africa is building a whole lot of solar panels to secure its energy supply. it’s cheaper than fossil fuels, decentralized, doesn’t require much of a grid. and works even when the officials are corrupted.
solar panels in africa
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4 daysWesterners treating Africa as a single generic, homogenous place as though it isn’t the world’s second-largest and second-most populous continent with over 50 countries, thousands of cultures, and numerous extremely diverse ecosystems like:
- 4 days
Any renewable energy is cheaper than fossil fuels.
Over the 30-50 year life of a power plant, fuel is by far the biggest cost. Renewables have zero fuel cost.
i remember the discussion 20 years ago when people were discussing whether renewables would ever be cheaper than fossil fuels. the (prevailing) argument (that (almost) everyone agreed to) was “nah, because producing something is always more difficult than just extracting it and shipping it around”
oh how the tides have turned.
It’s seriously the dumbest argument. Yeah solar panels are pricy, but you buy them once.
But the output of that oil extractor everytime you fill up at the pump or run the gas generators.
- 4 days
It was a bit from the book: they needed a massive amount of sunlight to “charge” the astrophage fuel they bred, so they converted most of the desert for the purpose.
- 5 days
What does “doesn’t require much of a grid” even mean? I genuinely don’t understand that one.
you don’t need to run 10 km of cable. the solar panels are on the roof.
- [deleted]@piefed.worldEnglish4 days
Or within a mile or two for fields of panels instead of being networked dozens or hundreds of miles from a central energy production center.
- 5 days
The ones in the picture are not on the roof.
In any case, I don’t think that really makes a difference ultimately. Rooftop solar doesn’t make that much power in the grand scheme of things. It’s proper facilities that make the real power, and those are usually large solar farms, which are built over (usually rural) land dedicated for that purpose and do require more than 10km of cable to connect to the rest of the grid. Just like any other power plant, really.
I mean solar is great and all, I just don’t see that being a real benefit in any grid where solar is responsible for any significant percentage of generation. Or am I misunderstanding the argument entirely and talking about something else?
no, the thing is, in the US sure utility-scale solar farms are what generates the most power, but i have read two articles about how people in africa and in the middle east install their own solar panels on the roof or close to the house to produce their own electricity because the grid is so unreliable. so you see, people make do with what they can get. and if grid is not available, then suddenly rooftop solar becomes a competitive option.
- 4 days
Probably refers to island mode capability. The inverters can generate their own set point voltage, rather than relying on a voltage from the grid and responding to its inputs. One of the main downsides of renewables is that they are inverter driven and the output is always chasing and lagging behind its input, whereas a spinning turbine just keeps spinning via inertia, in spite of load fluctuations.
This has other advantages with possible reactive power compensation and load diversion on distribution and transmission networks, if fully implemented.
In this case, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have island mode capability because of unreliability from the grid.
- billwashere@lemmy.worldEnglish4 days
I’ve never understood why they don’t put building under the solar panels. Wouldn’t that help with the heat?
