Why Solarpunk Is Already Happening In Africa (substack.com)
- Reference: 0180078892
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/15/0433216/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening-in-africa
- Source link: https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening
> You know that feeling when you're waiting for the cable guy, and they said 'between 8am and 6pm, and you waste your entire day, and they never show up? 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.
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> What's happening across Sub-Saharan Africa right now is the most ambitious infrastructure project in human history, except it's not being built by governments or utilities or World Bank consortiums. It's being built by startups selling solar panels to farmers on payment plans. And it's working. Over 30 million solar products sold in 2024. 400,000 new solar installations every month across Africa. 50% market share captured by companies that didn't exist 15 years ago. Carbon credits subsidizing the cost. IoT chips in every device. 90%+ repayment rates on loans to people earning $2/day.
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> And if you understand what's happening in Africa, you understand the template for how infrastructure will get built everywhere else for the next 50 years.
[1] https://www.slashdot.org/~schwit1
[2] https://climatedrift.substack.com/p/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening
Anti-stakeholders (Score:2)
While a similar setup makes sense in many places in the U.S. there are too many parties (private and public) invested in maintaining the status quo who will never allow it to happen.
It's good to see Africa figuring out solutions to their own problems. No one else was going to solve them for them without getting more in return.
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> It's good to see Africa figuring out solutions to their own problems. No one else was going to solve them for them without getting more in return.
china. the power of non-colonial oriented superpowers ...
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Are you referring to the non-imperial China that took over Hong Kong and Nepal, and is actively trying to take parts of India and Taiwan? Or maybe you are referring to the China that is pretty much putting many third world countries in servitude by loaning them massive amounts of money for infrastructure that can never be repaid?
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> Are you referring to the non-imperial China that took over Hong Kong
omg. hong kong has been china since imperial times. they didn't take it over, they got it handed over through negotiations long after it had become ... wait for it ... a fucking british colony.
> and Nepal,
wtf are you talking about? when did china "take over nepal"?
> and is actively trying to take parts of India
china has border disputes with india. india has a lot of border disputes, and most of them trace back to british colonialism. then again relations between china nad india have considerably improved lately.
> and Taiwan?
taiwan is actually china, at least china has plausible
Won't happen in the Unted States (Score:2)
until after the second civil war.
The utilities lobbyists will see to that.
Utility lobbyists? (Score:2)
Dude you can put solar on your house if you want nobody's stopping you. The problem is that economies of scale are a thing and a utility can produce a lot more electricity a lot more efficiently than you can slapping some solar panels on your roof...
That's got nothing to do with lobbyists that's got everything to do with how just well, everything works. A large public works project is going to be more efficient than a single person doing something. Again, economies of scale.
What's holding back sola
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As long as it is connected to the grid. Unless you in the middle of nowhere, you'll fight both the utility, and your county or city government via building code law to disconnect from the grid and be totally self-sufficient.
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ding ding ding, we have a winner. So true, so correct. And in the case of Austin, they will meter every watt and pay you 9.9c/KWh and then turn around and meter it right back to you @12-20. Deal eh? And code will fine you up to 1k/day if you go try to go offgrid.
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> The utilities lobbyists will see to that.
This.
It works in Africa because there are no incumbent producers whose market is being threatened.
It could happen in the USA, but for the structure of the utilities' capital financing. You may _think_ you are paying so much for a kilowatt-hour. In reality, a good chunk of utilities costs are fixed. And the rate structures are designed to recapture those, concealed as energy rates. Now here come the micro solar and wind producers, expecting to use the grid as their marketplace. Buying and selling energy ac
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And when you say "Fuck you" and try load defection with solar panels and batteries, city and county code enforcement will come after you and threaten to condemn your property unless you reconnect back up to the grid.
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Yes. Welcome to public power. Move to an investor-owned service area and utilities political power is much less. Because capitalism and free markets. With publicly owned facilities, "We decided" to do X. So there's no backing out on an individual basis. Even if "We" is an elite group within the government.
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It doesn't matter if it is investor owned or publicly owned. Here in San Diego, we have San Diego Gas and Electric, who are known for some of the highest electricity rates in the United States. People have looked into disconnecting from SDG&E here, but they risk getting a letter from code enforcement saying they'd better reconnect or there will be consequences. What matters is if your city or county building codes have a section making disconnecting entirely from the grid illegal.
Also public power comp
Big whoop (Score:2)
This happens everywhere. Sooner or later people get fed up and fix their shit
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
It does seem frustrating, that in America, almost any "do it yourself" project is basically "outlawed". There seems to be a regulation for almost anything. If almost any aspect of a home or business is changed, even cutting down a tree, there is paperwork to file, permits to get, an engineer to draw up the plans, a contractor to hire, and fees to pay. The laws seem to be made such that everybody breaks them almost every day doing the most common sense things.
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I completely agree.
Too much safety. Too much regulation.
Not enough creativity. Not enough dealing with the imperfect.
We really need to amp up freedom.
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TFS is about people getting tired of waiting for a government-supported solution and finding their own.
Your post is about encountering municipal bureaucracy when you had it in mind to do it yourself in the first place.
I'm no fan of bureaucracy for its own sake. But there's a reason you need to jump through some hoops when you want to change something on your property. Those trees you want to cut down might be crucial for flood mitigation. That room you want to turn into a spare bedroom might be a fire-trap
not holding my breath (Score:2)
in the US and Europe people complain about the lack of total integration of the power grid down to the house or even device level.
I'm all for resilience through federation, local production , and self reliance,but that's not the arc since the end of the Cold War. Instead we ship cotton across the Pacific to make T-shirts to ship back across the Pacific.
And move to cloud computing which is super reliable and redundant... until someone closes your account; possibly by mistake; possibly because you're seen
So isn't this coming from china? (Score:2)
Basically China is colonizing Africa using economics instead of the military. It's the same thing America did for the last 100 years or so.
It's that whole belt and road initiative. I don't think Africa is in a position to do anything about it so they'll just have to try and make the best of it but just like the rest of the world has traditionally exploited the whole continent China is going to do it too.
To get back to the article no this is not how infrastructure is going to be built over the next 5
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> To get back to the article no this is not how infrastructure is going to be built over the next 50 years. Most countries wouldn't allow China to do what they're doing to them. Those loans aren't coming from inside Africa they ultimately track back to China and the African nations are going to end up with a metric shitload of debt that will be leveraged in order to get obedience on a wide variety of issues.
I don't think you read the article at all as none of this is due to loans from China. It's people acting in their own economic interest because these products replace more expensive alternatives. Part of it is funding through carbon credits which is a separate sort of idiocy, but the companies involved have built a viable business model around supplying something people want in a way that they can afford. The only involvement China has is that they manufacture much of the hardware and it's not some governme
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Plus, how is my day wasted? I'm home anyway.
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I get confused by that too. THEY who?
But so many people can't write worth a shit anymore, it's not surprising that they lack consistency when they do try to write something.
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> Are we not calling the cable guy "he/him" anymore?
I believe the cable "guy" in this case is gender neutral. And since there is no "them" in the sentence, there would be no "him". The question is why not use "he/she". Frankly ,"they" is a lot better usage in any case. It may be a plural that does not match the singular "guy" but given the ambiguity of mixing plurality and the clumsiness of the "he/she" construction I would take the plural. And even people who use that clumsy construction when writing rarely talk that way.
Holding THIS as a positive example? (Score:2)
So in 2025 parts of Africa are still not electrified, they have to resort to jury-rigging half-solutions, and you hold this as an example of what we should be aspiring to? I mean, I get that is what misandristic Gaianism fanatics want to force on us, but still...
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Let me google it for you: [1]jury rigging [wikipedia.org].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_rigging
Most ambitious infrastructure project?? (Score:3)
Over exaggerate much? Installing solar panels to power individual homes doesn't even come close to the "most ambitious infrastructure project in human history". Maybe building a railroad across an entire continent, or building a massive roadway system with thousands of bridges that span mighty rivers and gorges. Perhaps digging canals to connect the planet's oceans, or building power plants and distribution systems to provide power to a billion people...
What is funding this is companies trying to buy carbon credits. I actually tried to read this article but it was so overhyped and the guy was so giddy to blow it out of proportion my eyes almost got stuck in a permanent eye-roll.
Implied (Score:2)
The slashdotter who posted this said in an inplicit way that the industrialised world would copy the electrical infrastructure of Africa. Then i lost interest and stopped reading.
Centralized Energy Industry (Score:1)
This is the future because centralized energy production no longer really makes any sense. It won't happen in the United States and other western countries because we have a centralized energy industry that is determined to protect its turf. You can see that with the current fights in some places over new power lines because companies built huge solar arrays in the middle of nowhere and need to get the power to somewhere there is demand.
That works economically only because there is a huge concentration of
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You are delusional and have no understanding of even basic science or engineering. The nation needs a grid to make things and to power over half its dwellings.
Africans aren't getting the energy a modern house needs from their panels on shacks.
Re:Cable guy? (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe a better analogy would be when you go to a bar, and there is a sign that says: "Free Beer Tomorrow"? And you go there the next day expecting free beer, but damn if that same sign aint up, and you have to wait another day. Man, that pisses me off!
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What's a metaphor? And before you respond I'm not inquiring about the usefulness of Facebook or any of the other products Zuck is pushing.
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You have a large company in the cable company causing you to stay home all day (not making money) and all to often causing you to lose multiple days work. If they do show up and you aren't home they still charge you. So you pay for what you don't get. They are comparing that to all the promise to bring electricity to these regions for 50! years and it is still a no show. That is the comparison they are making.
This "Solar punk" is different in that instead of dealing with a major corporation you are deal
Re:Cable guy? (Score:4, Informative)
You have to get cable installed because it does not come with the house.
In Africa, you have to get an electrical line installed because it does not come with the house (except in the Urban areas - where it is just like America.)
For 50 years, many African leaders keep promissing that the Utility company will build an electrical grid that goes to the rural areas and but they have repeatedly failed.
Now, you can just get Solar power installed and screw the utility.
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Thanks for the clarification posts guys.
I read the summary again. If whomever wrote it had left out the entire first paragraph completely, since it has nothing to do with the story, the entire thing would have been much more clear.
Thanks, everyone.
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It's a very apt 1st world analogy of 3rd world problems. It's not a 1:1 analogy.
Rural places wait decades for the 'modern world' to reach them...just like suburbia waits hours for the Cable guy.
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> I don't understand what this has to do with the cable guy not showing up.
It's a bad analogy because when you call the cable guy, the infrastructure already exists and you just need someone to hook up a box (and then they try to upsell you to the ultra premium mega bundle pack that costs $150/mo).
The issue in those parts of Africa is that there's no power lines, which is like what the broadband situation was for rural America until Starlink became a thing.