How Off-Grid Solar Power Transforms Remote Villages (apnews.com) 71
775 million people around the world didn't have electricity last year, according to the International Energy Agency. But the Associated Press points out that's changing in some of the world's most remote places — thanks to off-grid solar systems.
Here's a typical example from the world's fourth most-populous country... Before electricity came to the village a bit less than two years ago, the day ended when the sun went down. Villagers in Laindeha, on the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia, would set aside the mats they were weaving or coffee they were sorting to sell at the market as the light faded.
A few families who could afford them would start noisy generators that rumbled into the night, emitting plumes of smoke. Some people wired lightbulbs to old car batteries, which would quickly die or burn out appliances, as they had no regulator. Children sometimes studied by makeshift oil lamps, but these occasionally burned down homes when knocked over by the wind. That's changed since grassroots social enterprise projects have brought small, individual solar panel systems to Laindeha and villages like it across the island...
Around the world, hundreds of millions of people live in communities without regular access to power, and off-grid solar systems like these are bringing limited access to electricity to places like these years before power grids reach them... Indonesia has brought electricity to millions of people in recent years, going from 85% to nearly 97% coverage between 2005 and 2020, according to World Bank data. But there are still more than half a million people in Indonesia living in places the grid doesn't reach.
While barriers still remain, experts say off-grid solar programs on the island could be replicated across the vast archipelago nation, bringing renewable energy to remote communities.
Here's a typical example from the world's fourth most-populous country... Before electricity came to the village a bit less than two years ago, the day ended when the sun went down. Villagers in Laindeha, on the island of Sumba in eastern Indonesia, would set aside the mats they were weaving or coffee they were sorting to sell at the market as the light faded.
A few families who could afford them would start noisy generators that rumbled into the night, emitting plumes of smoke. Some people wired lightbulbs to old car batteries, which would quickly die or burn out appliances, as they had no regulator. Children sometimes studied by makeshift oil lamps, but these occasionally burned down homes when knocked over by the wind. That's changed since grassroots social enterprise projects have brought small, individual solar panel systems to Laindeha and villages like it across the island...
Around the world, hundreds of millions of people live in communities without regular access to power, and off-grid solar systems like these are bringing limited access to electricity to places like these years before power grids reach them... Indonesia has brought electricity to millions of people in recent years, going from 85% to nearly 97% coverage between 2005 and 2020, according to World Bank data. But there are still more than half a million people in Indonesia living in places the grid doesn't reach.
While barriers still remain, experts say off-grid solar programs on the island could be replicated across the vast archipelago nation, bringing renewable energy to remote communities.
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Two Words: Modern Dentistry.
Re:Are they happier? (Score:5, Funny)
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Classic error of misinterpreting convenience for happiness. Those are two different things, and if you think you are happy just because your life is convenient, then you have never experienced true happiness.
Re: Are they happier? (Score:2)
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Fossil fuels are the future!
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Yea man. Even nomadic tribesmen in Africa have cellphones these days.
Re:Are they happier? (Score:4, Informative)
I've got plenty of electricity*. I'd be happier to have one bar of 4/5G.
*We did have a day-long outage just a while back. Too many people charging EVs on a old, underground distribution system according to the power company.
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Hmm, sounds like an excuse. Typical EV chargers draw less than 7kW at home. Comparable to electric cookers/ovens and electric showers.
Re: Are they happier? (Score:2)
Comparable to electric cookers/ovens
Those have load diversity. Not everyone is baking a turkey at the same time at night, every night, all night.
and electric showers.
Third world shithole detected.
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Or even better: tell us why you are happier now because judging from your comment, you probably are either not using lighting in your house or you should not judge other people who do.
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My Malay fiancee has told me frequently how she's fine with whatever our future holds, as long as we're not living in a kampung with no modern-day utilities. So, yes, I would wager that their adoption of electricity on remote Indonesian islands is making the people living on those islands happier.
Only going to get better (Score:5, Informative)
You follow the "volts.wtf" podcasts, and there was one of a guy deeply studied in Wright's Law, and how far along that "S-shaped" curve of improvements we currently are for wind and solar. Looking at all the stuff working in labs, and going through the engineering/development process for production, his estimate was that we have 5-10 years left, of the exponential (Wright's Law) improvements in cost/benefit.
Even if it's only 5 years more, holy cow, that's some cheap solar panels - and every time I see an article about solar panel recycling, I think that a lot of panels that are "used up" for commercial payback, might still be good enough for off-grid buyers.
I was amused twice over by the article noting that a benefit is now that people can chill at night, watching TV shows on their cellphones, recharged by solar. First, that they may not have power to those people, but they do have some pretty good cell towers pretty close; and, second, that while some of these people may have trouble buying solar, there are also some villagers with some fairly good cellphones.
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> I think that a lot of panels that are "used up" for commercial payback, might still be good enough for off-grid buyers.
They very much are. "Used up" in that context means their rated power has dropped 25-30%. Which means they still produce 70-75% of the power they did when they were new - and that drops by ~1% per year on average for most panels, meaning these 'used up' panels can still produce worthwhile amounts of power if deployed in sufficient numbers for a few decades yet. There's definitely s
Good use case (Score:2)
That is the kind of right use for photovoltaic solar: off grid, low quantity and occasional. Like these villages or a little sailboat. Cancels (partially) fossil fuels.
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Here's a "counter anecdote"...
Doing the math on an off the grid system I found wind power far less costly than solar. Wind power can charge batteries too. Given the climate I'm living in there's no means by which I could have a habitable building without something to burn for heat. The fuel doesn't have to be a fossil fuel but that is a common choice. For people that want to pay for the carbon neutral option they can burn corn, soybeans, wood, or some other biomass fuel. Heat pumps are not considered s
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You made me laugh. A quick search of the internet tells me that in Norway every heat pump will have some means of backup heat.
I wrote " their heat pump can't keep up" not that no heat pump could keep up. The heat pump is sized to meet local building code and expectations of economics. If they lived in a colder climate then the heat pump would have likely been larger. It is likely that if they lived in a warmer climate the heat pump would have been larger since it provides cooling too. They burn wood f
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Show me a place in Norway that allows for heat pumps as the only heat source for a domicile and I'll retract my statements.
Or you simply could look on a map?? Or is that too simple?
The first place that must spring into your mind is: Oslo.
The heat pump is not rated for running below something like 40F,
Ten yards underground, there is no 40F, there it is much warmer. And your 40F is nonsense anyway, 40F is 4.4Celsius. Heat pumps run fine till below 0F.
And when you are to stupid to look on a map: The islands
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Show me some place that allows for heat pumps as the only heat source and I'll show you a tropical climate.
I live at about 38S. By definition, this is not the tropics. It was -2C here this morning. My HVAC is entirely run by heat pumps. They are nothing fancy, just air-air heatpumps. Most of the time the HVAC is running, it's powered from rooftop solar. At night, the HVAC is turned off. The house is insulated, so the inside temperature only moves by a couple of degrees.
How Solar Power Transforms Off-Grid Villages (Score:2)
Poor/expensive solution (Score:2)
If solar was such a good solution why aren't Hawaii (80% fossil), New Zealand (55% Hydroelectric), Haiti (70% fossil) and other island regions running mostly on it already? The solar panels themselves may be cheap but storing the power for them for nighttime usage is far from. You are much better with wind/hydroelectric and keeping generators as backup. Depending on your topography you MAY be able to do a solar/pumped storage combination but again, even regions with the topography haven't rushed to do so
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Solar is definitely better than no electricity, but is far from the first choice if you are building an actual grid from scratch and actually aspire to 7/24 power.
Agreed. Solar power should be the choice of last resort, not first. We are seeing costs of solar power being driven down artificially, and the costs of everything else driven up artificially, with government policies that have a "solar first" mandate. Why make a reliable and already running power plant immediately reduce output when the sun peeks out between the clouds then ramp up again when the sun goes away? That is not lowering CO2 emissions and is driving up electricity costs for everyone. If sola
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That fantasy is no longer sustainable. "Cheaper" solar and wind are done; they are resource intensive, and costs are climbing rapidly along with the fuel and materials upon which they depend.
Indeed, there is a limit on how low costs can get for wind and solar power because the costs for making the windmills and solar collectors cannot be lower than that of the raw materials used to make them. Wind and solar power take about ten times as much materials for the same energy or power as fossil fuels or nuclear fission. Because there are so many materials in common for all these energy sources (concrete, steel, copper, aluminum, etc.) the lowering of material costs are not likely to ever make wind
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Once that grid is in place then I expect the solar panels and batteries to slowly fade away as people gain confidence that the grid is stable and affordable.
Perhaps you should once travel to a country like Indonesia.
That would change your writing style. As everything you wrote above: makes absolutely no sense in countries like Thailand or Indonesia. You got it half right, but then completely wrong: "People build out more solar because ..." People, yes!! PEOPLE not Utilities!! Wow, can't be so hard to grasp
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You'd think Hawaii would be approximately 200% hydrothermal. Lots of hot ground to tap, lots of ocean for cooling.
Everything there should be electric except presumably the US Navy facilities. Commercial and residential energy should be dirt cheap.
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I looked it up.
A) Apparently feasible geothermal wouldn't quite make it to 100% of their current power use.
B) Hawaiians protest enough against geothermal it isn't politically viable - apparently they love being poisoned by fossil fuel use?
C) For some reason, the price of geothermal energy was pegged to the standard fossil fuel generated power rate, making it economically unattractive. (Wonder who lobbied for THAT? /s)
D) Their one small geothermal plant had a near-miss from a lava flow a few years ago.
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How is a small community in a remote area coming up with that kind of money not only for the initial setup but for the battery replacements (the most expensive part) every 10-20 years?
They can afford this in part because of improvements in lighting and likely in much larger part because they are not using electricity for the large residential loads seen in developed nations. Fluorescent and LED lighting take 1/10th the power of incandescent bulbs for the same amount of light. I had a spot light that ran on Ni-Cd power tool batteries that used an incandescent bulb. It was nice to help light the way during a power outage but it was worthless once LED and Li-ion batteries came on the sce
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Living in a tropical environment in a small domicile there's different needs and expectations on comfort.
Climate change may change that requirement. [youtu.be]
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If solar was such a good solution why aren't Hawaii (80% fossil), New Zealand (55% Hydroelectric), Haiti (70% fossil) and other island regions running mostly on it already?
If you read the headline, solar is here explained as a good solution for REMOTE VILLAGES. The paper is about Indonesia (and citing Sub-Saharan Africa). In these places, solar is life changing because it enables making electricity in villages that otherwise would not have it, or would not be able to obtain fuel regularly. Hawaii and New Zealand are developed countries, do not typically live in villages, also have a nationwide grid and people who can afford and supply fuel generators. The merits of solar for
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"Hawaii and New Zealand are developed countries"
That's my point.... If more developed remote areas with median incomes +14 times higher than Indonesia can't/won't utilize solar for their primary electrical generation how is a remote Indonesian fishing village going to. As I pointed out in my other two examples I'm not even suggesting that a non-renewable source (coal/gas/oil) should be used but another renewable source (wind/hydro) as they are a much more cost effective and potentially utilize cheaper loc
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The point is going from 0 electricity provides a huge boost in lifestyle, run a water pump, a light at night. You don't need an all or nothing solution, setting a a power plant, wiring up the 6,000 populated islands in Indonesia, or setting up delivery of fuel for generators to them is an immense task. Independent solar panels seem to be a good solution.
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They are using a tiny fraction of electricity compared to wealthy countries. The article even gives a cost - the villagers are paying $3.50 a month for their electricity supply, which is used mainly for lights and charging their cellphones.
Who is going to pay for the electrical grid to deliver power to remote villages using your solution?
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I think you are pretty daft.
Your parent explained to you: Hawaii HAS ALREADY POWER, WHY THE FUNK WOULD THEY SWITCH?
Those remote areas have NO POWER. Obviously a household with $50 to spare can simply by a modern solar light, put the 3 palms sized solar panel where it is convenient, connect the included 10m/10yards cable and attack it to the light. The light contains the battery, is the size of a big grapefruit, and contains 25 LEDs in 3 concentric rings. No power plant needed. No overland power cable. No tr
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I thought one of the selling points of solar was that it is so cheap that it didn't make sense to run/build anything other generation source anymore? And the summary mentions that many of these areas ALREADY HAVE POWER in the form of gasoline generators, SO WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY SWITCH? Oh, because some activist groups gave them away (or heavily subsidized them anyway). That's great for now, but what happens in 5-10 years when the activists/donors loose interest and the battery packs fail. I may be cra
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And the summary mentions that many of these areas ALREADY HAVE POWER in the form of gasoline generators, SO WHY THE FUCK WOULD THEY SWITCH?
Then you misunderstood the summary: *some people* have a gasoline generator. The others have nothing.
And: gasoline is expensive since the war. So: obviously if one stands for the decision to buy a $100 gasoline generator, and spent EVERY WEEK another $10 for gasoline, or buys two solar powered lights for $10 each: he buys the solar lights. That is not "a switch".
hat's gr
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Solar is "cheap" per kWh for first-worlders who can invest 10k or whatever it costs and reduce the cost on their large spending from heated water and air conditioning. The villagers in Indonesia own next to nothing and have very limited needs in kWh. It's a different use case. They can't invest in panels. They can buy a solar light for 50 $ like suggested above. Even the village generator was probably set up by their local government or by a charity, and local people still need to get money together to buy
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Maybe they can get some tips from Costa Rica where their electric grid is powered by 98% renewable energy for 7th straight year [ticotimes.net]
Some people take longer than others to wake up to new tech
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You are mixing up: having electricity - based on what ever with ta ta ta ta: having no electricity at all, and buying just enough solar power to run a fridge and a TV at night.
Also Hawaii is a super bad example: as it is in the USA. And we all know how absurd high the electricity demand of a "typical American" is.
I look forward to the day when I can put up a bunch of solar panels and tell my utility to take a hike, but the costs are in the tens of thousands of dollars for a relatively modest setup for a sin
They should not sell solar to the grid. (Score:2)
Residential solar is the most expensive means to get electricity so a policy of not allowing residential solar power to be sold on the grid is likely saving everyone from more expensive energy. There's been studies on this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The claims that solar power is cheaper than fossil fuels depends on two things. First, that the solar is done on large scales. There is economy of scale with many things and solar power is not immune. Distribute solar PV panels onto the rooftops of ho
Re:They should not sell solar to the grid. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's in interesting case study in adding up 2 and 2, and getting 5. Yes, electricity roof top solar costs more than utility solar. But utility solar isn't much use to me unless someone builds a grid to deliver that electricity to my house, and then other people get involved in measuring utility solar and selling it to me. Where I live, it costs around $0.08/kWh to produce the electricity, and they sell it to me for $0.25/kWh.
It's probably true the $0.08/kWh is cheaper than my roof top solar can produce the electricity for. But $0.25/kWh is definitely more expensive than me putting solar panels on my roof.
The article doesn't say it, but one of the drivers behind this "village solar" is avoids building all the infrastructure associated with the grid. And the cost drops by a factor of 3 or so accordingly. It's really that cost drop that makes it attractive, not the solar. The cost of building the grid is also the reason they are currently producing electricity using diesel generators - despite that being far more expensive than centralised generation. What's notable about solar is it's much cheaper than diesel generation.
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The article doesn't say it, but one of the drivers behind this "village solar" is avoids building all the infrastructure associated with the grid. And the cost drops by a factor of 3 or so accordingly. It's really that cost drop that makes it attractive, not the solar. The cost of building the grid is also the reason they are currently producing electricity using diesel generators - despite that being far more expensive than centralised generation. What's notable about solar is it's much cheaper than diesel generation.
It's also possible to view the above as the good enough solution that forever holds the village back from making progress by keeping it from investing in critical infrastructure.
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The article doesn't say it, but one of the drivers behind this "village solar" is avoids building all the infrastructure associated with the grid. And the cost drops by a factor of 3 or so accordingly. It's really that cost drop that makes it attractive, not the solar. The cost of building the grid is also the reason they are currently producing electricity using diesel generators - despite that being far more expensive than centralised generation. What's notable about solar is it's much cheaper than diesel generation.
It's also possible to view the above as the good enough solution that forever holds the village back from making progress by keeping it from investing in critical infrastructure.
Maybe. I think it's more likely that the cost of solar and battery storage will both continue their precipitous decline for a while yet, and a combination of residential solar and micro-utility solar (local solar farms) will become the global non-urban norm, probably with neighborhood micro-grids, each with a small connection to external sources used to offset dips in production or peaks in consumption (though those will largely be buffered by local storage).
I think this is similar to the way many develop
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Now you topped it.
A village which has no electricity at all, has no fossile or what ever power plant that has to be throttled when there is peak solar "input". Hint: such a village does not even have a grid.
You sometimes so dumb that we think one stole your account ...
How you can help make more (Score:2)
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Recycling older solar panels helps too. Same really with wind turbines.
Energy is Good, on demand is better (Score:2)
Energy, especially electrical is a necessity. Cooking over wood fires and lighting with fossil fuels is a poor substitute for clean energy. While some power is better than none we can't expect the third world to ultimately be happy living in energy poverty. While a couple of solar lights is better, it is not good.
The aim should be 24x7 power year round.
We need to lift the world from energy poverty, solar and a few batteries is not "Job done", not even close.
A solution which provides energy abundance is requ
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...solar and a few batteries is not "Job done", not even close.
That's debatable for the moment (but I'll grant it for the sake of argument). A solar+batteries setup will eventually become more economical than utility-delivered power. It seems inevitable as the cost of utility-delivered electricity continues its inexorable and relentless climb. My utility's electricity prices are double what they were 15 years ago, and show no signs of stopping, and the costs of solar panels and battery storage continue to decline.
It seems that sometime in the not-to-distant future, th
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OK for the sake of argument, you go solar + battery + backup from the grid.
Current estimates are that you need about a 7:1 overcommit of solar plus enough battery to cater to a 5 day power minimal input to provide a similar level of utility to grid connectivity. This is actually an significant under-estimate unless you change your lifestyle and by the way your kids will demand even more power.
So you're still going to have grid connectivity because, unless you live in the country, you don't have the land are
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Lighting is "solved". LED lighting is cheap, easy, can last all night.
Anything else - especially heating and cooling - is not. Just the equipment to do so would make a target for theft even in a developed country. Those kinds of batteries/panels are several hundred dollars each, easily removeable, and easily resold anonymously. Let alone scaling up to provide sufficient power for heating/cooling, plus the inverters or charge controllers necessary.
And when you get into that scale... even I would struggle
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Please don't give the usual guff about recycling, it's literally a pathetic percentage that's ever recycled because of the energy costs of doing so.
The energy costs have nothing to do with it. It is *MONEY*.
If I can get a fully working battery pack from china for $X.
And making a new one in my home country by recycling old battery packs, it needs to be cheaper than $X to make sense. That is all, and is actually happening _right_ _now_.
You won't be replacing their oven or air-con any time soon, though. And c
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Most people in those countries do not have air con. Would not make sense outside of office buildings or shopping malls etc. anyway. Here at my place it is hot from 12:00 14:30, then it is cooling down already. After 20:00 it is too cold for Air Con. And during peak time, the tin roof is the culprit for the heat. Makes no sense to have AC when your roof is like an oven. We have to replace the roof first. And guess what: afterwards we do not need AC anymore. I personally do not find that 35C is particular hot or unpleasant. And 2 months with a peak temperature during rough 2h a day around 45C is no problem either.
One perk of rooftop solar is that it shades the roof, so you get some cooling for "free." Of course, if you were constructing a new building from scratch, hopefully more sensible design choices* would be made. But we need to work with what we have.
* I still see new houses built in hot climates with black roofs because they think it "looks nice." Seems crazy to me.
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* I still see new houses built in hot climates with black roofs because they think it "looks nice." Seems crazy to me.
It kind of is, but it depends on many things.
Black e.g. is not only the best absorber but also the best radiator.
If the roof towards the inside is good enough insulated, it might be oki for the house itself.
But I would not like to be the neighbour - or owner sitting in the garden behind the house - getting the heat radiation from the roof into the sun shadow :P
Here for me (I'm in Thailand),
Say what? (Score:2)
While the country has targeted more solar as part of its climate goals, there has been limited progress due to regulations that don’t allow households to sell power back to the grid, ruling out a way of defraying the cost that has helped people afford solar in other parts of the world.
"Back to the grid" in a story about a large swatch not connected to a grid.