel is just another level
| of local government, taxing you like all the others do. An
| armed gang or warlord somewhere in Africa or Syria or
| Afghanistan very often functions similarly.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| Sounds like taxes and government to me and that hasn't (so
| far) stopped people from building.
|
| In fact many people here praise those gangs, and wish they
| were bigger and demand more money.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than
| electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US.
|
| How do they deal with the cost of storage for anything non
| trivial completely eclipsing any savings?
| energy123 wrote:
| Well it doesn't eclipse savings, you can still get about 12%
| annual ROI in developing countries with a battery.
|
| And many will make do without a battery, just relying on
| power during the day.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Well it doesn't eclipse savings
|
| I mean it's several hundred fold more expensive I'd call
| that "eclipse" but maybe you have a higher threshold for
| that word?
|
| > And many will make do without a battery, just relying on
| power during the day.
|
| I mean I guess that's an option if you don't want these
| places to advance in quality of life or produce much of
| anything.
| energy123 wrote:
| It increases costs of a solar system to about 1.5-2.2x
| (so an extra 50-120%), not several hundred fold. The
| hybrid inverter is slightly more expensive than a normal
| inverter, then you add the 4-16 kWh battery which is
| pretty cheap nowadays.
| mothballed wrote:
| Solar bribery is interestingly the exact opposite in some of
| the USA, where the solar contractors have basically gotten in
| bed with government for regulatory capture on the market.
|
| Most places in my state you need an electrician license,
| permits, bonding, insurance, a special 'solar' warranty, and
| inspections if you want solar.
|
| I built my house without any inspection or licensing and
| connected to the electric grid without anyone from the
| government ever even looking at it or taking money for it. If I
| wanted to add a solar system, it basically completely fucked
| everything and I would have had to gone through the normal
| permitting and inspection system for my house which would have
| made even building the house basically impossible for me.
| datadrivenangel wrote:
| Where did you build a house without a permit and get away
| with it?
| mothballed wrote:
| I have a permit. And the permit basically says I don't have
| to get it inspected, show building plans, or do anything
| but tip my hat to the government.
|
| Unless I add solar.
| foobarian wrote:
| I feel very optimistic about battery storage for this
| reason. I would love nothing more than be able to run on
| battery for a week or so so I can give a middle finger to
| the utility and just rip out the grid connection. No more
| solar inverter or power limit permits needed.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| You probably still want an inverter to get AC for your
| household. I'm also still waiting for the house size
| batteries to come down in price before pulling the
| trigger apart from a small 200W setup for fun
| foobarian wrote:
| Wording might have been ambiguous - yes to inverter, no
| to requesting permission to attach it to the grid (for
| good reasons, backfeeding power during outages, avoiding
| overload and fire etc etc.)
| organsnyder wrote:
| > I built my house without any inspection or licensing and
| connected to the electric grid without anyone from the
| government ever even looking at it or taking money for it.
|
| That's... not common (perhaps more-so in rural areas).
|
| In my area, being connected to the grid brings a lot more
| hassle: the utility gets a say in how much solar you can
| build, as well as how it's connected. Some of it makes sense
| (they want to make sure you're not going to backfeed during
| an outage and cause a hazard to linemen), but a lot of it is
| them protecting their bottom line.
| mothballed wrote:
| Interesting. My utility let me do my own service entrance
| and everything. They didn't even give a shit what I
| connected it to. I ended up powering a whole house and a
| trailer without anyone from the power company even looking
| at either of them (I added them after I built a 200 amp
| service entrance as just a stubbed entrance with no load).
|
| If I added a solar system they would neither care nor have
| any idea. Only the government cares here.
| latentsea wrote:
| It's not about them protecting their bottom line. It's
| about managing the supply-demand balance to within the
| tight tolerances required to operate the grid stably . You
| can't just let an unconstrained new amount of generation
| come online and maintain a stable grid.
| jmole wrote:
| "I built my house without any inspection or licensing and
| connected to the electric grid"
|
| Where exactly do you live? I'm not saying you're lying, but
| this smells like a tall tale. You can easily buy solar panels
| and batteries, and if no government inspectors are coming by
| anyway, then it doesn't matter.
|
| Maybe what you're saying is, "my power company wouldn't let
| me use grid-tied solar without it being permitted." ?
| mothballed wrote:
| Rural AZ
|
| >"my power company wouldn't let me use grid-tied solar
| without it being permitted." ?
|
| Nah they didn't give a shit what I connected it to. I
| literally stubbed a 200 amp service entrance on vacant land
| then just went wild connecting it to whatever I like. I
| shot the shit with their engineer when they ran secondary
| off the power pole and that was it, I've never seen them
| again.
|
| > no government inspectors are coming by anyway, then it
| doesn't matter.
|
| I don't know for certain but having an unpermitted solar
| panel visible via satellite would likely trigger a visit.
| jmole wrote:
| Great, so it sounds like installing unpermitted solar at
| your house is about as illegal as jaywalking, and you
| probably shouldn't worry about it so much.
| mothballed wrote:
| As long as it's not visible by satellite, yes.
| boredumb wrote:
| just never upset the wrong person that knows they have
| leverage over you keeping your home.
| kazinator wrote:
| Don't people have guns in AZ, especially rural?
|
| I wouldn't want to go to someone's home to hassle them
| about their DIY solar installation.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| People have guns in all of the US. Sure, AZ ownership
| might be around double that of CA, but that's just going
| from 1 in 4 to 1 in 2. The odds are high either way.
| jsight wrote:
| What law governs this? I'm familiar with a lot of
| restrictions on grid-tie systems, but I've never heard of
| it being this strict for something that could
| (presumably) be done without a back feed.
|
| I mean, are you saying that someone sticking up a few
| panels+batteries to run an electric fence, gate, and
| camera system has to have permits?
|
| This all seems strange.
| mothballed wrote:
| For example, here is the one that to install certain PV
| you need permit with roof and building plan, which is
| impossible on my house because I have none (literally
| built my roof off the cuff after thumbing IRC).
|
| https://www.azleg.gov/ars/11/00323.htm
| jgilias wrote:
| Just dropping by to say that I appreciate your approach
| to life lol
| thelastgallon wrote:
| > Most places in my state you need an electrician license,
| permits, bonding, insurance, a special 'solar' warranty, and
| inspections if you want solar.
|
| Because its dangerous to own solar. If its guns, then its
| perfectly fine and safe.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| In my jurisdiction I could avoid permits and inspections by
| attaching less than 5 square meters of panels to my house, by
| staying under 60V, and by staying right of the panel. It
| would be ridiculous to pay over $3k in permits and
| inspections for $2k of hardware.
| w10-1 wrote:
| > 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.
| badpun wrote:
| Some of the sacrifice is not voluntary - most panels contain
| parts and/or materials made by slaves in work camps.
| omnimus wrote:
| Just like iPhones.
| epistasis wrote:
| I think it's a bit different, I never heard a story of
| iPhones being manufactured like this:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57124636
|
| However most of the "slave" talk these days comes from
| highly politicized sources, so it's hard to cut through
| to the truth. For example, it's not likely that there's
| enough Uyghur slave labor to be involved with "most" of
| the polysilicon even from Xinjiang, much less the entire
| world's supply.
|
| IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from
| artisanal-scale mines in Africa, it's a very serious
| issue that gets trotted out more as a political football
| against the entire technology, rather than expressed as
| an earnest concern to solve the underlying problem.
| bdangubic wrote:
| > I think it's _a bit_ different
|
| nice to discuss the degrees of slavery, little slavery is
| cool, little more perhaps not as much...
| vkou wrote:
| Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think
| that a little slavery is cool.
|
| As I understand it, much of the rest of the world has
| similar views, but I'm sure this varies a bit from
| country to country.
|
| It's just that in the 21st century, we prefer to use some
| less-upsetting euphemism to refer to the practice
| domestically.
| bdangubic wrote:
| fascinating reading here on HN every now again someone
| taking a moral high ground on some random shit while
| actively using products and services of some of the most
| evil corporations in the history of mankind
| rmunn wrote:
| > Here in the US, the thirteenth amendment seems to think
| that a little slavery is cool.
|
| For anyone not familiar with the US Constitution, the
| 13th Amendment forbids slavery and involuntary servitude
| "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall
| have been duly convicted."
|
| Without that "except as a punishment for [a] crime"
| clause, being sentenced to N hours of community service
| would be forbidden by the Constitution, and the second-
| lowest penalty judges could impose (the lowest being a
| fine) would be prison time. So that clause was actually
| _necessary_ to include in order to allow for more lenient
| sentences for crimes that deserve something more severe
| than a fine: lowest level of sentencing is a fine, after
| that comes being sentenced to community service (which
| _most_ people agree is less severe than prison, even
| though it does count as involuntary servitude), and then
| after that come the more severe sentences like prison.
| mattclarkdotnet wrote:
| Most other countries seem to be able to have community
| service orders without labelling it "servitude". Do you
| have a reference for why community service is defined as
| servitude in the US?
| rmunn wrote:
| Are you saying that being ordered by a judge to perform
| work, without pay, and which you would not have done
| absent those orders, does _not_ fit the definition of
| involuntary servitude?
|
| Because while the precise definitions of servitude do
| vary from dictionary to dictionary, and some define it
| more harshly than others, in general it fits. One
| definition I found online (with no reference to which
| dictionary it came from) defines servitude as "A
| condition in which an individual is bound to work for
| another person or organization, typically without pay."
| Another one (Cambridge dictionary) says it's "the state
| of being under the control of someone else and of having
| no freedom". I couldn't check the Oxford English
| Dictionary as it requires a subscription to look up even
| one word. Merriam-Webster lists two meanings, one of
| which applies to land. the one that applies to people is
| "a condition in which one lacks liberty especially to
| determine one's course of action or way of life".
|
| Now, being sentenced to community service is only a
| _temporary_ condition of servitude, which ends as soon as
| a given number of hours have been served. And it might
| not fit the strict definition if the person being
| sentenced is allowed to choose the form their community
| service will take; I lack knowledge of what kinds of
| community-servitude sentences are commonly handed out.
| But if the person being sentenced does not get to choose
| the form his community service will take, but instead is
| told "Your community service will be served in the city
| clerk's office. Show up at 9:00 AM on Monday ready to
| make photocopies and run errands," then that counts as
| being under the control of another and lacking freedom
| _during the period of community service_. It 's not a
| permanent state of servitude, but even a temporary state
| of servitude is forbidden by the 13th amendment (other
| than as a sentence for a crime), because otherwise people
| at the time _would_ have argued "Oh, fifty years of
| involuntary servitude still counts as 'temporary', so I'm
| allowed to carry on with imposing debt peonage on my
| debtors."
|
| (I should also mention that I am not a lawyer, so perhaps
| US lawyers have already reached broad consensus on
| whether community service counts as involuntary servitude
| under US law; if someone knows whether that's true, I
| welcome being corrected on my point).
| mattclarkdotnet wrote:
| The context for the 13th amendment was that slavery was
| legal in the US then. It mostly wasn't in other
| countries, so they never had to try to find the language
| to allow judicial punishments while disallowing private
| slavery. If you are given a community service orders
| without labelling in the UK for example, nobody thinks
| it's slavery or servitude, they just think it's a valid
| sentence under the law. The grey area is probably around
| profiting off such work?
| rmunn wrote:
| > It [slavery] mostly wasn't [legal] in other countries
| [at the time the 13th Amendment was passed, i.e. the mid
| 1860's]...
|
| The history of the 19th century and when slavery was
| abolished in each one is actually a fascinatingly complex
| subject, and there's tons of interesting history hiding
| behind your word "mostly", to the point where I can't
| actually tell whether "mostly" is a correct or incorrect
| description. Judging by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim
| eline_of_abolition_of_slave... I would lean towards
| "definitely correct in Europe and the Americas, a lot
| murkier in Africa and Asia". Oddly enough, a lot of
| Spanish colonies in South America abolished slavery
| before the United States did, yet Spain itself didn't
| pass its law ending slavery until a year after the US's
| 13th Amendment came into effect.
|
| If you're at all interested in the history of that era,
| the film Amazing Grace, though it takes a few liberties
| with the historical facts, is a mostly-accurate depiction
| of what it took to get slavery abolished in the United
| Kingdom. Interestingly, the part of Prime Minister
| William Pitt was played by a then-unknown Benedict
| Cumberbatch (Amazing Grace came out in 2006, and most
| people first discovered Cumberbatch when Sherlock came
| out in 2010). I recommend the film if you enjoy
| historical films; it's quite fun. (I love the "I would
| have been bored by botany" line).
| ta20240528 wrote:
| The conditions in the 'Angola' prison in Louisiana are a
| lot closer to slavery than community service.
| epistasis wrote:
| Talking about degrees of slavery is decidedly not cool.
| If you have documentation of iPhone supply chain using
| forced labor like I linked to, please do share rather
| than trying to be morally ambiguous.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| You linked to a four and a half year old news article
| from a highly politicised source.
|
| I wouldn't call that "documentation".
| bdangubic wrote:
| buuuut his source is bold enough to fake trump speeches -
| that takes balls
|
| https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/03/bbc-report-
| revea...
| epistasis wrote:
| The BBC is not the source, they are reporting on another
| study, directly linked near the very top of the article.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| It actually links to rot.
|
| Try it yourself.
|
| Link rot.
| Teever wrote:
| I wonder how much solar energy produced from these slave-
| built panels makes its way into iPhones.
| aeonfox wrote:
| > IMHO, like the cobalt getting mined by children from
| artisanal-scale mines in Africa
|
| Not really an issue for solar battery systems as they
| typically use the cheaper LFP chemistry that has a much
| higher cycle count. The gravimetric density is a bit
| less, but that only really matters for high-performance
| mobility.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| You responded to a comment about cobalt with vague
| references to cell chemistry, cycle count, and energy
| density.
|
| What does any of that have to do with cobalt?
| dgacmu wrote:
| The post you're replying to didn't explain it well, but:
| LFP batteries don't use cobalt (or nickel).
|
| LFP production is starting to pass NMC (lithium + nickel
| manganese cobalt oxide). Slightly lower density but a lot
| of advantages in lack of easily catching on fire, longer
| lifetime -- and lack of cobalt. LFP (LiFePo4) is the
| battery chemistry of choice today for solar
| installations, where the longer lifetime and increased
| safety are a big win and the slightly lower density
| doesn't matter, unlike mobile applications.
| aeonfox wrote:
| I suppose I could have been clearer, but I figure it was
| an easy connection tom make from talking about
| _chemistry_ to the question of whether cobalt is even
| relevant.
| perihelions wrote:
| I.e.,
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/01/business/economy/solar-
| xi... ( _" Solar Supply Chain Grows More Opaque Amid Human
| Rights Concerns"_ / _" The global industry is cutting some
| ties to China, but its exposure to forced labor remains
| high and companies are less transparent, a new report
| found"_)
| baxtr wrote:
| Like anything else that the world procures cheaply from China
| btw.
| epolanski wrote:
| At this point this is a cliche.
|
| There's tons of countries with much cheaper labor.
|
| The reasons we build in china are not related to cheap
| labor, this hasn't been the case from quite some time.
| hattmall wrote:
| Cheap labor is still a major factor, but infrastructure
| is definitely another.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| And trust, probably the most valuable commodity.
|
| Three or four decades of proven ability to deliver,
| trusted relationships.
|
| Even despite all the political noise.
| typpilol wrote:
| 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
| gffrd wrote:
| I believe Parent is talking about trust in the ability to
| deliver on promises, not in handling of IP.
| typpilol wrote:
| 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.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Are you saying you don't reverse engineer your
| competitors, and friends, products?
| melagonster wrote:
| If you know it will happen, it is a part of price.
| blitzar wrote:
| 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"
| numpy-thagoras wrote:
| Most of the time, I don't personally look at it as cheap
| labour because I am just ordering, e.g. 60,000 of
| something or 100,000 of something else.
|
| It's cheap, yes. I can indeed buy 1,000 of something more
| locally or from other than China.
|
| But when it comes to scale, needing vast shipments, then
| they are the ones who can actually ship it and do it
| reliably. It just also happens to be cheaper, too, which
| is more of a convenience or cherry on top, than the
| actual attractive part: vast scale.
| esseph wrote:
| It's not remotely cheap. A long time ago the cheap labor
| moved from places like China to places like Mexico, which
| is one of the reasons so many automotive manufacturing
| plants there - just a rail ride across the border.
|
| Now that hasn't been the case for more than a decade. The
| cheap labor is in SE Asia and South America.
|
| What China has is decades of process improvement,
| factories, infrastructure, experience, and a willingness
| to work. They haven't been the cheapest, by far, for a
| long while.
| worik wrote:
| 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.
| lll-o-lll wrote:
| Japanese manufacturing was dodgy in the _80's_? I don't
| think so.
|
| "What do you mean doc? All the best stuff is made in
| Japan"
|
| "Unbelievable"
| kilpikaarna wrote:
| That's the entire point of the joke, yeah. Japanese
| manufacturing was dodgy in the 50s-60s but great by the
| 80s.
|
| Korean manufacturing might've been considered dodgy in
| the 80s but great by 2000. Taiwan (ROC) went through this
| also (70s vs 90s, ish?). And now China.
| usefulcat wrote:
| I don't now about Japanese _manufacturing_ per se, but I
| definitely wouldn 't say that finished Japanese products
| were considered dodgy in the 80s. Sony, Panasonic, Honda,
| Toyota, various camera brands, Yamaha.. I recall all of
| those being at least "pretty good".
|
| I definitely remember the sense that Japanese cars posed
| a real threat to the American auto industry, and in
| hindsight that seems to have been well founded.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Nintendo! That was definitely not their reputation in the
| 80s it was top notch
| blackoil wrote:
| You are right except off by couple of decades. So 60s to
| 80s.
| rswail wrote:
| 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 rest of the world,
| but the 21st century will belong to China.
| modo_mario wrote:
| >but then lost their edge as China moved itself up the
| car manufacturing hierarchy
|
| Didn't they lose their edge earlier and because the US
| togheter with some european nations forced their arm
| after a trade war to limit their exports, enforce an
| unfavourable currency regime, etc?
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| The older generation made huge sacrifices with no wage
| growth because the CCP kept the currency low.
|
| This allowed for China to choose industries it would
| dominate outside of economic forces. It chose to dominate
| solar and was allowed to sell panels below raw materials
| cost in order to kill competition.
|
| In one hand it's good for world solar, on the other hand
| this has helped cause the rise of the far right all over
| the west.
| stickfigure wrote:
| > The older generation made huge sacrifices with no wage
| growth
|
| ...and poured their savings into the sole investment
| available, real estate, creating the largest bubble the
| world has ever seen...
| chrismsimpson wrote:
| AI: hold my beer
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Real estate was at one point 25-30% of Chinese GDP. AI is
| not anywhere close, at least not yet.
| teiferer wrote:
| Just Nvidia has a larger market cap than all German
| public companies combined.
|
| Just Nvidia.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| But much less revenue I suspect? Looks like a bubble,
| smells like a bubble, it's a bubble
| metalman wrote:
| the vast majority of solar panels are imaculately concieved
| in fully automated factorys,some where in fact there are NO
| people and they turn the lights off, as the robots are blind
| to those frequencys anyway. surviving solar PV production
| facilities operate on razor thin margins, and gargantuan
| volumes, the results of which are the electrification of most
| of the world, useing the absolute minimum of carbon. first
| lights, and dev8ces, small appliences, then the next step
| will be universal access to clean water and refrigeration,
| and then the worlds largest continent will be something to
| recon with.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > the vast majority of solar panels are imaculately
| concieved in fully automated factorys
|
| What?
|
| https://insights.issgovernance.com/posts/forced-labor-in-
| the...
|
| Yes there is a bunch of automation in there, and still a
| ton of manual work and re-work. And it is done by the
| lowest cost labor, with a hefty government subsidy (by
| china) and a purchasing program.
| cyberax wrote:
| This is pretty much bunk. There really is _very_ little
| space for manual unqualified work in solar panel
| manufacturing.
|
| Does the supply chain contain less-than-free labor
| somewhere? Likely. Most probably somewhere in the raw
| material production, but it's not something that is a
| deciding factor in anything. These materials just as well
| likely go into making of iPhones and Lenovo laptops.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| Unloading, Frame assemblies, testing, Cleanup of any
| failed products (this is skilled labor)... Packaging and
| loading. This is at the plant that does panel assembly
| (joining silicon to packaging).
|
| The problem is that "Highly automated" does not mean
| "free of people" ... the demand for low skill labor (and
| a fair amount of it to keep up with automated processes)
| is still required.
|
| The cost of labor in china remains so low (on the whole)
| that these things are still not only feasible but cost
| effective.
| bad_haircut72 wrote:
| Yeh USA could doninate this if only the price of a guy to
| load panels onto a truck wasnt so high
|
| /obvious sarcasm
| Incipient wrote:
| This is a very rosy picture, unfortunately to the point of
| delusion. There are huge questions about the labour used in
| various stages, and the production of some of the raw
| materials is environmentally questionable.
| epolanski wrote:
| Sure, but most of it happens in countries beyond china.
|
| In any case, I literally have a cousin who's lived ten
| years in China building a 3d printing company, and the
| last reason he went to China was cheaper labor, that was
| borderline irrelevant.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| I dont think China deserves that hat tip. Their "commitment"
| was done years after all the major nations had committed to
| emissions reduction and seems to have only been done so they
| could sell the solution. They've made little attempt to
| reduce emissions and instead scaled their industrial base to
| capitalize on the demand from nations working to reduce their
| carbon footprint.
|
| The only thing they've done to greenwash their image is spend
| money buying articles that present the false image of a green
| china.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| This isn't factually accurate at all, and I would encourage
| some research so your statements can be more accurate.
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/china-energy-
| transi...
|
| https://ember-energy.org/latest-updates/wind-and-solar-
| gener...
|
| https://electrek.co/2025/09/02/h1-2025-china-installs-
| more-s...
|
| > Global solar installations are breaking records again in
| 2025. In H1 2025, the world added 380 gigawatts (GW) of new
| solar capacity - a staggering 64% jump compared to the same
| period in 2024, when 232 GW came online. China was
| responsible for installing a massive 256 GW of that solar
| capacity. For context, it took until September last year to
| pass the 350 GW mark. This year, the milestone was achieved
| in June. That pace cements solar as the fastest-growing
| source of new electricity generation worldwide. In 2024,
| global solar output rose by 28% (+469 terawatt-hours) from
| 2023, more growth than any other energy source. Nicolas
| Fulghum, senior energy analyst at independent energy think
| tank Ember, said, "These latest numbers on solar deployment
| in 2025 defy gravity, with annual solar installations
| continuing their sharp rise. In a world of volatile energy
| markets, solar offers domestically produced power that can
| be rolled out at record speed to meet growing demand,
| independent of global fossil fuel supply chains."
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65064
|
| > Utility-scale solar power capacity in China reached more
| than 880 gigawatts (GW) in 2024, according to China's
| National Energy Administration. China has more utility-
| scale solar than any other country. The 277 GW of utility-
| scale solar capacity installed in China in 2024 alone is
| more than twice as much as the 121 GW of utility-scale
| solar capacity installed in the United States at the end of
| 2024. Planned solar capacity projects will likely lead to
| continued growth in China's solar capacity. More than 720
| GW of solar capacity are in development: about 250 GW under
| construction, nearly 300 GW in pre-construction phases, and
| 177 GW of announced projects, according to the Global Solar
| Power Tracker compiled by Global Energy Monitor.
|
| https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/20/chinas-coal-
| generation-...
|
| > China's coal-fired electricity generation took an
| unexpectedly sharp turn downward in the first quarter of
| 2025, signaling a potentially profound shift in the world's
| largest coal-consuming economy. This wasn't merely a
| seasonal dip or economic distress signal; rather, it
| represented a clear and structural turning point. Coal
| generation fell by approximately 4.7% year over year,
| significantly outpacing the overall grid electricity supply
| decline of just 1.3%. However, electricity demand, a better
| measure, went up by 1%. What gives?
|
| https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/21/china-clean-
| renewable-e...
|
| > China's Decarbonization Is So Fast Even New Coal Plants
| Aren't Stopping It. In multiple sectors--transportation,
| renewable energy, and overall electrification--the clear
| trend is toward a greener energy system. In fact, in areas
| like renewables and electric vehicles, China is now the
| world's leading player. With the United States essentially
| abandoning the field, it will become even more dominant.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/26/china-
| breaks-m...
|
| > China's installations of wind and solar in May are enough
| to generate as much electricity as Poland, as the world's
| second-biggest economy breaks further records with its
| rapid buildup of renewable energy infrastructure. China
| installed 93 GW of solar capacity last month - almost 100
| solar panels every second, according to an analysis by
| Lauri Myllyvirta, a senior fellow at the Asia Society
| Policy Institute. Wind power installations reached 26 GW,
| the equivalent of about 5,300 turbines.
|
| (it is somewhat irrelevant that China has accomplished
| spinning up a clean tech machine of this scale out of
| energy security reasons, as it still accomplishes the goal
| of decarbonizing their economy first, and then, the rest of
| the world as their spun up manufacturing flywheel exports
| cheap clean tech to the world)
|
| https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-
| data-e...
| jabl wrote:
| Ember recently released a report (well, slide deck?)
| about the coming 'electrotech' age: https://ember-
| energy.org/latest-insights/the-electrotech-rev...
|
| We're at the point where things are changing fast. Yes,
| largely driven by the ginormous solar and battery
| production coming from China. The rest of the world
| better get their ducks in order if they want to compete.
| samtheDamned wrote:
| besides toomuchtodo's nicely made argument, I would like to
| point that that many "major" nations (I'm assuming that
| refers to mostly western countries, correct me if I'm
| wrong) were able to focus on committing to emissions
| because they gave their dirty work (ie: mass manufacturing,
| waste disposal, resource extraction) to other countries,
| especially China.
| AuthAuth wrote:
| toomuchtodo's arugments are deluded and ill respond to
| those in a bit. But I want to be clear that no one "gave"
| their dirty work to china. Industry in all these
| countries were priced out.
|
| The Western and Asian governments increased environmental
| regulations and the cost to do business rose. In China
| the government ignored its climate obligations and
| slashed environmental regulations and increased coal
| investment to drive energy costs down and thus the
| manufacturing moved there. You think Germany couldnt have
| cut environmental regulations slapped down a few coal
| plants and made solar panels?
|
| Thats why there was climate meetings to get everyone on
| the same track. If everyone is aligned in their goals
| then the economic hurt is easier to bare. China
| intentionally captialised on this and I do not think they
| deserve any praise for it.
| epolanski wrote:
| > They've made little attempt to reduce emissions
|
| They are a growing economy of a billion + people.
|
| You need to realize this is a population that was virtually
| 90% poor just 3 decades ago.
| chithanh wrote:
| > 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.
| adrianN wrote:
| Solar panel construction is very easy to automate, I don't
| think labor is a big driver of cost.
| myrmidon wrote:
| Labor is _always_ a big driver of cost, because you need
| to plan, build, maintain and operate those factories with
| humans even if fully automated, and a lot of the indirect
| costs is going to scale with the price of labor, too
| (local legal representation, transport /logistics, ...)
| myrmidon wrote:
| Median wage in urban China is about $20k/year.
|
| That is objectively dirt-cheap compared to basically _all_
| of the west.
|
| Yes, wages might be even cheaper in neighboring countries,
| but those lag behind in infrastructure, education,
| political stability, availability of capital and network
| effects from existing industry (and are thus not a viable
| alternative to China yet for lots of things).
| chithanh wrote:
| Manufacturing labor cost in China has surpassed parts of
| Eastern Europe.
|
| I agree that infrastructure, supply chains, political
| stability, and education are the primary drivers for
| attracting manufacturing to China.
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Manufacturing labor cost in China has surpassed parts
| of Eastern Europe.
|
| This is a good point, but I think that only really the
| underdeveloped/underindustrialized/unstable parts really
| qualify, possibly Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, with similar
| caveats than Chinas neighbors.
|
| Despite all this a lot of European manufacturing (e.g.
| cars), has shifted into the more viable low-wage
| countries over the last decades (despite language
| barriers and very high automation; talking mainly Poland,
| Slovenia, Hungary here).
|
| You still need labor to build, maintain and operate
| factories, even if they are filled with robots; people
| here underestimate the benefit of cheap labor by a _lot_.
| justapassenger wrote:
| > Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than
| electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The
| only thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the
| contractor hassle.
|
| Does decentralized solar plus batteries give you same amount of
| reliability? How many days without sunny weather can you
| survive without having to change your energy use habits?
|
| Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXTREMELY
| expensive. And grid has a lot of 9s.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The grid has a lot of 9s, but in a lot of places losing power
| for a day or two after a storm is not unusual at all. The
| grid per se being fine but your actual neighborhood being
| dark for a couple days is a pretty common experience in some
| places.
| tekchip wrote:
| Can confirm. I live in a US city and the only 9 involved is
| maybe the very first number. I've lived here just over a
| year and we've had 1 full day without power and probably 8
| to 10 short outages between a few seconds and several 10s
| of minutes. I'm adding batteries and solar permitting be
| damned.
| sethherr wrote:
| Wild! I've lived in Chicago and San Francisco and have
| never lost power for more than an hour. And can't
| remember the last time it went out at all, maybe 2 years
| ago?
|
| What city do you live in?
| daemonologist wrote:
| I'm (not GP) in the Chicago burbs and expect to lose
| power 1-3 times a year. Usually it's for less than twelve
| hours but last year it was out for three days straight.
| Most recent outage was ~10 minutes long a couple weeks
| ago - I still haven't set the oven clock.
|
| The cause around here is usually storm + trees + above
| ground power lines, plus a low enough population density
| that you're not top priority for the utility company.
| sethherr wrote:
| Checks out - you aren't in a city.
|
| I was surprised that the original comment said they were
| in a city
| ryandrake wrote:
| If you have ever lost power for just 12 hours in an entire
| year, you're already down to only two 9's: 99.863%
|
| I've never lived anywhere where the power didn't go down
| for at least a few (cumulative) days a year.
| abakker wrote:
| And, for a refrigerator and a lot of loads, being down
| for 2 days straight is way worse than a few hours a year.
| losing 48 hours of supply a year if broken into 2 hour
| chunks is not nearly as bad as losing 48 consecutive
| hours.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| I get your point, but I personally would be grumpy if I
| lost power for two hours twice a month. I realize that is
| rich considering this article is about people who are
| lucky to get any amount of power reliably
| jaggederest wrote:
| When I lived in a city proper, the grid was doing well to
| maintain 98% uptime. Multiple day long outages were the
| rule, not uncommon to lose power 3-5 days in a row.
|
| Now I live in a rural area and it's uncommon to avoid
| outages more than a month. We have an automatic transfer
| switch and fuel generator from previous owners and it
| saves hundreds of dollars in frozen food.
|
| This is in the US by the way. If you're investing in a
| transfer switch and generator now, the cost is going to
| quickly approach a modest solar + battery set up with a
| whole house inverter, and of course, you save money all
| year that way, not just in outages.
| ben_w wrote:
| Last time my building lost power was about 19 years ago,
| when I was living in a Welsh valley halfway between the
| two nearest villages.
|
| Since then, none of the extended Portsmouth conurbation,
| Sheffield, Cambridge, rural Cambridgeshire or Berlin have
| had any problems big enough to even notice while I've
| lived in them.
|
| I have seen at least two circuit breakers trip in that
| time though.
| zanellato19 wrote:
| I lost power for 10h in my city recently and it was a big
| fucking deal. The last 5 years that's the first time that
| happened. I would say I have less than a hour of downtime
| per year in the other years
|
| PS I don't live in the US.
| ruszki wrote:
| I don't know where you live, but I experienced outage in
| Budapest once in at least 10 years while I lived there.
| And only one phase was out, not all. We even lamented
| with my friends that we didn't even remember when was the
| last time when something like that happened. I never had
| to reconfigure the clock on my microwave, just for
| daylight saving time. I know that even 30 kms from there
| my granddad still experiences outages monthly, but there
| are places where that happens very-very rarely nowadays.
| martinald wrote:
| It's very location dependent fwiw.
|
| In the UK, I think I can remember 3 power outages my
| entire life. One when there was significant flooding in
| my hometown as a child, which lasted around a day, once
| at university for a few hours (local substation failed)
| and recently 30 minutes overnight while they were
| upgrading something (with a lot of notice). I may be
| undercounting/misremembering but I don't think its far
| off.
|
| I think the main difference is the UK in all but mostly
| rural areas has all the power lines underground. This is
| very different in eg North America where you can go a few
| blocks out of downtown areas and it is all overhead
| delivery.
| strken wrote:
| The grid where I live has a target of 89 minutes of
| unplanned power outages per year for urban customers and
| somewhere in the high 200s for long rural feeder lines.
| This is in Australia, where serving outlying customers
| comes with some geographical challenges. I think it's
| currently sitting at 99.998% reliability. I can't
| remember the last unplanned outage longer than a couple
| of minutes, although they did some planned work last year
| and took out our power for half an hour.
|
| I'm surprised that someone would think days of power
| outages are normal everywhere. My family used to get hit
| with 8+ hour outages every few years back in the 90s
| because we were at the end of a single long rural feeder
| line, and we thought that was an unacceptable frequency.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| I live in central Europe and can't remember the last
| power outage not caused by a clumsy electrician. It must
| have been many years.
| zahlman wrote:
| > And grid has a lot of 9s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003
|
| Not as many as you might think.
| manoDev wrote:
| A grid in a remote place in Africa would have less 9's than
| self reliance on solar.
| noosphr wrote:
| It absolutely does not.
|
| But having electricity 13 days every two weeks is much better
| than not having it at all.
|
| This isn't about China building out their grid with an over
| capacity factor of 200% so they can keep everything running
| even if rain, sun and wind all fail for months on end. This
| is a developing county getting to the point they can charge
| mobile phones consistently.
| badpun wrote:
| Sounds good until you try to run a business. Having
| businesses randomly out of commission is not a way to bring
| country from developing to developed status.
| o11c wrote:
| Better make sure they don't depend on AWS, then.
| jchanimal wrote:
| If that's your first thought, then you'll hate this
| influential perspective:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better
| epistasis wrote:
| Even if you have an under-provisioned solar+storage
| solution and don't want to splurge for a generator, even
| on cloudy days you still get power, just less.
|
| Generally businesses are _really_ great at balancing
| costs, and for highly-cost-constrained businesses if you
| give them 95% uptime at half the cost, the equation
| becomes clear. And in Africa, if the option is 95% uptime
| or 0% uptime, the choice is even clearer.
| pfdietz wrote:
| 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 bogus.
| noosphr wrote:
| It's their 2060 plan. Take it up with the CPP.
| pfdietz wrote:
| Press 'X' to doubt.
|
| Assuming someone actually told you that, I think you need
| to reevaluate the credibility of that source.
| noosphr wrote:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266649
| 842...
| pfdietz wrote:
| Nowhere in that document do I see a statement about 200%
| overcapacity. Could you point it out?
| Steven_Vellon wrote:
| 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.
| pfdietz wrote:
| It was around 14 hours of battery storage. Seems
| reasonable.
|
| Realize that replacing all ICE road vehicles in the US
| with 70 kWh BEVs would require storage equal to ~40 hours
| of our average grid usage. The future is going to need
| large numbers of batteries, which is why China has been
| all in on this.
| Steven_Vellon wrote:
| 14 hours of battery (~40 TWh for China) with the hydrogen
| storage or without? Because the calculator was reporting
| ~78,000 GWh battery storage with China's weather
| selected, and 2030 technology assumptions. I changed the
| spatial capacity factor from 1 to 2 and the battery
| storage requirement dropped down to 68 TWh, but still
| well above 40 TWH.
|
| Regardless, 14 hours of China's electricity demand is a
| whopping 40,600 GWh. By comparison, 2024's lithium ion
| battery production figure was 1.5 TWh [1]. Even assuming
| 100% of this went to EV's we're still talking about
| roughly 25 years worth of global battery production to
| fulfill only China's demand for storage in this model. As
| you point out, we still have loads of battery demand for
| EV adoption, so nowhere near 100% of production will be
| able to be diverted to grid storage.
|
| The scale of storage required to make intermittent
| sources viable without being backed by a dispatchable
| energy source really is tremendous, and this often gets
| overlooked in pushes for a fully renewable grid.
|
| 1. https://www.argusmedia.com/ja/news-and-
| insights/latest-marke...
| pfdietz wrote:
| That was about the amount in both cases. Slightly more in
| the no-hydrogen case than otherwise. Hydrogen contributed
| only marginally.
|
| Yes, it's a lot of batteries. So what? It's not like the
| current battery production is some firm limit. If
| anything, the very large future demand ensures batteries
| will be driven down their experience curve, so the cost
| will be even lower than assumed.
|
| The world spends something like $10T per year on energy.
| Any replacement energy system is going to be a big thing.
|
| You need to make an argument that is more than you
| expressing fear of large numbers.
| nicoburns wrote:
| I wonder what proportion of energy use goes towards
| either heating or cooling and could use a thermal energy
| store rather than an electrical one.
| epistasis wrote:
| Battery production capacity grows by 10x every five
| years. It was four years ago when I first heard that, and
| we are exactly on track still. In 2031 we will be at
| 20-30 TWh/year production capacity.
|
| There are few things that grow this fast when it comes to
| manufactured things, atoms are far harder to arrange and
| scale than bits. But it's happening at a tremendous
| scale. Natural gas turbine production capacity is tapped
| out with long order queues, and so is battery production
| well into 2026, but only battery production capacity is
| expanding at breakneck speed.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| Understand that only ~6 TWh of lithium batteries have
| been produced to date. As in, every single year of
| production combined adds up to less than 6 Twh. Moore's
| law largely stemmed from the fact that making a processer
| faster also meant making transistors smaller. Reducing
| the width of a transistor to a half, a quarter, etc.
| increased compute per cm^2 by double, quadruple, etc.
| Chemistry doesn't obtain that kind of exponential growth
| - we have hard limits on the number of joules we can
| store per gram of anode and cathode, so scaling up
| production means digging up more anode and cathode
| material out of the ground. The nature of resource
| extraction is that the easiest-to-exploit reserves are
| exhausted first, and continued production is contingent
| on accessing the progressively more and more inconvenient
| reserves. Maybe in 2030 annual global production will be
| 30 TWh - we'll know in 4 years. But there's a lot of
| people who probably don't want to make trillion-dollar
| investments gambling on that possibility panning out.
|
| Regardless of your confidence in battery production's
| continued growth, I think you'd agree that if someone is
| making a calculation about the required amount of
| overproduction required to maintain a stable grid, they
| should at least mention that their calculation is
| contingent on provisioning _tens of terawatt hours_ worth
| of grid storage.
| epistasis wrote:
| Getting to 10x production capacity doesn't require
| improving battery tech, it just requires building more
| factories. The equivalent here isn't Moore's Law, it's
| fab capacity. If battery tech stalled out today at the
| same pricing (it won't), we could still 10x the battery
| production capacity every 5 years just on this pace.
|
| The learning rate for batteries has not been as steep as
| Moore's Law for ICs. But the value of being able to store
| mass quantities of electricity at low cost is so
| incredibly valuable that it's going to blow up into a
| huuuuge number of factories.
|
| You look at the 6TWh of all time and see that as a
| limitation. I haven't seen that stat before but I trust
| you, because with the growth rate of battery production
| it has to be a tiny number, because it's exponential
| growth. In 2024, 1.2 TWh of batteries were produced, 20%
| of all storage capacity ever. That was a _single_ year!
| What if, in 2024, we produced 20% of all CPU capacity
| every produced? That 's obviously a hugely growing
| market.
|
| > The nature of resource extraction is that the easiest-
| to-exploit reserves are exhausted first, and continued
| production is contingent on accessing the progressively
| more and more inconvenient reserves. Maybe in 2030 annual
| global production will be 30 TWh - we'll know in 4 years.
| But there's a lot of people who probably don't want to
| make trillion-dollar investments gambling on that
| possibility panning out.
|
| If you spend a small amount of time diving into the
| industry, you'll see that there's a massive number of
| very smart people solving all these resource constraint
| problems, securing supply chains years in advance, and
| building like fucking mad. Sure, there's a lot of people
| that don't want to get involved, but they will be left in
| the dust.
|
| We are witnessing a massive energy interchange. This is
| like when the PC came along, but much bigger in terms of
| quantity and speed. Sure, there are those who are still
| skeptical of energy storage, 5-10 years after it became
| blazingly obvious that batteries are cheap and getting
| cheaper and will take over the enery world. But they are
| the same people who saw the iPhone and said "it will
| never catch up to my BlackBerry."
|
| Electricity storage in batteries is a swiss-army knife
| for the grid that never existed until recently. We
| couldn't do time arbitrage, always had to match supply
| and demand instantaneously, across grids spanning
| hundreds and thousands of miles. No more, that's all
| gone. We can do tiny microgrids, we can do single houses,
| we can do 10 TWh installs across grids, because batteries
| scale small, scale big, are cheap, getting cheaper, and
| are being produced on a growing scale that most people do
| not understand.
| epistasis wrote:
| 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.
| discordance wrote:
| Try that again with 99% renewable and it becomes much
| more reasonable with regards to over overcapacity. 1%
| non-renewable would be a very good outcome.
| pfdietz wrote:
| One can enable "dispatchable 1" which is simple cycle gas
| turbines, and limit the total CO2 emission so that's at
| most 1% of the generation. Doing that, and with no
| hydrogen, solar curtailment is reduced by more than half,
| to 8.1%.
| numitus wrote:
| Unfortunately, all such calculations are egocentric. People
| assume that everyone can use solar panels for 13 days 2
| weeks, and when needed, we'll just get electricity from the
| grid. But what they don't take into account is that when
| there's load today but none tomorrow, the grid becomes
| unstable. 2) This also increases costs. You might save
| electricity consumption in 14 times, but your expenses for
| grid electricity can increase in 14 times, because the grid
| still needs to be maintained -- staff must be kept at power
| plants to ensure you can be supplied with 100% of your
| energy at any moment.
| incompatible wrote:
| The tricky thing in cold climates is the part of the year
| when solar power is lowest but electricity use, for
| heating, is highest. Sometimes they have hydro or
| something.
| noosphr wrote:
| These people don't have access to the grid. That's the
| issue to begin with.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > And grid has a lot of 9s.
|
| I mean, it very much depends on where you are. Three 9s would
| be no more than about 8 hours downtime per year. A lot of
| rural locations would do worse than that, realistically.
| andyferris wrote:
| Distributed can do redundancy. It's relatively cheap.
|
| Consider a family with two cars instead of one. How often do
| they have zero working cars? The correlated failure rate
| squares while the cost doubles.
|
| My home now has a grid connection, house battery and solar, a
| caravan with mounted solar/battery/fridge/inverter beside it,
| and I also have a portable "powerstation" and portable solar
| panel which is basically a UPS. My fridge contents and phone
| charging needs have a several extra 9's now for costs that
| have scaled very well.
|
| These systems are tech that is improving rapidly. In some
| years these African farmers with their increased yields will
| likely add a bigger, second solar & battery system. In a
| village you can run a cable next door. Etc.
| aydyn wrote:
| > Each 9 of reliability for infrastructure is EXTREMELY
| expensive. And grid has a lot of 9s.
|
| Correction: _should_ have a lot of 9s.
|
| But in a lot of places in the U.S., even rich states, it
| doesn't because a combination of regulatory capture,
| profiteering and straight corruption.
|
| I can see why solar and batteries are so attractive because
| at least its your prerogative when the power goes out.
| Iulioh wrote:
| Have you heard how companies makes money on the US grid?
|
| Oh boy.
|
| They are incentivized to BULID but not to maintain or
| upgrade because that grants them guarantee rate of return.
|
| It was enlightening to see what caused the big blackout
| during a big snowfall in texas a few years ago
| afiori wrote:
| It is funny to me how fractally perverse systems gets
| when a centralised authority refuses to directly solve a
| problem but rather decide have it solved by third party
| uncooperative players by creating an endless stream of
| byzantine rules to force the solution to be a twisted
| copy of what the centralised authority could have done by
| itself.
|
| Of course there are failure modes in any approach but "oh
| no! Herding cats is hard. Who could have imagined!" is
| funny to me
| babypuncher wrote:
| My concern is that it deflates any impetus to actually
| solve the problems of regulatory capture, profiteering, and
| other corruption.
|
| Not everybody can afford the up front costs of installing
| solar + battery storage, plus replacement when the PV cells
| and batteries inevitably reach EoL. These people will be
| left behind on a decaying grid nobody with political
| capital wants to fix or at the mercy of landlords.
|
| I really don't like this attitude we have in America where
| we realize "thing is broken" and advocate throwing it away
| instead of trying to fix it.
| aydyn wrote:
| > I really don't like this attitude we have in America
| where we realize "thing is broken" and advocate throwing
| it away instead of trying to fix it.
|
| Because people are too busy playing Team Politics instead
| of solving issues that everyone can get behind.
|
| Fixing the power grid is one of those things that
| everyone could get behind, and yeah I agree, it
| disproportionately affects the economically
| disadvantaged.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| I read a decent essay about the difference between solar and
| wind reliability and fossil fuel reliability.
|
| Solar and wind tend to be regularly and predictably
| intermittent but not unreliable. That's something you can
| design around. Especially when you have cheap storage to
| handle critical loads.
|
| It's instructive to look at California's ISO website's supply
| graphs over the year. Renewables follow a reliable daily
| cycle.
|
| https://www.caiso.com/todays-outlook/supply
| TYPE_FASTER wrote:
| PVWatts will help you figure this out:
| https://pvwatts.nrel.gov
|
| According to PVWatts, a 10kW solar system would get me very
| close to my average usage in December. I'd be way over in the
| summer, could probably get away with a 4kW system and dial
| back use during an outage. I can lease two Powerwall 3
| batteries from my utility company for $55/mo.
|
| Or look at: https://www.franklinwh.com/products/apower2-home-
| battery-bac...
|
| Edit: this also looks like a good option:
| https://www.santansolar.com/product/the-homesteady-kit/
|
| We used to lose power 3-4 days a winter in our old house. It
| would have been really nice to have heat. A generator or
| smaller system could handle that.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| keep in mind the limitations of these forecasting
| calculations. On an AVERAGE day, assuming AVERAGE weather,
| assuming AVERAGE load, you should be fine.
|
| The trouble with relying on the weather for your
| electricity is that it is entirely possible that you will
| go five days straight with cloud cover, limited to no solar
| generation and then be freezing. This is the problem that
| the electricity grid solves with varied sources of
| generation.
| toast0 wrote:
| > And grid has a lot of 9s.
|
| Where I live, I only get two 9s from the utility. And I'm
| within commuting distance of Seattle. With my generator, I
| still got three nines the one year where the battery tender
| failed and the generator didn't start when needed, but only
| because that outage was less than 8 hours and I replaced the
| battery tender before further outages (I _could_ have jump
| started the generator, but the outage started overnight and
| waiting it out was easier). Most years, the number of brief
| outages adds up, and I probably only get five 9s.
|
| Solar + battery + generator for really bad weeks (but make
| sure you exercise it!) could pretty easily add up to the two
| nines I'd get from the utility here.
|
| For developing countries, solar + battery alone is likely be
| better than many grids which often are intermittent rather
| than 24/7 and many places don't have any access to utility
| power.
| brucehoult wrote:
| Same here in rural far north New Zealand.
|
| I actually counted the number of outages after I got my
| battery unit in June -- it was six in five weeks, for
| anything from a couple of seconds to 30 minutes, which I
| noticed because the unit clicked over to running from the
| battery, and the clock on the oven (which is still only
| mains powered) flashes until I go over and hit a button.
|
| In April I had a 40 hour outage after a storm. That's what
| caused me to order the brand new Pecron E3600LFP, first New
| Zealand model shipment in "early" June (I received mine
| June 19).
|
| In February 2023 I had a 4 day outage during/after a storm.
|
| There are even, every 2 or 3 months, scheduled and notified
| 9 AM - 3 PM outages for equipment maintenance, tree
| trimming etc. Just those alone lower the grid reliability
| to around 99.5%.
|
| Six days outage in three years -- let's call it four --
| drops grid reliability by another 0.4%.
|
| So, yeah, two 9s is about right.
|
| With the Pecron base unit (US$999 at the moment still on
| Halloween special, $1259 before that) I simply don't notice
| any outage under 4 hours, and that's even with a full
| winter heating load. In fact I deliberately turn the mains
| to it off from 7-9 AM and 5-9 PM every day.
|
| A 4 hour outage was a little close sometimes, so in August
| I added a 3kWh expansion battery ($699 on pecron.com right
| now).
|
| With 6kWh I can run my fridge, computers, Starlink, some
| LED lighting for 36 hours. Or 30 hours with typical kitchen
| appliance usage added (espresso machine, toaster, kettle,
| microwave, air fryer).
|
| Or virtually forever now I added 6x 440W solar panels (cost
| me US$400 total) to it, which still generates around 200W
| between them in even the worse overcast and rain.
|
| I'm running this stuff as a mini off-grid system, not
| connected to the house wiring at all -- except plugged into
| a standard socket to charge the battery if needed. I also
| have a $450 2kW petrol generator which I can use to charge
| the battery if needed, but needing that should be very
| rare.
|
| Total cost: under US$3k. More like $2.3k at the current
| Halloween special prices.
|
| https://x.com/BruceHoult/status/1984782313386099022
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| There are a few US Solar wholesaler companies that will draft
| and sign engineering drawings for a roof-top permit application
| in most states. Some folks claim https://www.pegasussolar.com/
| was inexpensive, and might be worth a call.
|
| The problem with Home Solar is the same as with Heat exchanger
| installs... some installers price gouge, and simply don't care
| about the quality of the work.
|
| Best of luck, if you plan to stay someplace 8+ years a 10kW
| Solar+battery install and heat exchanger are fine investments.
| We've also donated a few of those cheap FlexSolar 40W Foldable
| Solar panels + power-bank kits to people in remote areas, and
| they reported phone/VHF-Handy charging was reliable. =3
| glenstein wrote:
| >voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission
| line for years [1]
|
| This is a disastrous misrepresentation of a complex case with
| lots of moving pieces. At no point in the history of the
| construction of that specific power line was there a challenge
| to legality of citizen initiative until after the vote.
| Meanwhile, as they were behind in the polls, the company rushed
| to build as much of it as they could knowing that the
| initiative was coming, so when they failed at the ballot box,
| they could claim a legally recognized "vested interest".
|
| Absent the vested interest claim they would have been legally
| bound by the results of the ballot initiative, and the vested
| interest was not established until after the ballot had been
| voted on.
| manmal wrote:
| Here in Austria, grid costs are now on par with the actual
| electricity cost. Each are ca EUR0.1 per kWh now, plus again
| that in taxes.
|
| Once the EU finally gets rid of the ridiculous pricing model
| where spot prices are dictated by the most expensive energy
| source (usually, gas), we might have a situation where grid
| costs exceed the cost of energy itself.
|
| Oh and what do they do with that money? Hoard it for upcoming
| grid updates, which they supposedly have to make to accommodate
| solar peaks and EV charging. And buy solar parks in Spain,
| apparently.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| >Once EU finally gets rid of the ridiculous pricing model
| where spot prices are dictated by the most expensive energy
| source (usually, gas), we might have a situation where grid
| costs exceed the cost of energy itself.
|
| Why is it ridiculous? From a pure mathematical economics
| point of view it's genius I think. It means energy producers
| can just set their price at production price, knowing they
| will get the best deal that way and thus don't need to
| speculate on the electricity prices. It makes electricity as
| cheap as possible when it's abundant and expensive when it's
| not, also incentifying users of electricity to shift their
| consumption.
|
| What's a better way of doing it?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Any way that is more fair for the end user.
|
| Why should a solar generator, who has virtually zero
| inputs, demand the same rate as a gas or coal generator
| who's costs are dominated by inputs?
|
| Where's the promised savings to the end user? That's right,
| there aren't any.
|
| And people bang on about solar being cheaper.
|
| No it isn't.
|
| Solar electricity is the same price as gas peaker-plant
| electricity. Everywhere I've looked, same story.
|
| And there's no solar power without gas.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| If you can make a great profit from solar, you are
| incentivised to build more of it for an even greater
| profit.
|
| Soon there is so much solar that you don't need the
| expensive gas most of the time.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| Isn't that a self defeating loop.
|
| Great profit to be had from solar because of expensive
| gas.
|
| Let's put aside that this isn't good for the end user, as
| it openly admits the whole point of solar is great
| profit, rather than savings for the end user.
|
| Soon there's no need for the expensive gas.
|
| Where's your profit margin not?
| istjohn wrote:
| > Let's put aside that this isn't good for the end user,
| as it openly admits the whole point of solar is great
| profit, rather than savings for the end user.
|
| The whole point of capitalism is that in a well-
| regulated, open, competitive market, an ecosystem of
| companies pursuing maximum profit drive down each other's
| profit margins as they compete for a limited pool of
| consumers. In other words, it is precisely the profit
| motive that creates savings for the end user.
| glenstein wrote:
| Exactly. The same principles that apply for solar energy
| are already in place for natural gas and for every other
| form of energy and the fundamental logic of markets is
| that there's a price point consumers will pay that's also
| profitable for the company.
|
| That didn't newly become an issue for the first time once
| solar entered the picture. There should be a word for
| this type of argument where people relitigate settled
| principles because they're discovering them for the first
| time.
| nandomrumber wrote:
| It's not like I'm discovering the concept for the first
| time.
|
| I just think when people say things like "solar is
| cheaper than gas" they should say for who.
|
| Solar is cheaper than gas for the capitalist.
|
| And there's no guarantee the capitalists savings will
| ever be passed on to the consumer.
|
| In my market, Australia, the energy retailers are
| regulated to increase prices once a year. Increase
| prices. Never a saving for the retail customer. They've
| worked out that can skip all that messy market bullshit
| and just regulate annual increases.
|
| Good work if you can get it.
| defrost wrote:
| > In my market, Australia, the energy retailers are
| regulated to increase prices once a year. Increase
| prices. Never a saving for the retail customer. They've
| worked out that can skip all that messy market bullshit
| and just regulate annual increases.
|
| Have you actually read the regulation?
| The AEMC said the new rules were in response to requests
| from Australia's energy minsters. They will:
| * prevent retailers from increasing prices more than once
| a year * ban excessive charges like late-payment
| fees for all retail contracts * ensure all
| consumers are entitled to a fee-free payment method
| * prohibit retail fees for vulnerable consumers *
| ensure vulnerable Australians are receiving their
| retailer's best offer * prevent retailers from
| charging more than the standing offer price if the
| customer's initial offer changes or expires. This will
| protect customers from paying higher prices for their
| loyalty. The rules to improve consumer
| confidence in retail energy plans will come into effect
| on 1 July 2026. Those that assist hardship customers take
| effect from 30 December 2026.
|
| There is a _difference_ between
|
| A) regulation that _forces_ a price rise once a year.
|
| and
|
| B) regulation that _stops_ more than one price rise (if
| any) in any year.
| glenstein wrote:
| It _sounds like_ what you are talking about is the
| "Default Market Offer", aka the Australian equivalent to
| the "standard offer" in the United States. I cannot
| possibly stress this enough: nothing about the existence
| of the standard offer has anything to do with the
| relative economics of solar to other energies, so it's
| bizarre that you're showing up in a middle of a thread
| about solar power specifically, and treating a phenomenon
| that applies to the energy market as a whole like it's
| only a problem for solar.
|
| And remember what this thread is about - Solarpunk in
| Africa, off the grid, which is a case that has nothing to
| do with regulated utility grids, so it couldn't possibly
| have less to do with the article that this thread is
| about.
|
| You're insisting you're not discovering the concept for
| the first time, yet even in this comment you're still
| doing the same thing, treating systemic regulations that
| apply to energy markets writ large like they somehow only
| apply to solar. You wouldn't be doing that if you
| understood beforehand that these systemic problems had
| nothing to do with solar in particular, you would be
| doing it if you were just starting to look into solar and
| discovered those issues for the first time, which I what
| I think is happening.
| jabl wrote:
| Even more generally, this applies to commodity markets.
| Price of potatoes is x EUR/kg, set by supply and demand.
| If some farmer can produce potatoes for 0.1x EUR/kg, they
| get to make a good profit.
|
| Now electricity wholesale markets are an artificial
| construct, but it has been designed to mimic other
| commodity markets in that the producer on the margin sets
| the price.
| manmal wrote:
| > the fundamental logic of markets is that there's a
| price point consumers will pay that's also profitable for
| the company
|
| Electricity demand is price inelastic, meaning the
| consumer has no direct influence on prices, and will pay
| practically any price (well, up to a point). In the EU,
| the day-ahead spot prices are published every day at 2PM
| CEST, and it's a bidding market driven only by suppliers.
| If gas price goes up by x3, total electricity price
| average will go up by some linear factor, because gas
| turbines are absolutely required for surges/peaks - at
| least until we have enough batteries.
|
| Calling this a market is stretching it IMO.
| glenstein wrote:
| I'm sorry, but somehow this manages to be the most
| incorrect comment in the entire thread so far, a textbook
| case of missing the forest for the trees.
|
| For starters, numbers I've seen suggest something day
| ahead prices are something like 10% to 30% of the overall
| energy supply because most of it's sold outside of that
| context via things like regulated utility pricing,
| forward and futures markets which sell weeks to years
| ahead, and long-term bilateral contracts such as power
| purchase agreements. So most energy is not purchased this
| way over the short term.
|
| Moreover, for goodness sake, inelasticity at the margin
| doesn't make something _not a market_ , that's simply not
| what inelasticity means, and none of these considerations
| have anything to do with whether solar power in
| particular can be profitably offered to customers.
| (Again, why would it be just applying uniquely and
| exclusively to solar power but not other forms of
| energy?)
|
| Investments of various kind occur over horizons of days,
| months, and years where these market dynamics unfold.
| Every energy source on offer whether it be solar panel,
| gas turbine and storage facility is financed built and
| dispatched based on the expectations of cost and profit.
| Demand is quite elastic over the horizon of months and
| years, and demand inelasticity is sometimes a feature
| _of_ markets not something that identifies any specific
| phenomena that prevents solar power in particular from
| entering markets.
|
| Solar power rises and falls throughout the day in a
| manner that conveniently aligns with actual energy
| consumption patterns, and its net effect on the grid is
| de-stressing peaking infrastructure.
|
| So it's certainly true that there are day ahead markets
| but if you think the upshot of that is that it somehow
| means solar can't be provided at a price point affordable
| to consumers that simultaneously profitable to the
| companies providing it, well, the phrase "missing the
| forest for the trees" was practically invented for
| moments like this.
| glenstein wrote:
| If solar is cheaper to produce (which it often is),
| there's room for undercutting natural gas _and_ room for
| profit, a mutual benefit to customers and the solar
| industry where only natural gas loses.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Soon there is so much solar that you don't need the
| expensive gas most of the time.
|
| Unless it's night. Or, possibly, unless you have enough
| battery capacity to store the entire nighttime supply
| during the day.
| manmal wrote:
| > Soon there is so much solar that you don't need the
| expensive gas most of the time.
|
| In the EU (winters with weak solar radiation) this only
| works if you can store power over multiple months.
| Getting rid of gas means purchasing and maintaining a
| giant amount of batteries. Slow storage won't save you
| from outages during peaks. We do have very cheap power
| from solar, during the hot months. In winter, its wind
| and offshore turbines that are prevalent, but they are as
| unpredictable.
|
| So, solar and wind power is trivial. Storage is the
| issue. And consumers will pay that storage, in both grid
| cost, and spot prices.
|
| I don't understand why peak producers should dictate
| prices for all levels of service. Make an exception for
| them that's adequate, like a second peak market, and
| done? Why should a solar producer (who doesn't buffer!)
| get 3x the price only because Russia turns up gas prices
| and the big producers start panic buying expensive gas
| futures, poisoning their whole lineup in the process?
| Solar producers just pump whatever's coming out of their
| panels into the market, with no regard for grid
| stability.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| Right now providing grid stability is maximally rewarded
| because you get paid a lot when it's needed and little
| when there's a lot of electricity available. Storage
| providers can use this spread to make money and create
| grid stability.
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by second peak market?
|
| Let me turn around the question, why should a gas plant
| get more for its electricity when it's indistinguishable
| from solar electricity?
| nandomrumber wrote:
| In the case of gas peaked plants: because they're
| providing grid stability.
|
| Whereas solar generators are ruining grid stability.
| defrost wrote:
| Mini pumped storage dams and battery banks fix that issue
| cheaper than gas peaker plants.
|
| Eg: In your market, Australia, this was completed this
| year for $8 million AU
|
| https://www.westernpower.com.au/resources-
| education/network-...
| manmal wrote:
| That's just media hype. You need orders of magnitude more
| of these plants to prevent blackouts entirely.
| defrost wrote:
| 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 understand the Western Power link provided looks like
| media hype, it was put together years back at the start
| of the project with minal updates in the interim.
|
| It's well out of date now that the Walpole project has
| been completed and is up and running for a few months
| now.
| manmal wrote:
| Yes, for one town that's a solution, but not one for the
| whole of a nation.
| manmal wrote:
| > why should a gas plant get more for its electricity
| when it's indistinguishable from solar electricity?
|
| I already wrote it: levels of service. A gas plant powers
| up in minutes. A coal plant in hours. A nuclear reactor
| in years. Solar and wind isn't controllable at all.
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| But why would anyone else being able to deliver at the
| same time get anything less?
|
| I agree there's actually an issue here, ideally the price
| should be set by the next seller which just didn't get to
| sell.
| manmal wrote:
| The cheaper suppliers actually bid with their prices, and
| why wouldn't those prices be fair then? The EU then goes
| and gives them more than they offered. Make it make
| sense. Google ,,merit order".
|
| It's still a gamble for suppliers btw. The prices change
| every 15 minutes, and every cheap supplier is at the whim
| of more expensive suppliers.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| comments like this really show that many people with
| strong opinions do not understand how the electricity
| grid, electricity markets or electricity economics work.
|
| Electricity is priced at the edge entirely because demand
| must match supply at all times. You either meet all
| electric demand or someone will go without power. This is
| why marginal pricing exists and this is why the most
| expensive generator is always the last to be accepted.
| This is why electricity at night is cheaper that during
| the day.
|
| Please, if you do not understand what you are talking
| about, it's ok to just say that you don't know. Don't
| spread misinformation like this.
| latentsea wrote:
| > Electricity is priced at the edge entirely because
| demand must match supply at all times. You either meet
| all electric demand or someone will go without power.
|
| There's also more to it than just that. Supply-demand
| imbalance affects the frequency on the grid. Too high or
| too low frequency damages the turbines in the base load
| power plants, and they will shut down to avoid damage if
| the frequency goes too far out of range. Hence, too
| little or too much power actually causes grid collapse.
|
| Solar actually has to be managed a lot more carefully
| than people realise.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| This has almost nothing to do with how electricity is
| priced.
| latentsea wrote:
| Electricity isn't priced only one way.
|
| In the Japanese market in summer during the day the spot
| price nose dives to almost nothing because of an
| oversupply of solar. Yet most installed solar is
| operating under the FIT system where all generation is
| guaranteed to be bought by the regional generation
| company for a fixed price, regardless of what the spot
| price is. This worked to incentivise bringing lots of
| solar online, but its paid for by adding a levy as a line
| item to everyone's electricity bill. To lower the
| financial burden the government is ending the FIT system
| and transitioning to FIP where from memory solar
| operators still make similar money as they did under FIT
| but it's sold on the spot market and then the government
| pays a premium on top.
|
| The TSOs have to manage the supply-demand balance and
| there's things like the balancing market to help with
| this. However the government is also changing the
| regulations to put more of the burden of managing the
| supply-demand onto the solar operators themselves and not
| lump it all on the TSOs. Lots of people invested in solar
| under the FIT system because operation and expected
| revenue was straightforward. Now with shifting to FIP
| it's less straightforward. Additionally when the burden
| finally falls to the solar operators to proactively
| manage the supply-demand balance, there aren't good
| systems they can readily leverage to do so, and the
| average Joe with solar panels on their roof isn't
| necessarily going to want to be submitting 30 minute
| generation plans to their regional TSO, hence they'll
| eventually have to wind up going through aggregators and
| such becoming part of a virtual power plant where you may
| have things occur like negawatt transactions to
| incentivising reducing demand to help manage the supply-
| demand balance etc.
|
| PPAs are also an increasingly popular option for
| purchasing/selling solar power. They're usually fixed
| price contracts, but depending on how it's setup money
| either changes hands directly between the generator and
| consumer (via a retailer) or sometimes the generator
| sells it all on the spot market and then settlement of
| the difference between the contract price occurs
| afterwards between the parties. Even with fixed price
| contacts the revenue isn't completely guaranteed because
| the TSO might need to issue curtailment orders to the
| generator in order to manage supply-demand balance when
| there is oversupply or grid congestion.
|
| It's not all sold on the spot market.
|
| Anyway, my comment was less about how it's priced more
| about hidden operational complexity of renewables non-
| industry folks aren't aware of. In particular turbines
| have inertia and so if you stop generating power they
| will still run for a while, and this helps keep the
| frequency on the grid stable, but solar doesn't have
| inertia since it isn't turbine based, so large swings in
| generation can have an instantaneous impact on grid
| frequency, which can be destabilizing, unless you do
| stuff with batteries and inverters to produce pseudo-
| inertia. TSOs need to manage fluctuations with frequency
| containment reserve, frequency restoration reserve, and
| replacement reserve. These costs all wind up as part of
| the wheeling charges which affect the bills in the end.
|
| There's also things like capacity payments/capacity
| market which impacts solar operators, but I don't know
| specifics on how that stuff works.
| subscribed wrote:
| From a profit-driven energy company it surely makes sense.
| From the customer perspective not so much:
|
| - https://www.businesselectricityprices.org.uk/media/n35dlc
| za/...
|
| - https://www.endfuelpoverty.org.uk/energy-giants-
| see-457-bill...
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| Rural electrification in the US hugely proves your point. Yes,
| grid costs are _fantastically_ expensive!!
|
| At the time: we had no choice! Universal electricity access was
| (& is) _vastly_ better than the alternative: not having
| universal access. But what 's happening in this article isn't
| an alternative, not so far: it's leaving the masses behind,
| dropping the pretense that electricity is a utility that ought
| be available to society broadly.
|
| Perhaps the private rental systems here provide pretty good
| access. In general though, I think society really ought to
| accept pretty big inefficiencies/costs (if that's what it
| takes) if thats what it takes to provide these base demands
| widely. It feels _horrific_ to consider only the costs here, to
| see the inefficiency, without regarding what electrification,
| transport, and other base utilities enable your people to do,
| how much it changes lives.
|
| Narrow, mercenary cost analysis is an awful way to run your
| society. For sure, I deeply hope solar maybe can reduce some of
| the grid maintenance costs, by decentralizing energy. Over
| time. But this article &b this comment broadly accept a cost-
| based analysis, that largely revolve around the failure of a
| public works, one that needs to be efficient but that also has
| to be more willing to lose some money, to operate no matter
| what in unprofitable places. States have to make utilities
| available, period, whatever combination of political & economic
| will/unprofitability is required.
|
| I'm excited for solar! The decentralized nature is amazing! But
| beyond the glory of possibility, it scares the heck out of me
| that society might just give up on a tie that binds us, might
| abandon the basic sense of utility that most states have been
| able to keep going for around a hundred years now.
|
| The success & market capture of the companies spotlighted here
| is both a success, but also an liability. Solar _is_ plentiful
| but the middlemen here have enormous price control, that maybe
| they are not flexing on now, but over time is a capability I
| would far prefer states tap & use for public benefit, rather
| than comingling with private interest.
| don_esteban wrote:
| This is not about rich society abandoning its people. (That's
| the US healthcare mess.)
|
| This is about advances in the technology allowing the people
| to take care of themselves in cases when the overall society
| is so poor that it can't provide the central electricity
| grid.
| nextaccountic wrote:
| Permitting hassle? What do you need permits for?
| skywhopper wrote:
| To build meaningful solar on your house/property would
| require permits most municipalities.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| Since once all the land is accounted for, there is no such
| thing as construction without destruction, I am glad that
| destruction is difficult.
| api wrote:
| In many places more of your electric bill pays for the grid
| than for the power.
| Loughla wrote:
| >The advent of a new transmission route in the US these days is
| pretty much a miracle event.
|
| Having had three major transmission lines for energy (two
| electric one gas) come through the area I live in the last 8
| years, this is just false.
|
| In the US it's not hard to get it done as long as you have
| mountains of cash and a state willing to imminent domain
| people.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| > voter ballot propositions illegally blocking a transmission
| line for years [1]
|
| The idea that a private company should get to _unilaterally_
| change our environment _for profit_ is gross.
|
| I think it's funny you use this example when CMP has been
| utterly refusing to connect tens of solar power and community
| solar projects to our grid, which suffers from a lack of
| generation contributing to our staggeringly high electricity
| costs.
|
| Meanwhile, CMP insists that they have to double our rates
| (again), and don't really provide justification. This despite
| our generation and distribution costs being entirely separated,
| CMP having monopoly power over most of the state for
| distribution buildout, CMP having one of the least reliable
| grids in the nation despite supposedly spending enormously
| within the last few years to upgrade parts of the grid, and the
| whole time, CMP is extracting tidy profits to an entirely
| different country, from my fellow Mainers who are primarily old
| and on fixed incomes.
|
| Maybe, just maybe, you don't have an accurate understanding of
| this issue?
|
| We have several _fully built_ solar farms, desperately needed
| new generation, just sitting idle as CMP refuses to connect
| them, because connecting more distributed infrastructure like
| that would eat into their profit margins, which continue to
| stay high as they continue to _yearly_ increase our rates while
| sending out _multiple_ leaflets telling people that they are
| totally not at fault for increasing their distribution rates
| because oh my generation costs also went up.
|
| You should look up how much CMP spent on playing ads about how
| they would totally respect our nature and it would be vaguely
| great for us to build a transmission line to another state, as
| they continue to refuse to hook up generation that could reduce
| our power prices, and not even their chunk of that price!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Where I live in California permitting is such a pain in the ass
| that a _lot_ of work goes unpermitted. Contractors have a CYA
| clause in all of their contracts (along the lines of "the
| owner is responsible for all permits"). Permits significantly
| increase the time for a job, with inspectors needing to show up
| to inspect things before something else can go on top, and
| things that seem reasonable causing complete reworks[1]. The
| fact that so few people pull permits means many workers aren't
| used to inspections, causing even further delays.
|
| 1: e.g. I saw an inspector not allow two 90deg. bend in RMC
| because, while the existing RMC went through a wall, and came
| out in a straight line on the other side, without knocking out
| the wall, we couldn't prove that there weren't already 3 90deg.
| bends. Maybe that's the right call (the electrician certainly
| thought it was asinine), maybe not, but things like that can
| significantly increase the time for project completion, since
| there are downstream effects to the scheduling.
| yankwire21 wrote:
| It certainly is asinine.
|
| The reason more than 180 degrees of bends is not allowed is
| because it becomes too hard to pull the wires through. If the
| inspector was there looking at finished work, the wires are
| already pulled.
| teiferer wrote:
| > in the US you just need to bribe landowners and hold-outs
|
| If you really believe that then you need to read up on how the
| political system is financed. Members of congress spend a
| majority of their day calling "donors". That's not mom and dad,
| it's some corps (or rich individuals) who want to get sth done
| in return. And magically it gets done if the donations keep
| flowing. The only thing missing for "bribe" is to actually use
| the word.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| 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.
| veunes wrote:
| At least in some African countries, the centralized grid was
| never built out to begin with
| interstice wrote:
| Every time I see $/watt charts like this I just want a single
| link to buy something at that price. 20c/watt? Yes please,
| _where_.
| epistasis wrote:
| These prices are outside of the US, because the US has massive
| tariffs. But prices like $0.28/W are quite achievable, here's a
| random link:
|
| https://signaturesolar.com/waaree-405w-pallet-mono-31-panels...
|
| The global average price for solar panels is $0.09/W in 2025. I
| think India, which also has tariffs to stimulate local
| factories, is around $0.18/W.
|
| Though at these prices you're likely going to be paying nearly
| as much for mounting materials as you are for the panels.
|
| Edit: Also, used solar panels are becoming a pretty thriving
| market. Definitely worth checking those out, especially for
| isolated projects like a solar car port or something.
| jaggederest wrote:
| Yep I'm looking at used solar since I have a ton of roof
| space and land area, and the shipping is 50% of the price of
| a pallet of panels. Even if they're derated 25% and 20% fail,
| the racking and balance of system outweigh them to a silly
| degree. It's going to be 80% balance of system 20% panels.
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| If you plan on mounting to your roof beware of expired fire
| ratings. I ran into this problem recently
| bergie wrote:
| Here in Colombia we noticed that a lot of bars and such have
| awnings built out of solar panels. Cheap, durable, and makes
| power.
| Tepix wrote:
| Here in Germany you can now buy 450W-500W solar panels at
| 50-60EUR (SS) That's already much lower than 20c/watt.
|
| (SS) for example: https://www.mydealz.de/deals/sunpro-500-wp-
| solarmodul-210-r-...
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| 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.
| tetris11 wrote:
| Isn't $6 a month the cost of the subscription, but the $40-56 a
| month the cost of the installation?
| icedshrimp wrote:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ib-atDnj5jE
|
| video from sunking from 7 years ago where the cost of a basic
| system was 25C/ per day. Probably cheaper now.
|
| the article wording/numbers seem mixed up but the overall
| argument holds up when you look at the actual products they're
| talking about here
| titanomachy wrote:
| 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.
| safety1st wrote:
| Yeah way too many tell-tale ChatGPT rhetorical devices in
| this article, which is a shame because the topic and premise
| are fascinating, but those turned me off from finishing it.
|
| AI slop hits 700+ upvotes on Hacker News. The Dead Internet
| and the triumph of quantity over quality loom. A sign of
| things to come.
| cycomanic wrote:
| It's getting boring how every. single. article. has
| comments how the article is AI generated. The funny thing
| is the article writing styles are completely different, but
| every one has apparently "tell-tale" signs of "AI slop". It
| just gets tiring.
|
| For what it's worth I pasted the first couple of paragraphs
| into several AI detectors and 4/5 said it's clean, while
| one said mixed (partly AI generated partly human). So
| either all these AI generation tools are crap, or the text
| is not so "obviously" AI generated. Not saying either way,
| but it seems to at least not be so obvious.
| Version467 wrote:
| All of those tools _are_ garbage. There is no reliable
| automated way to detect ai generated text. In 2023 OpenAI
| had a tool for this as well and they eventually took it
| down because it wasn 't accurate enough. The major AI
| labs are probably best positioned to make such a tool
| work. If even they can't, then some random company with
| access to a fraction of a data and a fraction of the
| compute almost certainly also cannot.
| MattSayar wrote:
| Agree those tools are unreliable. Unless you have a
| massive amount of ML models trained on individuals'
| writing[0], the best you can do is vibe-checking[1].
|
| [0] https://mattsayar.com/can-ai-tell-if-im-writing-ai-
| slop-a-ma...
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_w
| riting
| mattvr wrote:
| The detectors are wrong. Here's the thing: AI slop has a
| distinctive structure that many of us spot from a mile
| away.
|
| The kicker? This setup-punchline format sets off a red
| alert for astute readers' AI detectors.
|
| This isn't just AI slop, it's an industrial AI sludge
| factory.
|
| (note: this was ironically written by a human)
| cycomanic wrote:
| You realise the irony right? You say say AI "slop" has a
| distinctive structure, but at the same time you (and the
| other poster) say that AI tools can not detect it? For
| what it's worth I'm an AI sceptic, but one thing that AI
| tools are good at is pattern matching (that's really all
| they do). But somehow pattern matching AI writing is so
| obvious to human's but it completely fails all AI tools
| (just tried another tool which said 100% human).
|
| It doesn't match up. Moreover it's getting tiring,
| because every single article has these comments on them,
| and I've seen enough examples where authors showed up in
| discussions or texts were from before LLMs were widely
| available, but posters were still adamant that the text
| was AI generated.
|
| I highly doubt that people here would reliably pick out
| (success rate > 60%, i.e. you get 60% of guesses
| correctly if text was generated by a human or LLM) LLM
| generated text that completely fools 90% of AI detectors.
|
| Regarding the setup-punchline format, guess what, those
| were popular way before LLMs (not surprising LLMs must
| have learned them from somewhere).
| bavell wrote:
| What detection tools are you using and why do you have
| such confidence in them? How reliable are they and how do
| you know? Why do you think these particular tools are
| better pattern matchers than actual humans (on HN no
| less)?
|
| Food for thought, fwiw I think you have some valid
| points.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _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 write better than most people. The only thing
| that dropped is content marketing salaries. You were
| already reading slop, LLMs just let the publisher skip the
| human content spouter middleman.
| baq wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember people complaining about the
| exact same thing except they called it eternal September.
| rswail wrote:
| Back in my day, we lamented the loss of bang paths for
| email... and you had to pay Robert Elz to bring in a news
| group because munnari connected Australia to the world...
|
| Yeah, I'm old.
| DecoySalamander wrote:
| I think it's more of a link with a nice title getting 700+
| upvotes. IMO many (and most non-tech) articles linked on HN
| are bad and most of their value lies in them being a
| conversation starter.
| titanomachy wrote:
| Yeah I think this is right. I want to read an HN
| conversation about solar in Africa, and all the
| interesting anecdotes that come out of the woodwork.
| Valuable even if the article itself is mediocre.
| leoedin wrote:
| It was a hard read, but actually a fairly interesting
| article. It's a shame the author chose to format it how
| they did.
|
| The key takeaways - that solar is super cheap, that
| technology has unlocked offering hire purchase to
| incredibly poor remote communities, and that westerners
| looking to buy carbon credits are basically subsidising
| that - are pretty interesting. There was a lot of fluff
| around those points though.
| testdelacc1 wrote:
| 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.
| ncruces wrote:
| They mixed up the numbers for residential solar (Solar King)
| and agriculture solar (SunCulture).
|
| The $100 down + $65/mo is for agriculture.
|
| (not that the numbers are correct or make sense)
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| It's obviously AI generated. Was a bummer because I was
| interested in the premise.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| this, they also say 45-60/month which is NOT 0.21/day
| veunes wrote:
| Would've been clearer if the author had separated those models
| explicitly, but yeah, you're right, those two numbers don't map
| to the same product
| fakedang wrote:
| This is embarrassing, getting frontpaged for a ChatGPT article
| with bullshit maths.
| alephnerd wrote:
| As I keep saying ad infinitum, Africa is not a single unitary
| region.
|
| Different countries in Africa have better grids than others, and
| different countries in Africa have stronger penetration of
| digital banking and DBT than others.
|
| A country seeing a boom in domestic solar because of government
| subsidies and policies like Nigeria [0] is different from a
| country seeing a domestic solar boom because of a collapsing
| electric grid and regulatory failure like South Africa [1] or
| Pakistan [2] (not Africa but the same point holds).
|
| At best this is an AI generated article, at worst this is someone
| who is truly misinformed and thinks about Africa this
| reductively.
|
| [0] - https://nep.rea.gov.ng/solar-hybrid-mini-grid-for-
| economic-d...
|
| [1] - https://globalpi.org/research/south-africas-solar-boom/
|
| [2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/pakistans-solar-
| revo...
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I'm curious how you stay on top of African affairs. South Asia
| doesn't seem that hard to me but I don't know where to follow
| the regulatory landscape of African countries.
| worik wrote:
| > Africa is not a single unitary region.
|
| Well, duh!
|
| Who is saying different? Nobody here
|
| A short little article that does not cover every aspect is not
| bad. It is good
| w10-1 wrote:
| TLDR: dirty fuel is being displaced by clean electricity for
| 500M+ Africans beyond the grid via combination of cheap solar
| panels + batteries, microfinancing, electronic payments, and a
| carbon-credit kicker. Two main players captured most consumers
| and farmers via hard-to-reproduce integration. TAM should
| increase 3X with China's continued oversupply and govt-backed
| financing. Case studies available for key points.
|
| Inspiring. My only critique would be that the excited tone (and
| exclusivity) ends up detracting from the achievement and
| opportunity.
| asadm wrote:
| I also saw this on my recent visit to Pakistan, the country has
| flipped to solar instead of grid for most middle-class homes.
| Farmers and small industries also have started using solar a lot!
| Truly transformational (and cheap) thanks to China.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| > M-PESA, a mobile money platform that let people transfer cash
| via SMS.
|
| This a thing that needs to be more widely known. If you saying,
| as people here sometimes do, "oh but my new tech could help
| people move money in poor parts of the world" (not mentioning any
| specific tech right now) and you're not familiar with M-PESA,
| then you're just out of your depth and talking foolishly. The
| real world has already moved past you.
| astroflection wrote:
| The M-PESA transaction fees are high.
|
| <sarc>M-PESA helps fight poverty through the ingenious
| application of a thousand paper cuts. </sarc>
| warkdarrior wrote:
| According to this page: https://www.safaricom.co.ke/main-
| mpesa/m-pesa-for-you/tariff...
|
| Fees are high (22-38%) for low amounts, and then they drop
| into the 1-2% range that is typical of Western credit card
| networks.
| SideburnsOfDoom wrote:
| I didn't say that you had to praise it extravagantly, just to
| be aware of it. To know what the current state of play is.
| What demonstrably has succeeded, and what untapped niches
| remain.
| 2d8a875f-39a2-4 wrote:
| Yeah, MPESA was and is still an incredible product. A real
| lightning-in-a-bottle moment. Even if they've struggled to
| replicate that success in other geos, the original vision and
| execution back in the 200x's is a textbook case that bears
| study.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Several African countries have also been fascinating for the
| growth of cellular telephone.
|
| Grids require an amount of cohesion that isn't always on-hand in
| that part of the world (a fancy way of saying "When they built
| the grid in Europe, they could mostly put copper on telephone
| poles and assume nobody would just show up and steal it later").
| But a cellular node can be built to be self-contained and
| protected by a single property owner with a shotgun.
|
| It became a much faster and cheaper rollout solution and the
| demand created a market to justify the cost of improving and
| perfecting the technology.
| conductr wrote:
| Isn't this the same thing they did with the internet? They
| skipped the wired revolution and just implemented it when mobile
| phone networks made if more feasible. If you look at it only in
| the present, it seems revolutionary, their mobile usage is
| through the roof - how modern of them. But if you dig in, they
| also had decades with essentially no data services when the rest
| of the world was surfing the web full tilt and they still have a
| lower access to actual computers which may be lost
| jobs/skills/etc. In this case, they've had decades of power
| instability and all that comes with it. So there are tradeoffs
| being had. It's not a bad strategy for some of the poorer parts
| of the world to let the rest of the world do the innovating until
| things are affordable, it's quite smart and should be expected
| actually.
| 3RTB297 wrote:
| Kinda, but not really. IRL, feature phones and cheap
| smartphones subsidized to carry Whatsapp and Facebook apps
| starting 20 years ago pushed "people using the internet" and at
| this point Whatsapp is 90% of what people use internet for in
| Africa because data is cheaper than talk and text.
|
| There's also the perception of usability. I have personally had
| relatively well-paid Africans tell me that $4 a month for 10 GB
| of (4G mobile) data was "the most expensive on Earth." Which is
| not true, I checked, but people say it to try and rumor mill
| the price down. However, it's sort of almost true in the sense
| of trying to pay for streaming services and being online like
| anyone from London or LA on one's hone and not home fiber
| connections, which only the wealthy have. But that's not how
| people use their phones anyway. So there's no market for high
| bandwidth use, and only the wealthy are willing to use
| bandwidth and pay for it because prices drop per GB once you're
| doing unlimited fiber connections at home on post-paid
| accounts. The middle ground is the barrier.
|
| But people like the author who barely know where Africa is on a
| map love to throw around stats like "85% of Africa is online!"
| Not like how most Westerners think. Kids in wealthy areas will
| push being on IG and Tik Tok. In malls in larger cities there's
| a shop that sells gaming consoles.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Sick and tired of these AI articles. The cheery friendly tone at
| the beginning is classic example of ChatGPT.
|
| Flagged.
| marstall wrote:
| people saying this is AI-generated: why? It seems voicey, pacey,
| individualistic ... and contains new-to-the-world info. And it's
| good. None of these being qualities I associate with AI writing.
| raincole wrote:
| Lack of sources. Questionable numbers and math. Tone. Emoji. In
| short: everything.
| sirsar wrote:
| It's not good. If it were good, it wouldn't juxtapose random
| uncited numbers together that don't compute:
|
| > Crop yields increase 3-5x
|
| > Farmers go from $600/acre to $14,000/acre revenue
|
| 5x$600 is $3000. Where did the extra 4.7x come from? The new-
| to-the-world info looks more like "making stuff up on the fly".
| nluken wrote:
| The giveaway is almost always an over-dependence on "Not 'x'
| but 'y'" structure. Even when the author changes the wording so
| that the phrase doesn't read exactly like that, they tend to
| leave the structure intact, and the bots _really_ like to lead
| with the inverse of what the author wants to say to create
| contrast.
|
| A human author might have used this technique once to really
| emphasize a strong point, but today's LLMs use it so often that
| it loses its emphasis, and instead becomes a distinct stylistic
| fingerprint.
| myself248 wrote:
| As a human who's written like that for decades, this witch-
| hunt makes it really hard to participate online anymore. This
| was a standard expository device taught in school, some of us
| latched onto it, and now it's impossible to argue that we're
| human because someone's conviction that we're AI is just an
| opinion and there is no evidence that will convince them, nor
| do they deserve the effort it would take even if it were
| possible.
|
| What's the path forward?
| marstall wrote:
| yeah it's a crazy trend. suspicion that everything is AI is
| a poison to forums. have no idea how this moves forward.
| secretly hoping it destroys the entire internet, and
| rapidly. so we can go back to conspiring in smoke-filled
| rooms.
| nluken wrote:
| Keep using that structure. The bots use it so much, and in
| ways that human authors wouldn't, that it becomes self-
| parodying. As long as you're not using the same device over
| and over again in the same piece you'll be fine.
| worik wrote:
| > people saying this is AI-generated: why?
|
| Because they themselves have nothing interesting to say
| barbazoo wrote:
| I wish I could invest in that. I heard about a solar power
| cooperative here in Canada recently and I'm curious how to get
| involved in that.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| I think the point of this article is to get people to say this.
| Considering half the numbers in this article are fabricated, it
| makes me wonder if this comment is also a part of the scam.
| chrneu wrote:
| v7n's comment smells like a bot or they used AI to translate.
| v7n wrote:
| I'm sorry you feel that way. I'm not a native speaker but
| neither do I use any of _those_ tools to write my comments
| here.
|
| The community I have the privilege to be involved with in
| Kenya is facing many challenges when it comes to
| propagating access to solar energy, and one relatively
| small thing that can be done would be to service the lead-
| acid batteries most commonly used there: the environment is
| quite hostile to them as I understand it, and lead-acid is
| "the affordable chemistry" of choice. The problem is that
| there is a lack of knowledge and toxic waste (sulphuric
| acid, lead) handling capability. Otherwise topping up old
| batteries as a service is absolutely an achievable goal,
| much needed, and there is money to be made.
| v7n wrote:
| If you're talking about fairly modest sums ($10k to 100k) and
| Kenya in particular is on your radar, I think we should discuss
| this further. I'm not Kenyan myself (European), but I frequent
| the area and have a solid network and resources already in
| place to make things happen. How may I reach out?
| manoDev wrote:
| This article is a good example of how, sometimes, starting from
| scratch is a blessing, since you can adopt the best tech right
| away instead of fighting market inertia and monopolies trying to
| keep a status quo - as a counter example, see Japan being stuck
| w/ fax past the internet advent.
| xipho wrote:
| "But here's the thing: this massively understates the
| opportunity.
|
| The solar system is the Trojan horse. The real business is the
| financial relationship with 40 million customers."
|
| Soooo... they have a good thing going, there is an opportunity to
| fsk them over? Like more centralized fees?
| energy123 wrote:
| North Africa has a lot of sun, a lot of land, and not much solar
| seasonality. They will be hit hard with climate change though.
| portaouflop wrote:
| Everyone will be hit hard by climate change. I do t see why it
| should be less in eg the Americas - where you already have
| pretty volatile climate events
| energy123 wrote:
| The equator is particularly vulnerable because it's already
| very hot
| Tepix wrote:
| Scandinavia is likely to benefit from climate change.
| maxglute wrote:
| Would be interesting if renewable exporters are going to ge
| emission credit vs penalty vs fossil exporters. I mean it won't
| change anything, dead dinosaur sauce must flow, but it's a useful
| way to attribute actual emission producers at source.
| matthewfcarlson wrote:
| This was one of the most interesting things I read today- good
| job Skander!
| lebimas wrote:
| AI slop writing, but interesting information nonetheless
| ajnin wrote:
| Ah, capitalism. It's only rainbows, children laughing and
| happiness. Well, if you're a potentially profitable customer, of
| course, otherwise you're left on the side of the road. And if
| you're not part of that low 10% that can't repay the costs and
| presumably gets violently thrown back to the last century.
|
| Are massive infrastructure projects a failure ? Most definitely.
| But is corporate driven development the panacea this articles
| makes it out to be ? I don't think so. Especially telling is the
| last bit explaining how 3 households of a village sign a
| contract, then 30, but never does the whole village get solar.
| Public projects have that universality that is sorely needed.
| Should that one person that can't pay be left in the dark ? Too
| poor, too sick, too old, too unique, not profitable!
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| This is the most optimistic thing I've read about this year. When
| they got to "and also they replaced diesel farming with solar
| panels and are making bank," I had a big smile, and when I got to
| "and they're selling it as carbon credits on the side," I just
| started giggling. Wonderful!
| jchanimal wrote:
| I was staying at a Maasai owned ecolodge in Kenya on the day they
| switched over from generator to solar. It was so much quieter,
| and with their new electric Range Rover they don't ever have to
| go into town except for parts.
| riazrizvi wrote:
| This reads like a timeline in a game of Civ. Love it.
| ang_cire wrote:
| This is cool, but I don't think "move everyone off of government
| managed utilities to private profit extractors" is very Solar
| Punk.
| nutjob2 wrote:
| Huh? These people own their own equipment after 30 months and
| are then not reliant on usually corrupt and/or incompetent
| government. They're not exactly rent seeking.
|
| Being self reliant is indeed "very punk".
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Capitalism isn't all bad. Example: you can actually buy real
| food.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Now imagine that, except the cable guy is 'electricity,' the
| day is '50 years,' and you're one of 600 million people. At some
| point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself._
|
| To what historic people did electricity come all by itself,
| without them haivng to figure out and build anything themselves?
| kazinator wrote:
| > _Now imagine that, except the cable guy is 'electricity,' the
| day is '50 years,' and you're one of 600 million people. At some
| point, you stop waiting and figure it out yourself._
|
| To what historic people did electricity come all by itself,
| without them having to figure out and build anything themselves?
|
| For all those who have electricity, who was _their_ "cable guy"?
| mattfrommars wrote:
| But solar energy itself cost more than other form of electricity.
|
| But who is driving cost of solar? Is it China?
| theshackleford wrote:
| > But solar energy itself cost more than other form of
| electricity
|
| That is in fact, not correct. Maybe you should put that one
| back where you pulled it from.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Where the sun doesn't shine?
| losvedir wrote:
| This has got to be ChatGPT, right? There's just a lot of...
| nonsensical phrasing and sentences? I love the story of it, but I
| can't take the writing.
|
| > _This worked great if you were electrifying America in the
| 1930s, when labor was cheap, materials were subsidized, and the
| government could strong-arm right-of-way access. It works less
| great when you're trying to reach a farmer four hours from the
| nearest paved road who earns $600 per year._
|
| It's structured like a contrasting pair of sentences, but it just
| doesn't make any sense. The things it's calling out in 1930s
| America aren't - or don't have to be - dissimilar from modern
| Africa. The farmer making $600/yr is kind of a non-sequitur.
|
| > _But there was still a massive, seemingly insurmountable
| barrier: $120 upfront might as well be $1 million when you earn
| $2 /day._
|
| No, it's 60 days of earnings. It's just a weird sentence. Taking
| a median US wage of $60k/yr or $165/day, 60 days of earnings is
| $9,900. "Might as well be $1 million" is a wild take, and a
| sloppy way to say it.
| bluGill wrote:
| My grandpa (long dead) remembers his dad paying $600 in the
| 1920s (1930s?) to get electric to the farm. That is the actual
| cost, not inflation adjusted. Most of the neighbors didn't
| because that was too much money in those days.
| mysterypie wrote:
| > _$600 in the 1920s (1930s?), not inflation adjusted_
|
| I consulted the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation
| calculator:
|
| $600 in 1925 would be $11,264 today
|
| $600 in 1935 would be $14,329 today
|
| A lot of money, but I've heard that it can easily cost
| $10-20K today to erect a couple of poles to bring power a
| hundred _feet_ to your property in a rural area these days.
| Do you know what distance was being covered to bring power to
| your grandfather?
| bluGill wrote:
| i didn't learn this until I was given a copy of his
| autobiography (about 5 pages) after he did so I have no way
| to ask.
| skandergarroum wrote:
| 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 that:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act
| FloorEgg wrote:
| Hey in the part 3 that introduces PAYG it jumps from $100
| down $40-65 a month to $0.21 a day / $1.50 a week.
|
| It seems your mixing up examples since they're off by an
| order of magnitude. Once I read that my trust in everything
| else started breaking down and I couldn't be bothered to read
| the rest with the same level of engagement.
| jogu wrote:
| I noticed the same, the number don't make any sense.
| losvedir wrote:
| Thanks! Maybe I'm a little too sensitive to AI signals. I
| actually really love the story and content, but if it was AI
| generated I didn't know how much to actually believe it. I
| still don't know who _you_ are, but it 's probably less
| likely to be totally fabricated if a human is responsible for
| it. So, thanks, I'll give it another read.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Rather than too sensitive, I think you're making up AI
| signals. Poor writing (or, in this case, slightly less than
| perfect writing) is not a phenomenon to which humans are
| immune.
|
| If you like the idea of human-written content on the
| Internet, I recommend against joining the chorus of voices
| baselessly accusing humans of being AI bots - an
| unfortunate trend lately which only serves to
| disincentivize future contributions.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| "Why this works: Blah blah" It is more likely that the
| poster just lied.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| > 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
| bluesnowmonkey wrote:
| Agreed it clearly is.
| chrneu wrote:
| just fyi when I ran this through an AI detection tool it came
| up with likely ChatGPT. 60% written by non-human. So either
| you've started really writing like an AI or you used AI for
| this.
|
| It fails the sniff test and the tool test.
|
| You also didnt correct the math mistakes the AI made.
| zem wrote:
| don't know if the article is chatgpt or not, but "might as well
| be a million dollars" is a super common way of saying
| "completely out of reach"
| _ink_ wrote:
| And from that $2 you probably still have to spend something
| on food / shelter / clothing, so it's not like you could just
| save it all.
| FanaHOVA wrote:
| The structure of each section gives away that it's mostly AI
| even without having to read the actual words. I'm sure it was
| AI + writer, but there's something about ending each section
| with 3-4 short, question-like sentences that is strongly AI.
| This is the same format as the successful LinkedIn slop so
| maybe it's not AI and just algo-induced writing.
| SamBam wrote:
| Yup. It's the colons after every paragraph's first sentence:
|
| > 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.
|
| > The magic is this: You're not buying a $1,200 solar system.
|
| > It gets even better: there are people who will pay for
| credits beforehand.
|
| It's just again and again and again. It's sounds 100%
| ChatGPT.
|
| Maybe this is 100% written by hand by someone who reads too
| many ChatGPT-generated articles. Possibly the author just
| spends a ton of time chatting with ChatGPT and have picked up
| its style. Or it's just more AI-written than OP wants to
| admit.
| portaouflop wrote:
| We are so cooked. We spend more time trying to suss out if
| something was written by AI than actually reading the
| article. So many legitimate ways of writing are now "ai"
| style. I used to use emdash a lot, but now I deliberately
| avoid it because it's an AI smell - using the less
| "correct" version instead. E
| golden-face wrote:
| Huh? Even if the farmer could save 100% of that daily $2
| earning it's still 60 days worth of wages, which while not
| exactly $1,000,000, is still a lot for the the farmer.
| raincole wrote:
| > The farmer making $600/yr is kind of a non-sequitur.
|
| It's less than a non-sequitur. It makes the contrasting even
| weaker because it means in modern Africa labor is still cheap,
| just like in 1930s America.
|
| > I love the story of it, but I can't take the writing
|
| My personally heuristic is that if the style is AI, the
| substance is likely AI too.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| Lets see a small paragraph from the article:
|
| > 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.
|
| Ah yes, not AI slop at all! /s
| _kidlike wrote:
| I also got ChatGPT vibes... all this repetition of "why it
| matters" and all the lists, and going back and forth between
| contradictions...
|
| It's even sadder to me that the author says this is not GPT. I
| believe them. Which means we have reached a point where the
| style of how ChatGPT writes has made its way into our sub-
| conscious...
| eric-burel wrote:
| I had this idea to rent roofs to install solar panels, building a
| kind of decentralized power plants. I live in the sunny southern
| France where summer are starting to become unbearably hot, but at
| least this comes with a lot of sunpower. There are plenty roofs
| but sadly we install solar plants in spaces that compete with
| forest/fertile soil. I am not an energy engineer so that's not a
| realistic project for me, but are there similar projects around?
| thinkcontext wrote:
| There is a similar idea called "community solar" in the US. It
| allows electric customers to subscribe to the output of solar
| panels on someone else's roof. This allows a developer to build
| a solar array on a large commercial building's roof that they
| rent.
| zzwzzw wrote:
| This model has actually taken off in rural China. Salespeople
| will tell you, "You only need to lend us your roof for 20 to 30
| years,and in return, you'll receive a sum of money." Many
| people in rural China readily agree to this deal. I'm not
| entirely sure what these solar panel companies get out of the
| arrangement. Perhaps they sell the generated electricity for a
| profit, or supply it to factories with high energy demands.
| kazinator wrote:
| > _After 30 months = you own it, free power forever_
|
| Except that chip that can remotely shut it off is still in it,
| waiting for a ransom attacker.
| myself248 wrote:
| I was wondering about that. Is there some sort of removal
| process when the lease is up? If there were, folks would just
| do it early. Maybe there's enough enforcement/followup to
| discourage that while there's still outstanding debt, but
| perhaps it's a thing later.
|
| It's a good point. This purchase model with IoT-enabled PAYG
| devices means there's a built-in vulnerability in the entire
| infrastructure. And unlike with a centralized utility where
| hypothetically some action-movie hero could rip out the one
| central device that shut things down, here there's millions of
| them everywhere.
| dvrp wrote:
| Good story but jesus fucking christ the ChatGPT. I cannot bear
| it.
| kanary wrote:
| "lets dive in"
| initramfs wrote:
| I think those authors have been trying to figure out what I've
| long suspected- infrastructure can't be build locally as easily
| as one that can be exported with extreme modularity. Building a
| nuclear power plant, even a small modern one, still requires a
| ton of permitting and environmental review. Setting up a portable
| solar power plant, with imported panels and inverters, in theory
| allows for much more adaptability and affordability.
|
| I've heard/read common criticisms about NGO's having more power
| and private funding than weak and poor governments, but then
| again, if there isn't a centralized effort to develop
| infrastructure, citizens are more likely to prefer outside
| funding/investment
| https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/internation...
| htrp wrote:
| >Solar Home System Evolution:
|
| >2008: $5,000 (affordable only for wealthy urban Kenyans)
|
| >2015: $800 (middle-class farmers)
|
| >2025: $120-$1,200 (true smallholders)
|
| How does US solar cost so much?
| testing22321 wrote:
| Tariffs (government tax) on Chinese panels, corruption
| (companies bribing(lobbying) to get monopolies on installs) and
| more corruption ( power companies bribing to get guaranteed
| profits)
|
| Based on comments here my 7.8kw rooftop solar in Canada was
| 3-5x cheaper than people pay in the US. It was $8k CAD ($5,660
| usd) My Dad in Australia got a 10kw system fully installed for
| $5k AUD ($3,250 usd)
| bave8672 wrote:
| To be fair, prices in Aus have been heavily subsidised until
| recently.
| testing22321 wrote:
| Of course, which is a great thing!
|
| When you buy corn or gas or tires for your car do you
| really care if it's subsidized and say something like "oh
| yeah it was $x, but heavily subsidized"?
|
| Of course not, you only care about how much it costs you.
| bave8672 wrote:
| On the contrary, I care because I don't buy these things
| at all, yet my taxes are being used to subsidise the
| people that do.
| testing22321 wrote:
| You don't buy any foods with corn in them?
|
| Or use fossil fuels?
| throwaway290 wrote:
| probably CCP subsidizing manufacturing and sales (like they do
| with EV) because it's a command economy and getting the world
| to run on their stuff is good for their "national security".
| and US taxing it for that reason
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Solar panels represent approximately 12% of the total average
| cost for solar projects in the United States. The remaining
| costs are primarily composed of soft costs, which include
| permitting, financing, installation labor, customer
| acquisition, and other non-hardware expenses.
|
| https://www.ny-engineers.com/blog/breaking-down-the-price-of...
| jacob019 wrote:
| "The global North's carbon problem subsidizes the global South's
| energy access." This is problematic. The subsidized economy will
| grow inefficiently, the wealth transfer will inevitably result in
| a corrupt class of bureaucrats who seek to maintain the status
| quo even when it doesn't make sense. Time will pass and it will
| get worse until there is political will for change, and that
| change will result in the suffering of those whom the initial
| intent was to help.
| apitman wrote:
| > How Africa is building the future by skipping the past
|
| They did the same thing with internet. Went straight to
| cell/fiber. If you've never heard of M-Pesa, I highly recommend
| learning about it.
| zkmon wrote:
| So, if the electricity gets cheaper the way information got
| cheaper, does it make our muscles and mind weaker due to lack of
| work and thought?
| m3h wrote:
| Same in Pakistan: https://www.dawn.com/news/1924573
|
| After COVID, grid electricity became hugely expensive, but the
| pushback was massive and unexpected, as people transitioned from
| a fixed supply to a hybrid online or offline (battery-powered)
| system.
| Fr0styMatt88 wrote:
| Wondering if any Aussies here know this.
|
| I've heard that if you have a solar system and a battery system
| connected to the grid, if the grid goes out for whatever reason,
| your battery gets cut off as well. Meaning that it's essentially
| useless as power backup.
|
| Is this true? Can you really go fully off-grid in Australia?
|
| I've heard this from rural people in Victoria, where they do
| experience blackouts and where an actual backup would be useful.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| you heard wrong. What most electricity grids forbid is
| exporting power from your home to the grid when the grid is
| down. The claimed danger is that energised power lines will
| kill people working on the lines.
|
| The reality is that the vast majority of home inverters (in an
| EV, battery or solar PV) is nowhere near powerful enough to
| energise even a single distribution transformer.
|
| This is yet another example of electricity codes being
| unrealistically restrictive.
|
| Generally, there's nothing stopping you from disconnecting your
| home from the grid during a power outage and running your own
| devices off a battery. Going fully off-grid depends on your
| local laws.
| brucehoult wrote:
| Many systems, especially older ones, are set up this way by
| default.
|
| But you can get, for extra $$, a switch to disconnect you from
| the grid entirely when it's down and run from your own solar
| power / battery. People who live in cities with underground
| wires normally don't bother, but it's essential in the
| countryside (IMHO).
|
| Note however that many people have only maybe 5kW or 8kW or
| something like that being added to grid power by their solar
| setup, so if there is no mains power then it doesn't take many
| 2kW appliances (microwave, kettle, clothes washer (when heating
| water), dish washer (ditto), hairdryer, vacuum cleaner) to
| overload it. Not to mention 3kW hot water heater or 3kW+ stove
| oven.
|
| I have a 3600W off-grid system (Pecron E3600LFP) and I run
| pretty much all that stuff from it. I added up and I could try
| to turn on 14kW of stuff at the same time. But I don't,
| obviously.
| BLKNSLVR wrote:
| I've had solar for ten years and just added a battery to it
| which _should_ keep the house running through a power failure
| for as long as the battery holds out.
|
| This is yet to be tested, but it's very specifically setup to
| me able to.
|
| There are some specific electronics required to continue
| operation when the grid is down, and with the explosion of
| popularity of home batteries, I think these options are also
| more common.
| exidy wrote:
| It depends on the inverter. Older "grid-following" inverters
| would isolate themselves from the grid to avoid putting any
| current on the line when presumably in an outage it should be
| de-energised, as well as relying on the grid for reference
| frequency.
|
| Modern hybrid & multi-mode inverters are capable of isolating
| themselves from the grid, generating their own reference
| frequency and managing connection and disconnection from the
| grid. However you might not get one of these types of inverters
| unless you specifically ask for "backup power" or similar.
| lambdaone wrote:
| There's also nothing stopping African communities from building
| peer-to-peer microgrids if they want to.
| Ray20 wrote:
| The same thing that's, you know, stopping them from having real
| power grids.
| self wrote:
| Extending the grid to power a remote village is not the same
| thing as the villagers running their own microgrid.
| nextworddev wrote:
| Someone really wants to pump solar here lol. I get it, the retail
| solar bags must be heavy for many
| xbmcuser wrote:
| I have been saying this for a few years now that people are
| underestimating the change solar, batteries and electric
| transport/machinery will bring about im many of parts of the
| world. People are not going to just get access to cheap
| electricity but also a lot of machinery that they can run with
| that electricity that was not possible before.
| utopiah wrote:
| Yep, a memory that changed my perspective on this was in a tiny
| island in Italy where a grandma was riding her electrical bike
| uphill with no effort in the middle of the Summer.
|
| When I mean uphill I mean not Tour de France level but damn
| steep still. And yet, here she was with her grocery in her bag,
| no problem.
|
| That was absolutely wonderful because, despite my envy, she was
| _autonomous_!
|
| She didn't need no stinking petrol station, she could charge at
| home. She didn't need a humongous garage where streets were
| ridiculous narrow. She could park somewhere, charge the battery
| home.
|
| This moment was genuinely wonderful... and my point is that I
| do believe even though it felt relatively new, I can easily
| imagine it to deploy at scale for the benefit of most.
| chrneu wrote:
| EV powertrains also have way fewer parts. Arguably, repairs are
| easier.
| worik wrote:
| Africans doing it for themselves
|
| Who else could?
| chmod775 wrote:
| You'll see these little solar panels outside people's homes in
| any country that doesn't have all of its population (reliably)
| connected to the grid. They're everywhere in rural Afghanistan as
| well for instance.
| gandalfian wrote:
| Equator, poorest countries with 12 hours of sun 365 days a year.
| If batteries really fall in price it may rapidly have the
| cheapest, cleanest energy on the planet. The future of energy
| intensive industries may be Africa, which would be nice, they
| could use a break. Not to mention the cheapest place to launch
| your rockets into orbit.
| sosodev wrote:
| I can't help but be reminded of the bitter lesson when I read
| about the continual spread of solar energy. The simple, scalable
| system wins over everything else. I wonder how many aspects of
| our lives could be transformed in this way.
| nielsbot wrote:
| I heard a fascinating interview with Sandeep Vaheesan[1]
|
| He said in the early days of American electrification, private
| power companies wouldn't build lines to rural customers because
| it wasn't expected to be profitable. So rural customers joined
| together and formed public power companies and got the job done.
| Not only that, they innovated many cost saving technique which
| the private power companies eventually adopted.
|
| Public power cooperatives still exist, but have themselves become
| ossified and commercialized over the years.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miyfj98lR38 (starts at
| 21:18)
| thehappypm wrote:
| Kenya is an equatorial country so they basically have steady ~12
| hours of sunlight every day year round. Pretty cool!
| ricksunny wrote:
| And, much of the rural population is in the Great Rift Valley,
| a particularly high elevation region which as a result enjoys
| higher solar flux.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| People should learn to never trust a #1 ranked hacker news
| article. There are almost always hidden motives. The author
| (GPT???), or a company mentioned in the article likely is
| connected to a VC, or YC or both!
|
| Don't engage with slop that seems lazily written, if not
| completely generated by Claude(sorry author if I'm wrong, I know
| you are claiming you wrote it but idk). This stuff kinda comes
| off like an article written on behalf of SunCulture or SunKing so
| they can go, hey guys look we were featured on a front page of HN
| article.
| tomalbrc wrote:
| It's even a tad worse; They are just one of those "career
| accelerator" companies. In fact most if not all of their
| articles seem to be AI generated
| pinkmuffinere wrote:
| I understand why this is happening in Africa first -- lack of
| infrastructure makes the solution much more competitive. But as
| prices fall, it seems that this might be cost competitive in
| other areas as well. Selfishly, I'd love to see this in the US!
| Any big issues that would prevent adoption in the US?
| tencentshill wrote:
| I'm sure you can think of one at the moment.
| epistasis wrote:
| It's mostly politics stopping this in the US. But even with
| current political roadblocks to solar, it's an absolutely
| massive part of new builds for grid scale electricity
| generation:
|
| https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=65964
| chrneu wrote:
| >Any big issues that would prevent adoption in the US?
|
| Lol is this sarcasm? America is back on the fossil fuel train
| baby! If you're a patriot, jump on board as we sink this ship!
| Solar panels are for soyboys and we eat beef out hur.
|
| Joking aside, solar is so cheap that even without subsidies the
| US is installing more solar than anything else. Fossil fuels
| are dirty and expensive in comparison.
| Tepix wrote:
| Already in Germany people are putting solar on their roofs and
| batteries in their basements which makes them no longer need
| the grid 80+% of the time. With Sodium-Ion batteries this will
| go to 90+% at the same cost. It's happening pretty much
| everywhere.
| narrator wrote:
| All the back to the land decentralized survivalists solarpunk
| people can do just about everything except for rare earth
| refining. That's the part of solarpunk that can only happen in
| China because nobody anywhere wants that in their backyard. One
| of the more interesting political/economic questions is can a
| non-authoritarian country that values environmental protection do
| rare earth refining, or is the ecological harm in isolation too
| abhorrent to the members of the community where it is done to
| counterbalance the ecological good it does elsewhere? In an
| authoritarian country, you can just tell the people who live
| around the processing plant to relocate or suffer because it
| helps the environment elsewhere. In a non-authoritarian country,
| the local people will all reject it because it will degrade the
| quality of life and their land. This has been happening in the
| backlash against mining in Madagascar for example.
| komali2 wrote:
| I wonder this as well - it seems the most strategic path
| forward for any nation or community is to localize the supply
| chain as much as possible, but like oil before there's some
| things that are just impossible or super difficult to get
| locally. And unfortunately to find new ways to turn sun into
| electricity costs money to do and won't happen because the cost
| of the current method is too low to justify trying to turn sand
| into solar panels or whatever other thing you might try.
|
| I dream of a solar punk future where basically any community
| can generate power without any horrifying pollution anywhere in
| the supply chain. Mirror powered smelters, sand batteries.
| mkoubaa wrote:
| Conspiratorially, if all places were non-authoritarian and did
| not tolerate cheap refining, a regime change would have to be
| ordered
| whatshisface wrote:
| Rare earth refining isn't a specific industrial process. The
| _cheapest possible method_ is a specific industrial process,
| and is very dirty. In a "survivalist solarpunk world" it would
| probably be done less cheaply.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > All the back to the land decentralized survivalists solarpunk
| people can do just about everything except for rare earth
| refining. That's the part of solarpunk that can only happen in
| China because nobody anywhere wants that in their backyard.
|
| You don't actually _need_ rare-earths to produce solar panels,
| control systems and batteries - at least not in the amounts
| that require the scale China is operating at.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| This phenomenon is vastly underestimated. Electricity can also
| amplify the influence of TikTok and Temu -- a world no longer
| constrained by energy shortages, with social media less dominated
| by the West, and a marketplace for cheap and affordable
| industrial goods. Together, these forces will essentially curb
| uncontrolled population growth in any country and gradually raise
| living standards. (Also pakistan and many other countries)
|
| Even North Korea is undergoing some changes. The country has long
| suffered from energy shortages, and the gradual spread of solar
| power can help address some of these issues. However, I doubt
| that North Korea's geographic conditions will allow for much
| improvement.
|
| And considering geography, if I understand correctly, the Middle
| East has once again gained a significant advantage?
| hotpotat wrote:
| Trading uncrontrolled population growth for TikTok sounds like
| a deal with the devil.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| i think no one can stop that from happening.. you have
| electricity, you have apps. people will have more thinking on
| the child thing. and more time on the internet and less time
| on the home.
| dustypotato wrote:
| One thing i think a lot of people forget is the effect of
| Porn on fertility rates.
| chrneu wrote:
| lmao what?
|
| Is this some /r/nofap stuff leaking?
| teilarer wrote:
| AI slop on the frontpage. "Hey there! "
|
| " Let's dive in"
|
| " Want to fight climate change?"
|
| Seven hundred bullet points in the article, etc.
| komali2 wrote:
| Reading things like this makes me feel like there must be
| fundamentally something wrong with my brain, because it all seems
| like just a complicated song and dance that is maintained as a
| global share delusion for reasons I can't figure out.
|
| Some solar panel companies in China are trying to extract the
| idea of value from farmers whose hands change actual currency a
| couple of times a year to whoever brings it to market, all other
| times "money" is sent around in SMS. That bit of extracted wealth
| pays out in volume, eventually, but they also get a huge boost
| from selling "we did an environmentalism" dollars to corporate
| social responsibility brokers who are trying to help ai and oil
| and gas companies convince legislators that actually their
| businesses don't harm the environment because they bought the
| magic dollarydoos from the Chinese solar panel vendors who are
| making money selling solar panels but also selling magic
| dollarydoos.
|
| It seems madness. This system is efficient and the best one we
| can do?
| mbgerring wrote:
| It's hard to overstate the degree to which the United States is
| giving away the future to any country that can produce clean
| energy technology at scale.
|
| Lithium is abundant in the United States. Nothing in the
| component chain of solar and battery systems is so complex it
| couldn't be made here. We could establish trade with African
| countries like China has, instead of doing these pointless
| tariffs. But for idiotic cultural reasons, we are not doing any
| of those things.
|
| The world will permanently shift away from the fossil fuel
| economy sooner than most people think, and it will disrupt the
| entire system of dollar-denominated oil that underpins the U.S.
| empire. It's glaringly obvious where this is headed. And yet!
| stingrae wrote:
| "This worked great if you were electrifying America in the 1930s,
| when labor was cheap, materials were subsidized, and the
| government could strong-arm right-of-way access."
|
| It was good in the moment. The issue is maintaining it without
| the same cheap labor and materials. PG&E in California is a
| perfect example. There is no way for them to maintain the grid
| which is aging and causing fires. We are going to have to switch
| to a slightly similar regional power generation/storage model.
| chrneu wrote:
| Oh wow this is a very good point and not something I'd ever
| really considered. Good comment. Makes a lot of sense.
| edelbitter wrote:
| As long as grid upgrades & maintenance continue to work
| reasonably well across western Europe, bad examples from the US
| are not particularly worrying. Economics of scale still very
| much apply; there is a point in maintaining expensive grid
| infrastructure. Especially so when using it to improve other
| expensive infrastructure, such as electric high-speed passenger
| rail.
| xvilka wrote:
| With famously weak energy grid[1], South Africa would certainly
| benefit from the same approach. Sadly, it seems, it isn't
| considered en masse.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| Buried lede (in that none of the comments mention this): wireless
| micro-financing without transaction fees works for 10 African
| countries and is enabling a rural energy revolution. (though
| M-PESA isn't without controversy, and clearly it could benefit
| from competition)
|
| Meanwhile, developed nations have millions of people who pay up
| to 500% interest on payday loans, 29% interest on credit cards,
| and can't get bank accounts. Small businesses can't grow quickly
| due to (among other things) high transaction fees cutting into
| already-meager profits. We only hear news about big business and
| products and services for people with money. We forget that if we
| want our economy to grow, and adopt things like increased
| personal/residential solar power, we need to unburden the
| poorest, grow their own wealth, and infuse that back into the
| economy.
|
| Perhaps we should stop obsessing so much over AI, and obsess a
| little more over making it less expensive and difficult to be
| poor. Seems to be working in Kenya.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| What do they do during the night? Do they use batteries to store
| the energy?
| flave wrote:
| An interesting response from an LLM. I'd love to hear more from
| the person who prompted it.
| anovikov wrote:
| This is such a bunch of nonsense!
|
| The ROI of using a diesel-powered pump isn't so high so few
| farmers have one. It means, they work well and those who don't
| have one, still get some water for their fields, too.
|
| A solar pump is many times cheaper to run. It means ROI of using
| it is huge and many more people will get them. But it doesn't
| mean there will now be magically more groundwater to pump!
|
| Which mean, those who don't have a pump, will soon find
| themselves completely without water - it will be all sucked out
| by people with pumps. So they will also HAVE to install those
| pumps.
|
| As a result, no one will be better off because same amount of
| water will be redistributed among same number of farmers. Even an
| "arms race" of more and more powerful pumps is likely when people
| will realise theirs are not working as good anymore now than
| everyone has one.
|
| All until the point where ROI of having a solar pump will become
| negligible.
|
| Farmers will not be better off - they will be worse off. Chinese
| will make money - money funded by Western funds for "reducing"
| carbon emissions which do not really reduce anything as they are
| "replacing" diesel pumps 90+% of which did not exist.
|
| And yes, people will also have a little bit of electricity at
| home - about 100x less than in grid-connected Western homes - a
| 200-watt panel per household at about 15% average output or maybe
| 20 KWh per month. It's not enough to run a blowdryer, or kettle,
| not even a fridge. But enough to charge a tablet to watch online
| TV - and become far right.
|
| Bingo, enshittification comes to Africa, in it's purest form.
|
| Only good thing about it is that money will go to Chinese vs
| Arabs for diesel fuel. Chinese are a problem that will gradually
| solve itself due to demography, while Arabs will not.
| anovikov wrote:
| I meant to say: this is a new sleek tool to make people compete
| more intensely against each other in the race to exhaust a
| limited resource. Just like freelance sites made life of
| everyone miserable while extracting cash out of them, simply
| because they did not increase the amount of work available -
| just forced everyone to compete stronger and pay to play. Until
| the work was ruined and people simply churned out.
| Uptrenda wrote:
| >IOT-backed hardware linked to a novel asset whose issuance
| serves to make the world a little bit better
|
| I swear: this was meant to be the pitch for like 99% of
| blockchain companies, only in this case they managed to do it.
| This is super interesting on so many levels.
|
| The zero-cost payments with a low-barrier to entry. Again, this
| is what digital currencies were meant to do. Only, it turns out
| that at scale a combination of tech problems and legislative red
| tape made everything break. Just solving this one problem here is
| industry-defining in its own right. And shows the kind of
| products that open up when banking is enabled to everyone.
|
| What about the hardware though? Well, I've worked at startups
| that were exactly dedicated to this kind of IoT stuff. They even
| were linking it with payments. But can you guess what happened?
| Well, of course: it had to be linked to blockchain shit, you
| know, just because... Then on the product side of things: nothing
| ever left the lab... Not that customers would have been able to
| use a blockchain-based payment rail anyway...
|
| Getting reliable IoT hardware is hard enough but you still have
| to build customer relationships. They did it all through a simple
| technology the users were already familiar with. You don't need a
| frigging comp sci PhD to use SMS mobile payments. I think that's
| genius and blockchain tech bros could truly learn a lot from
| this. Pay-as-you-go here is also genius because as the author
| states: the chances of the owners having tons of disposal cash
| around to outright buy equipment are slim. Yet offering equipment
| to strangers under a pay-to-buy scheme by itself is risky for the
| lender and would typically lead to the kind of bureaucratic red
| tape that would slow down financing. With the IoT stuff, they can
| shut off the equipment on non-payment. But also: the economics
| are already there because the only other game in town is
| expensive disposal fuels like kerosene and petrol.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| 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.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| 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 mark up
| that pretty much immediately breaks once the warranty period is
| over.
|
| More details for the interested here: https://solar-aid.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2024/10/State-of-Re...
| stogot wrote:
| Sounds like an opportunity to do a buyback and sell to a refurb
| provider.
|
| But also to fix their junk. 250 million?!
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| We are teaching people how to fix them so that the income
| stays within those communities.
|
| You can see a bit our latest work here:
| https://www.linkedin.com/posts/energy-makers-
| academy_strathm...
| jonway wrote:
| This is interesting. Can you please consider expanding your
| outreach to venues other than linkedin? I understand that
| you are serving local needs, but I suspect that some people
| in the United States would be quite interested in learning
| about this. I've assumed that people used solar power in
| Africa, but didn't consider the restraints and challenges
| of keeping them operational.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I don't see the problem. The market to fix these will
| eventually emerge.
| reedf1 wrote:
| This is a far more negative comment than the linked article for
| those who wish to read it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| The same report says that 90% of those kits are repairable and
| the most common failure point is the battery and also that the
| vast majority of users hold on to their devices in hopes of
| repairing them in the future, as there exists some kind of
| repair service, it just isn't up to scale.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| The repair service is really expensive for subtle reasons.
|
| First of all there is the repair itself, but there isn't any
| collection service so you need to travel (often a full day)
| to get to a repair centre. Then travel back. Not open on the
| weekend so you have to do it during the week, meaning you are
| also loosing 2 days of income. Then you have to go and get it
| once it's done.
|
| Total cost of repair for people using these devices might 10+
| days worth of income if you include the opportunity cost.
|
| That's why we are training people to fix these systems within
| their communities.
|
| Regarding parts you can get second life batteries in Kenya
| for $1-2 per cell from people like Acele Africa[1], so you
| can get total repair cost down to ~$10 (that's ~3% of
| original purchase price)
|
| [1] https://www.aceleafrica.com/
| mycall wrote:
| How often is bartering used as payment for repairs?
| danans wrote:
| > First of all there is the repair itself, but there isn't
| any collection service so you need to travel (often a full
| day) to get to a repair centre
|
| This is a good reminder of how much we in the developed
| world take our publicly funded transportation
| infrastructure for granted, which allows a repairman to
| easily reach us or vice versions.
|
| This mirrors our public health infrastructure, which in the
| US at least is being degraded, the consequences of which
| we're all likely to experience soon.
| thegabriele wrote:
| "Five billion phones to be thrown away in 2022"
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63245150
| zekrioca wrote:
| This looks more like an opportunity, especially compared to the
| worse downsides of these communities continuing with diesel.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| 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 example: when we train people they can 4x their _household_
| income within 6 months. This is young people who didn't have an
| income before and are suddenly earning 3x as much as both their
| parents combined.
|
| People just don't know how to fix these things and when someone
| finally learns how, they can absolutely rake it in.
|
| It's actually insane to me how much education can be such a
| massive multiplier in this context!
|
| Link to our recent work: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/energy-
| makers-academy_strathm...
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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?
| dhoe wrote:
| As someone who's spent the last 3 years in Africa, if there's
| one thing I learnt here is that if it can be fixed, they'll
| find a way to fix it.
| chrneu wrote:
| lol yeah I was gonna say that they fix everything. They can't
| just Amazon prime new shit. It's weird how OP just assumes
| they're inept at repairs when that's just not true at all.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| I didn't say, nor do I assume, people are inept at repairs.
| I said that the communities that are being targeted with
| off-grid solar don't currently have the skills or
| infrastructure required to maintain these systems.
|
| It's something I've seen with my own eyes and that I've
| read in academic literature as a widespread problem. Cross
| and Murray 2018 [1] being one the first papers to talk
| about it, I saw it myself for the first time around that
| time in Tanzania.
|
| I stayed in a village where each house had at least 2
| broken solar lanterns stored in a corner (like those old
| routers people love to keep).
|
| The next closest repair shop was first 30min motorbike ride
| then a 2 hour bus ride away.
|
| This was a village of 8,000 people.
|
| Yes, the person with a diploma from the local technical
| college can fix a lot of things but they live in the local
| town with grid electric etc. They don't live in these
| remote rural regions where off grid is so
| important/impactful.
|
| [1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214
| 62961...
|
| Edit:
|
| The solution is to teach more people how to design, build
| and maintain solar energy systems so that the skills are
| embedded in off grid communities and give them the tools to
| carry out the work. You can do a lot with a soldering iron
| and good grasp of electronics!
| jabl wrote:
| Well, what is the alternative then? Probably the same
| problem when their diesel generator conks out. Small
| things you can do yourself, but rapidly you run into a
| situation where you need spare parts, or at least a
| competently run machine shop.
| ducttapecrown wrote:
| How long did it take for mobile repair shops to
| proliferate? Surely solar repair shops will also appear.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's not even Amazon prime. It's all the random industrial
| doodads you need to keep a modern economy running.
|
| The "modern world supply chain" just doesn't go into africa
| much or at least not in a way that general commerce has
| easy access to.
| DanielHB wrote:
| Brazilian person here, when I moved to Europe I was baffled I
| couldn't find shops that fixed electronics. Like I wanted to
| get my Android phone charging port replaced, I literally
| couldn't find a shop in my city willing to do the repair.
|
| I eventually went back to Brazil and had it fixed there and
| replaced the battery. Freaking phone lasted 8 years on my
| very clumsly hands, still works even. The fix cost me ~30 usd
| plus the battery cost.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Somebody who has the skills to fix electronics will be
| working with fixing devices which are much more expensive
| and critical than cell phones.
|
| Industrial dishwasher breaks down? You need to get an
| electrician there ASAP.
|
| Cell phone breaks down? Throw it away and buy a new one.
|
| Brazil has very low salaries for skilled workers, so it
| makes sense that it's cheap to find somebody to fix your
| phone.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Note that mobile phone repair is the no. 1 service
| provided by repair shops in rural areas of many countries
| in Africa.
|
| Like 50%+ of all repairs are mobile phone repairs
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, it's something extremely valuable, an expensive
| portable, and the new models all just keep getting worse
| and worse. There's no reason not to fix them.
|
| It's also a repair that demands some amount of training.
| I imagine people fix a lot of things without getting them
| to a shop.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Hackers are down voting my comment. My question to them:
| If you could get paid twice the salary per hour to repair
| expensive machines, would you spend your time repairing
| mobile phones?
|
| Everybody wants that juicy, juicy cheap labour, but
| nobody wants to be the cheap worker.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Do you think US people capable of fixing phones make more
| than the ~$600/hour they can add in value by fixing
| phones there?
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 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.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| 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.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| 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.
| aoeusnth1 wrote:
| No, it's extremely easy and routine to fix cell phones.
| You could train teenagers to do it.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| And you can train those teenagers to do things which are
| much more profitable. If they have the dexterity and
| other skills needed to work on cell phone electronics,
| then they can work on other electronics.
|
| If it was a good business, then there would be cell phone
| repair shops on every corner in Europe, like you have in
| other parts of the world where that makes sense.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| That seems more optimistic (or solar punk) than your summary
| e.g.:
|
| > In terms of waste management, 85.3% of distributors reported
| that they had a waste management strategy. Mostly, this tended
| to involve collecting broken products, harvesting them for
| spare parts and then storing the remainder in a central
| warehouse before sending them to a (usually certified) local
| e-waste recycling facility. How effective these recycling
| facilities are, however, was beyond the scope of this report.
|
| They seem to suggest that lithium batteries are the hardest to
| repair and recycle, but people want to do so. It feels like a
| problem that will get easier at scale.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| For sure recycling is improving. That's different from repair
| though.
|
| The current cycle is 1. sell product 2. wait three years for
| it to break 3. Go back to 1.
|
| The impact of the recycling can lessen the impact of that but
| it definitely doesn't eliminate it. That's just on
| environmental scale, think about the financial impact of
| carrying this debt for years on people earning $2 a day.
|
| Also important to note that a lot of this is contingent of
| legislation that implements things like Extended Producer
| Responsibly (EPR) where you essentially have an additional
| tax on producers that gets used to fund collection. Kenya
| implemented this for the first time 12 months ago [1], so we
| will see the impact over the next couple years.
|
| Re solar punk, my personal vision is that you basically teach
| people how to build and maintain these systems themselves by
| running solar tech bootcamp and giving them off-grid tools.
|
| They then have tools and skills to fix anything without the
| need for the grid. Train 100k people and have them maintain
| these systems using a decentralised approach.
|
| In fact, as part of our training we now have e-cooking stove
| suppliers who deliver training on their stoves to our
| students.
|
| The economic impact of this cannot be over stated.
|
| 1. You are giving people the ability to 4x their income as
| repairers
|
| 2. You are saving the people who are getting new systems,
| instead of repairing them, multiples of their yearly income.
|
| [1] https://cleanupkenya.org/30-things-to-know-about-kenyas-
| epr-...
| epolanski wrote:
| The article you link bundles together 5/10/15/20/25 years
| technology in one huge basket.
|
| What about the most recent (last 5/10 years)?
|
| Also, aren't almost all failures battery, rather than panel,
| related?
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Yeah not much has changed, it's simple technology that was
| developed in 2005. Main innovations of the PAYGO model in
| recent times was the ability to use the payment data you
| collected to offer other types of loans. One of the previous
| biggest companies in the space now sells mobile phones using
| PAYGO.
|
| Technically battery chemistry has obviously moved on but we
| are talking a device capacity similar to a medium power bank.
| How much innovation have you noticed in power banks recently?
|
| Panels are big problem from a e-waste perspective as they
| very difficult to repair.
|
| Batteries failures are repairable. Usually battery packs will
| be 2+ LFP 18650s or 32700s. If one cell goes bad the the
| whole pack goes but the others may be fine. Just need to test
| and match cells and you can make new packs.
|
| I can't remember exact recovery rate for cells, I think it is
| something like 40-60%.
|
| Dealing with these batteries at end of life is a challenge,
| but that's a global problem.
|
| Still a lot of legacy Sealed Lead Acid batteries around but
| these are very recyclable.
| oezi wrote:
| If we look at the growth curves it is clear that the actual
| real boom in solar will be happening between now and the
| next 10 (maybe 20 years) until the S-curve flattens.
|
| The pictures in the report show panels which are so tiny in
| comparison to what you can buy today for 50 USD that it
| seems incomprehensible why anybody would repair them.
| jl6 wrote:
| 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 continued supply of parts/tools/funding.
|
| Sometimes solutions get treated as resources instead of
| infrastructure, like a water treatment plant that got strip-
| mined for metal (that example was from South America).
|
| Tech is a whole ecosystem, mindset and lifestyle, not just
| magic hardware to parachute into situations that aren't set up
| to manage it on a long term basis.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| On some level economies of scale and improving technology
| don't warrant maintenance
| zdc1 wrote:
| 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.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Solar Aid who wrote this report have an app called
| SunnyMoney which has repair guides.
|
| Don't know about uptake:
|
| https://solar-aid.org/news/repair-app/
| Scoundreller wrote:
| 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.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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).
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| ain't just tech in the developing world.
|
| even in the Big IT Enterprise "support" is a byword that
| appears in all discussions.
|
| it's not enough to have, or to build, you gotta maintain,
| fix, replace, and eventually, remove.
|
| those discussions aren't fun or sexy, and everyone hates when
| you tank a blue-sky "it'll fix everything" discussion with
| the unpleasant realities of long-term care and feeding
| tbrownaw wrote:
| The claim being that it's a _gap_ there, a thing that gets
| overlooked in these projects. Whereas here it 's a standard
| line item in whoever's budget.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > 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 in rural
| India and calling it a day is superficial and worthless.
| Imagine shipping something suitably technologically
| advanced to some Germanic tribe during the Roman conquest
| of Europe if you need an analogy.
|
| [0] The worldview bit might surprise some. As some have
| argued, there are reasons why enterprises like modern
| science arose and flourished only in the West, whereas
| everywhere else scientific development was historically
| quite limited. These reasons include a culture formed under
| the notion of the Logos which entails the belief in a
| thoroughly intelligible universe that can be fully known
| _in principle_ ; a rejection of pantheism with a
| distinction made between the transcendental and the
| immanent, allowing for exploration; a rejection of
| pantheism and so a world infested with capricious,
| personified natural phenomena; an omniscient and
| omnibenevolent God who is not capricious or voluntarist.
| Without these elements, the confidence and motivation
| needed to confidently exercise and develop intellectually,
| to try to understand the world - which contribute to the
| formation of a robust scientific culture - is stifled.
| scottLobster wrote:
| It's not just a failure to appreciate, it's an outright
| demonization of many of these observations as
| racist/imperialist. One of the prime motivators for this
| kind of development "aid" is the mistaken belief that the
| only issue is a lack of resources or external
| exploitation, and if you just provide the resources
| and/or remove the exploitation a given place will
| naturally turn into an enlightened Western nation-
| equivalent. Maybe with some fun unique cultural
| festivals, local cuisine, and some harmless, quirky
| native dances in exotic outfits!
|
| Meanwhile even in the West it's easy to find people who
| win the lottery and are broke a year later, or rich
| celebrities/pro athletes who make tons of money and lose
| it all, or die with far less than you'd expect. Those
| people are laughed at and/or pitied, because even they
| are held to to a higher standard than some poor 3rd-
| worlder who's just a pure victim
| soperj wrote:
| > 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| 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.
| gertrunde wrote:
| 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.
| kulahan wrote:
| 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 -> problem solved!
|
| But in reality it went like this:
|
| People lack reliable mosquito protection -> give them
| treated nets -> many of these families are starving -> fine
| mesh nets are great at catching small fish -> all their
| food is now infected with insecticide, mosquitos continue
| to access the family as well
| fwipsy wrote:
| 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.
| yabones wrote:
| 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/
| rswail wrote:
| As you develop the _distribution_ network, you also establish
| the _recovery_ network.
|
| Make it more advantageous for someone to continue to pay
| maintenance, on the basis of modular upgrades over time, versus
| owning outright.
|
| Essentially the "grid" becomes the physical
| distribution/repair/upgrade network.
| energy123 wrote:
| > sell people cheap crap at a 10x mark up that pretty much
| immediately breaks once the warranty period is over.
|
| Two massive exaggerations inside one sentence to drive home a
| rhetorical point.
|
| Provision of retail solar is a highly competitive market in
| developing countries and the profit margins are small.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Cheap crap = lasts only as long as the warranty period.
|
| I did a survey in partnership with a the African Leadership
| University in a Rwanda, where we surveyed people living in
| two rural villages and found 90% or units had broken within 3
| years of purchase. This is the logical end point when 1/5
| stop working after 6 months, which you can find in Cross and
| Murry 2018, linked in other comments.
|
| 10x mark up (i.e. the mark up on cost of the unit) comes from
| knowing that the COGS for one of these units is ~$20-30 and
| the premium sellers sell up to $300.
|
| Sure it's at the top end of the range but 10x markup on each
| unit is not an exaggeration, let alone a massive one.
|
| Gross margins are indeed tight but that's is a separate issue
| to markup. You can sell at a huge markup and still make a
| loss: for example if the default rate of loans you make turns
| out to be much higher than you expected.
| veunes wrote:
| It highlights the gap between access and resilience
| mtrovo wrote:
| 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.
| randomtoast wrote:
| 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.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I was thinking about this too. There are tradeoffs around
| repairability. As an example, if you're expecting the unit
| to live in a wet environment it's not unreasonable to
| consider potting the circuit boards. This makes water
| ingress as a source of failure significantly less likely,
| but also has thermal effects (heat can't radiate very well
| through a block of silicone) that can hurt the overall
| lifetime as well as make it almost impossible to repair.
| cogman10 wrote:
| 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.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| That's the premium solution that some, but not most, can
| afford and only makes sense if the cost of repair is less
| than the cost a new unit. Travel just makes that tip in
| favour of getting a new system with a $10 deposit.
|
| Most of the people we're talking about here are subsistence
| farmers who pick up casual labour at a local farm. Income is
| sporadic and seasonal.
|
| That was the initial brilliance of the PAYGO system, it
| allows users to pay off their device sporadically I.e. they
| buy units when they get paid and that goes towards paying off
| an asset that in theory will then provide energy at 0
| marginal cost. Turns out that last bit isn't true.
|
| Here the VC story is important, these companies were meant to
| be high growth and giving significant returns. We all know
| how that ends.
|
| > 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.
|
| I have been in the past, but not anymore. No one is saying
| people aren't resourceful but there is a significant barrier
| to entry when it comes to electronics repairs for the general
| population. One part of what we provide is an off-grid repair
| lab bundled with our new education offering so it's very much
| knowledge + tools.
| segmondy wrote:
| Africans have more repair skills than westerners. Due to cost
| of things being expensive, repair culture is really big over
| there and in other 3rd world countries. You would be surprised
| at what folks can fix over there.
| ta20240528 wrote:
| "Africans have more repair skills than westerners."
|
| ... which is why our roads are so much better than those in
| Switzerland.
| prmph wrote:
| There's a difference between being able to do something and
| being motivated to do it.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Perhaps the race to the bottom to create the cheapest possible
| solar panel wasn't the right way to approach this.
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| Is there some money in recycling them? The easiest way to get
| people interested in cleaning up trash is if you can pay them
| for the trash. Is there any money in a broken solar panel?
| 4bpp wrote:
| The somethingpunk settings are _supposed_ to be gritty and
| dominated by exploitative megacorps, though! As a rule, the
| thingpunk needs a Man dominating by means of the thing to rebel
| against. The only reason "solarpunk" has gotten such a rosy
| image is that its proponents tend to fancy themselves the
| Tessier-Ashpools were it to come to pass.
|
| I guess even _cyberpunk_ now has a bimodal supporter base -
| there are the would-be punks, and then there are the would-be
| (and actual) Zuckerbergs building the torment nexus /metaverse.
| advael wrote:
| There is no sustainable future without repair and maintenance,
| and there are significant barriers to repair and maintenance
| imposed by governments in the name of "Intellectual property".
| robocat wrote:
| 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.
| more_corn wrote:
| 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.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Isn't it a shame that 90% of the comments here are complaining
| that AI was involved in producing this article, and _none_ of the
| comments are from a tech nerd kid in Africa who has electricity
| because of the solar schemes mentioned in the article?
|
| I want to hear from the people affected.
| eskibars wrote:
| I agree in principal, but this whole post is lazy if it's AI-
| produced. There's certainly no original thought and as the
| comments mention here, most of the math is outright incorrect
| baq wrote:
| You'll likely need to wait a couple decades for this. Kids need
| to not spend all their free time helping on the farm first and
| their currency has to appreciate such that they can afford a
| computing device that isn't a toy. With yields seeing such big
| increases it looks feasible, but we're still early.
| kaon_2 wrote:
| I worked in this industry, visited several rural areas. Spoke
| to many people. Sunculture used to be a customer of our
| software company. The article doesn't quite do justice to the
| introduction of electricity; it claims that people replace
| kerosine or diesel with electricity.
|
| From what i've seen this is rarely true. Most people just sit
| in the dark. This means you go from total darkness at night to
| electricity. Even the smallest 100lumen light is
| transformative. You can talk to your family at night. You can
| make love while seeing your spouse. You can see the spiders and
| the snakes. You are less afraid of bandits in the night. The
| biggest impact isn't made by the pumps or the larger systems,
| but by the significantly more affordable $5-$10 solar lanterns.
| The poorest of the poorest will get this and pay $0.20 per day
| or week for this.
| yangcheng wrote:
| it will get more exciting once those solar panel can charge
| electronic cars
| ruperthair wrote:
| They can do so today. Works great for my parents.
| kaon_2 wrote:
| I worked in this industry as a software developer. Companies like
| SunCulture (who used to be a customer of ours) started
| maintaining all their customers on spreadsheets. But with high
| volume low-value sales, you need to have good software to manage
| this. We were a player.
|
| I once had to do a mobile money integration with a Zimbabwean
| bank. A dozen skype calls led to nothing. Then I visited the
| country, bought a local cell phone, made a few phone calls, and
| within several days I'd reached the developer I needed. He said:
| "Wait all I need to do is add this string?". "Yes.". He did so at
| midnight and our integration worked. Next evening we partied.
|
| It shows how integrations are often more of a
| human/organizational navigation more than anything technical.
|
| As for the article; the tone is hyped, and it is also somewhat
| true. Hundreds of millions will be using electricity. Still I
| want to point out one thing: This is all Solar powered DC
| electricity. No inverters! So you are looking at powering DC only
| appliances! Inverters are generally simply too expensive for
| this. Also the impact on income is very limited; you can't really
| do anything significantly more productive with the electricity,
| as several reports have shown. But I don't want to downplay the
| impact; The quality of life improvement is hard to overstate.
| Maybe somewhat comparable to say; you are forbidden to use any
| form of transport (bike, car, bus) to suddenly having all 3. Life
| becomes so much more convenient. For example: You don't have to
| take the bus anymore to town to charge your phone - yes people do
| this.
| jjcob wrote:
| > 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 offer
| 1000W power.
| kaon_2 wrote:
| Thought provoking question! I am not an electrical engineer,
| but arguments I heard went along these lines: Almost all
| existing appliance markets are AC. Are we really going to be
| building a complete parallel appliance market? You wouldn't
| be able to sell a TV from the city in the country side and
| vice versa. I would be keen to hear what an electrical
| engineer on hackernews has to say!
|
| Interestingly, when I visited the countryside, I saw some AC
| electrical appliances. One elder couple had an enormous 80ies
| style stereo-set gathering dust in the shed. I was told they
| were a wedding gift.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| 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.
| snickmy wrote:
| I'm with you, and actually bullish on this to be a viable
| way forward.
|
| 48V DC has been eyed already for a potential standard to
| emerge. Doesn't need massive cables to deliver decent
| power (4A ~200W). There is enough hardware around coming
| from use cases like EV and Boats that could make it work.
| Many battery solutions already 'talk' 48v without lossy
| stepdown of voltage, etc.
|
| Big plus is that the regulation is A LOT less strict for
| <48v DC compared to AC 110/220/240.
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| I'm slightly afraid of a world where USB-C PD is going to
| be that standard.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Perish the thought.
|
| You plugged your class EVTF television into a class ETVF
| receptacle and your TV caught fire? Shame shame on you.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| Laptops, TVs and other electronics already run from DC.
| Also, there are a lot of appliances for camper vans, boat
| which run on 12v or 24v DC. On Alibaba you can buy a stove
| for a few bucks: https://www.alibaba.com/product-
| detail/Solar-DC-12V-24V-Batt...
| amluto wrote:
| 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, too." If you're so inclined, you can cook an entire
| meal or three on it _while unplugged_.
|
| If someone wants to make them work in rural areas like this,
| I think the necessary ingredients will be:
|
| 1. Cheaper batteries. These are likely coming.
|
| 2. More energy. A meal might require 1 kWh or more. (Or less
| -- scrambled eggs won't require much energy at all.) This is
| solvable with more panels.
|
| 3. Copper. The coil itself is a decent sized hunk of copper.
| I assume this is part of why cheap little portable induction
| cooktops still cost $50 or more.
|
| 4. Power electronics? I'm not an expert, and I have no idea
| how much of the cost comes from the power electronics, but
| integrating the battery and the induction heater seems like
| it should result in a dramatically simpler system than, say,
| producing AC from a battery and then converting that AC into
| a form that will power the coil. The current list price of
| the Impulse Labs stove includes a hilariously high power
| output, and a stove targeting rural Africa could be 1/5 as
| powerful and would still be fantastic.
|
| I wouldn't be surprised if someone could squeeze the cost of
| a decent battery powered stove down to $200 in a few years if
| they had appropriate scale.
| jjcob wrote:
| I looked up that Impulse Labs induction hob. Holy Shit,
| 10kW peak on a single burner is ridiculous!
|
| I already managed to ruin a pan with just 3.7kW (heated it
| while empty), and I tought that was a lot.
|
| However, I think the cost is probably mostly the battery.
| Our induction hob (max power per burner 3.7kW / 7.2kW
| total) costs only 10% of the battery powered stove.
|
| Also, at the low cost, induction is a non-starter.
| Resistive heating elements are dirt cheap, and the
| efficiency is not much less than induction. Induction is
| just way nicer :)
| myrmidon wrote:
| Battery power for an oven like this is not necessarily
| cost-prohibitive; if you want cost effectiveness and long
| lifetime, LiFePo cells can be had for ~$60/kwh, which
| would be under <$200 for an ImpulseLabs sized oven.
|
| Absolutely agree on resistive heating for cost
| effectiveness: Some cheap cells, resistive heating and
| minimal power electronics would probably be the way to go
| for the African market.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45703666
| gimmeThaBeet wrote:
| Dang that 6k is pretty prohibitive not for the overall
| level, but because it's 4 hobs or nothing. Hardly a "give
| it a swag" kind of level. I assume they are probably
| somewhat comparable to the Breville Control Freak, so at a
| single hob you'd be competing against $1500.
|
| But the battery is a nice philosophy, similar to
| hybrid/mild electric cars. You don't need all the power
| forever. You just need more than a 120V circuit can
| provide.
| jchanimal wrote:
| The marginal cost of a hob is likely not the price
| driver.
| rozab wrote:
| Lowtech magazine recently had an article about cooking with
| solar power:
|
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2025/10/how-to-build-a-
| sol...
| Driver8 wrote:
| They also did one on using DC directly instead of AC and
| the benefits of doing it:
| https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2016/04/slow-
| electricity-t...
| snickmy wrote:
| AC makes power distribution easier (because you can have
| modulated phases). So it's correct to say it's easier to move
| it over a long distance. Additionally, and i'm really
| simplifying, at parity of nominal voltage, you can move a lot
| more power, at a lower dissipation cost. This has resulted in
| few high power electronics to be AC native (ie.: no AC - DC -
| AC conversion). Think about motors in the various appliances,
| etc. It doesn't need to be like that, investment in DC car
| motors have pushed the industry to optimizes design, and get
| similar power output of the motor at lower energy
| consumption.
|
| That said, if you are a manufacturer of an appliance and you
| have an addressable user base of billions with AC, and a
| 'potential new user base' with DC... you might just want to
| swallow the cost and add a DC / AC converter for the sake to
| not have to produce two variants of the most complex / costly
| item (the motor in this case).
| brohee wrote:
| That wheel has turned. The king of long distance
| transmission is now HVDC, to be point of sometimes being
| used intra-grid and not just for interconnects.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Ignoring the cost of the battery how much does a cordless
| drill that'll break your wrist cost? A non-trivial amount
| more than the corded one that's for sure. You're gonna see
| comparable cost difference in just about every "final
| appliance" that actually turns the jiggling electrons into
| results (whether those results are work or heat).
|
| Alternating current is substantially easier to step up/down
| in voltage, much nicer to anything that modulated current
| flow and has a lot of convenient aspects for motors. Like for
| like the DC solution costs just a little bit more every step
| of the way.
|
| Even if you're not doing long distance transmission the cost
| of all those things that are worse about DC are going to be
| bore across the entirety of your economy that uses AC. DC
| makes sense here because the supply chain is so dysfunctional
| that making the "better" solution work would actually cost
| more than the "12v doodads from china" style solution.
| Eventually as electrification continues the choice of DC will
| become a drag though.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 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 voltages and currents.
| AC is easy, it traverses through 0V 100 (or 120 in the US)
| times a second. But DC? The arc is just going on. That's why
| most electrical equipment, from switches over automated
| breakers to fuses, has distinct ratings for AC and DC, with
| DC ratings sometimes being half the AC rating.
|
| Additionally, larger DC networks tend to have issues with
| weird current flows and electrochemical corrosion.
| chrneu wrote:
| My understanding is that the main benefit of small solar like
| this is to get combustion out of the home, specifically
| kerosene or dung lamps/stoves. A lot of folks have respiratory
| issues because they cook indoors.
| kaon_2 wrote:
| Yes and no. You are right that indoor cooking (or outdoor on
| wood) is indeed one of the biggest causes of death worldwide.
| It dwarfs deaths by malaria. And where people don't die, it
| causes respiratory issues. I don't know the math but it is
| similar to smoking X cigarettes a day.
|
| - sidenote - You always learn that in centuries past, people
| didn't grow old. I never knew why but my current suspicion is
| that air pollution by stoves and hearths was probably the top
| 3 cause.
|
| However, cooking isn't (yet) solved by solar. Making heat
| from electricity is hard! Clean Cooking solutions often use
| propane, butane, or wooden pallets. Clean Cooking companies
| face all of the same issues as the Off grid solar companies
| of this article. But you'd be surprised that it is really
| considered a different industry. Customers and price plans
| are the same, but funding often comes from different sources.
|
| Making affordable, electric, clean cooking solutions would be
| one of the most impactful inventions of our generation. Even
| then, challenges remain: No cultural activity is as steeped
| in tradition as cooking, and convincing people to change
| this, resulting in different tasting meals, is hard.
| Particular if it is the man deciding on the money, and the
| woman doing the work.
| looofooo0 wrote:
| alibaba.com/product-detail/Solar-DC-12V-24V-Battery-
| Powered_60758353185.html
| razakel wrote:
| >I don't know the math but it is similar to smoking X
| cigarettes a day.
|
| The article says two packs a day.
| kaon_2 wrote:
| I oversaw that thank you :)
| myrmidon wrote:
| > Making heat from electricity is hard!
|
| Why? All you need is resistive wires, and minimal, dirt
| cheap electronics for regulation and shutdown/safety.
|
| You can find this in literally any $20 kettle or toaster,
| no need to supply Africans with induction cooktops for
| thousands of dollars...
| mrWiz wrote:
| You also need a buttload of electric power, which is the
| bottleneck.
| duckmysick wrote:
| > Companies like SunCulture (who used to be a customer of ours)
| started maintaining all their customers on spreadsheets. But
| with high volume low-value sales, you need to have good
| software to manage this.
|
| That's pretty interesting. Can you tell us more what kind of
| problems your software solved and how you convinced them to
| move from the spreadsheets?
|
| I tried something similar (in another industry) and it's a
| mixed bag. Companies often straight up refuse to move past the
| spreadsheets even though it creates a significant backlog on
| their side.
| kaon_2 wrote:
| Happy to oblige. Basically we digitized a company from
| spreadsheets or paper to ERP. We'd introduce accounting
| software, stock management software, help desk software. But
| the biggest thing you need is some kind of "Loan Account
| Management Software" which is the center piece.
|
| This centerpiece tracks the outstanding loan amount that each
| customer has. It sutomatically sends payment reminder SMS
| messages a few days before payments are due. It connects to
| the hardware with internet-of-things to turn it off if
| payments aren't made. It connects to the bank to ensure
| payments are there, and confirms when payments are made.
| Really fun software to build with many different parts.
|
| There were SaaS providers for this. In the beginning (2015)
| there was only 1 player, Angaza (Reed Hastings mentioned in
| the article is one of their sales guys). Nowadays there are a
| handful; PaygOps, BBoX pulse (not sure if that still exists),
| and a few smaller ones. They charge like $2-$7 per device
| managed on the platform.
|
| Convincing customer to take this up was not hard at all. You
| pretty much needed it to run your operations on anything more
| than 100 customers, and as the above article shows, scale had
| big advantages. Moreover; if you could show to investors that
| you had the software infrastructure scale, they were
| significantly likely to give money. It was boom time until
| corona hit. Everyone was expecting 30% YoY growth like until
| 2019, but then everything stagnated. Many companies went
| bankrupt and a lot of consolidation happened in the
| distributor market. Companies saved money on their software
| first, and we called it a day.
|
| In the manufacturing industry where I am now, I fully agree
| with the mixed bag. Companies are old, with many old people,
| they stay small and don't necessarily need to scale or "grow
| forever". They are conservative and happy with the way things
| are.
| veunes wrote:
| Totally agree on the DC limitation point too. A lot of folks
| outside the space assume these systems are just mini-versions
| of Western home solar setups, but they're not
| monegator wrote:
| The problem is that there is no true manufacturing nor
| repairability capacity for high density electronics in africa.
| Hell, our customer in SA asks us to buy spare components for them
| because getting parts there from our favourite distributors is a
| nightmare.
|
| My parents are involved in an organization that helps developing
| parts of Togo. They helped build wells, structures (schools,
| bathrooms, .. ) and give material for agriculture and light
| manufacture, fund for tutoring, such things. All the electric and
| mechanical machinery they donated, including vehichles, are older
| models and the reason is simple: they must be serviced with the
| available technology, and they must be simple to service.
|
| They made a conference in our town to showcase the project and i
| addressed the obvious elephant in the room: what about
| electricity? They are dependend on china for cheap panels and
| inverters, and they do not want to use alternative sources that
| require way less tech to operate: biofuel for example. They say
| it's not as efficient, and i concour, but i feel there is also a
| geopolitic issue, they do know they are making themselves
| dependent on china and there might be a small print condition for
| the cheap solar.. and they were elusive on the answers.
|
| Also, not programs to train electronics technicians in the next
| future. If i ever get involved i'd like to help with setting up
| repair shops and train technicians. We'll see in the next few
| years what happens.
| darkwater wrote:
| Are we really able to service solar panels and batteries in
| Europe either, for example? Or most of the time is just a game
| of moving refurbished devices to replace the broken ones, that
| are then shipped back to... China? to be refurbished once
| again? I know that for more costly EV batteries there is some
| refurbishment capacity in Europe but what about the rest?
| veunes wrote:
| The idea that Africa is skipping the grid in the same way it
| skipped landlines is compelling, but this goes even deeper: it's
| infrastructure as a product, not a government service. And it's
| being financed by the end user and the global North's carbon tab.
| Wild.
| jsrozner wrote:
| Pretty sure this article is at least partially AI-written.
| Interesting content. Annoying style.
| Tepix wrote:
| The story is great, but is it just me who's tired of this style
| with ultra short sentences? It's getting to the point where it's
| distracting.
| tgtweak wrote:
| 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)
|
| >N2,000 per week ($1.39 USD/week) x 60 weekly payments, N3,500
| 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
|
| >N5,600 per week ($3.82 USD/week) x 60 weekly payments, N15,500
| 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.
| tgtweak wrote:
| 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 - N48,000 per week, 80 weekly
| payments, N240,000 down payment N4,080,000 ($2,836.94 USD)
| financed or N2,400,000 ($1668.79 USD) buy outright
|
| PowerHub Plus (3.3kW AC inverter 230VAC, 5.0 kWh lfp battery
| storage, 1800-3600W solar panels - N64,000 per week, 80 weekly
| payments, N320,000 down payment N5,440,000 ($3782.58 USD)
| financed or N3,200,000 ($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).
| aussiegreenie wrote:
| 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.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-11-06 23:01 UTC)