Renewable Energy is Surging in Africa (apnews.com)
- Reference: 0183491846
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/26/05/31/1827209/renewable-energy-is-surging-in-africa
- Source link: https://apnews.com/article/solar-battery-renewable-africa-hydro-6bdcc8449fd19fe0108eac827e0bd170
> The shift is visible in a $1.5 billion energy agreement between China and Zambia announced in early May that includes three separate 300-megawatt projects spanning solar, wind and coal-fired power. While the inclusion of coal underscores the continent's continuing need for stable baseload electricity, African countries facing rising fuel import bills as a result of the Iran war, unreliable grids and growing industrial demand are increasingly turning to renewable energy projects that can be deployed faster and more cheaply than traditional plants.
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> Of the 322 energy projects announced across Africa in 2025, 173 were solar projects, followed by hydropower at 46, wind at 34, gas at 22 and hybrid energy projects at 14, according to the energy research firm Electron Intelligence... Utility-scale solar power costs have dropped by nearly 90% globally since 2010, while onshore wind costs have fallen around 70%, making renewables the cheapest source of new electricity generation in many African markets...
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> Much of the growth is through distributed solar and battery systems installed directly in mines, factories, telecom towers and homes. "Most official statistics still measure the energy transition the old way, by counting megawatts connected to national grids," [said Matt Tilleard, CEO of CrossBoundary Energy, which invests in renewable energy in Africa]. "But solar and batteries don't need central utilities." Data from the Africa Solar Industry Association shows 23.4 gigawatts of operational solar projects had been tracked across Africa by the end of 2025. But Chinese export figures indicate 58.1 gigawatts of solar panels have been shipped to African countries since 2017, suggesting solar adoption may be growing far faster than official figures capture.
Investor Tilleard says "Renewable energy is now unequivocally the fastest, cheapest, and most bankable way to connect people, companies and economies to the megawatts they need to grow."
And the article also includes this quote from Mugwe Manga, climate finance lead at FSD Kenya. "Africa is not on the periphery of the global energy transition, it is sitting at its center. The continent holds the world's best renewable resources, and the economics have now decisively turned in favor of clean energy."
[1] https://apnews.com/article/solar-battery-renewable-africa-hydro-6bdcc8449fd19fe0108eac827e0bd170
Less legacy infrastructure, Easier to run locally. (Score:5, Insightful)
Both cellphones and renewables were entering a region that had far less legacy infrastructure. Plus renewables can operate locally much more easily.
Re:Less legacy infrastructure, Easier to run local (Score:5, Insightful)
Also Africa has a heck of a lot of sun in patterns that are more consistent all year round. Close to the equator you may get less sun in the day but you don't get a 4x difference between the peak summer production and minimum winter production as we do here.
More consistent output means it's easier to plan around, and not having winters at 40 below zero means even if the power is out for a while you're probably not going to die.
Lastly, of course, with local power production there aren't thousands of miles of copper cables and tall metal pylons to cut up and steal.
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> Lastly, of course, with local power production there aren't thousands of miles of copper cables and tall metal pylons to cut up and steal.
Like telephone land lines when cellular was introduced.
Re:Less legacy infrastructure, Easier to run local (Score:4, Insightful)
That's actually the area of my interest. This would seem to be a natural situation for local power grids without the need for investment in long distance high voltage transmission. There can be an advantage to skipping over the earlier technologies if you pick the right stuff. The problem is knowing what "right" means because that's largely dependent on the "maturity" of the technologies in question.
But where is the angle to go for the funny? I'm not really seeing any good ones for this story. Something about the AI advice to investors in Africa? (Maybe something about what the AI said when it found Dr Livingstone?)
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> But where is the angle to go for the funny?
I'd say AI generated images of large wild life trying to use slow moving wind turbine blades as back scratchers. :-)
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Wow... $1.5 billion! Helluva deal! And, with China, who only makes the highest quality stuff, longest lasting stuff!
Fairly certain that legacy infrastructure isn't MCM 500 cabling like we have in the US... it's probably lamp cord and wire-nuts and electrical tape, and someone turning on a light at the wrong point blacks out a country.
So, do these new installations include running proper wire to use the power? How do the locals pay for this power?
"Utility-scale solar power costs have dropped by nearly 90%
Reasons for solar/wind (Score:4, Interesting)
1) Not tied to frequent fuel deliveries
2) Does not require much that humans don't already need - sun and air. (Variability will affect your power storage needs)
3) It can be deployed almost anywhere, and even be portable.
The main issue is energy density - if you want to drive hundreds of kilometers a day, run your AC all summer and heat all winter, etc., you're going to need a lot of land dedicated to power collection.
I imagine there are a lot of places in a continent like Africa where people might be happy to get by on what solar can give them in return for not having to worry about burning oil or anything else to get electricity.
"Variability" will included the African monsoons (Score:3)
> Variability will affect your power storage needs
Keep in mind that "variability" will included the African monsoon seasons (months varies across continent).
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Start with a ducted horizontal wind turbine. If you imagine a bunch of salad bowls stacked with spacers and you get the idea of what it would look like from the outside.
The ducts collect air from any direction and drive it down, through the turbine, and out the bottom. Water doesn't turn corners quiet as easily as air, so you can use the ducts to separate out the majority of liquid and drain it away from your turbine.
Then you and an armored shell of horizontal bands that can be moved up and down to reduce
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> There's your monsoon-resistant wind turbine.
And now initial cost and ongoing maintenance costs are scaled by what factors? Assuming it really is that simple of course.
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The additional cost over a normal horizontal ducted turbine is, of course, the new shell and the actuator it requires.
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Coal and NatGas don't need delivery... must be active coal mines, and active NatGas sources in-country.
2) Fallacy... how's the solar power at night? How's that wind on a no-wind day? Guarantee that those things aren't gonna vanish in the middle of the night to be sold online or to a ganglord?
3) So, you can carry a house-sized solar panel to recharge your dead cell phone? I highly doubt anyone is gonna be trucking around solar panels to set up someplace, simply following where people go. I know you'll b
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It's like you didn't bother actually reading my post and just responded in ignorance.
It happens here, but perhaps you'd be happier on Reddit?
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There's actually only one reason.
They can't get credit for anything else.
African nations are exceptionally capital poor. Basically all projects are funded by foreign investment banks.
Last decade and a half was significant reduction on any power plant infrastructure loans that were for anything other than solar and wind, of which time after 2015 (Paris Agreement) was almost a total ban. This hit even the one exception in Africa: SA, and is one of the reasons for their constant blackouts. Though as is the cas
Ya, but ... (Score:2)
> Investor Tilleard says "Renewable energy is now unequivocally the fastest, cheapest, and most bankable way to connect people, companies and economies to the megawatts they need to grow."
It's a scam - the U.S. Dear Leader has said so many, many times, so it must be that. /s
(And his Party and followers are happy to acquiesce.)
yay! (Score:1)
Someone needs to tell the locals that there is copper in the transformers and cables, and that the batteries make wonderful fires that don't get put out by high winds or heavy rains.
Shocking! (Score:3)
[1]I don't think anyone [slashdot.org] [2]could have seen this coming [slashdot.org] [3]for any reason [slashdot.org] [4]at all. [slashdot.org]
[1] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/12/31/001211/cheap-solar-is-transforming-lives-and-economies-across-africa
[2] https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/11/15/0433216/why-solarpunk-is-already-happening-in-africa
[3] https://news.slashdot.org/story/24/10/13/0056259/zambia-faces-a-climate-induced-energy-crisis
[4] https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/06/17/1956259/kenyas-first-nuclear-plant-faces-fierce-opposition
Poor Power Plants (Score:2)
When your power plants are non-existent or unreliable, a power source you can purchase and maintain becomes a wonderful choice.
Similarly, people living in a homestead situation do the same thing. Alaska cabins almost all have solar and often have wind or a water turbine.
SHS has delivered power to hundreds of millions (Score:2)
The estimate is that about 300m people in Africa now have access to more (and more reliable) electricity thanks to the adoption of solar home systems (typically a panel, integrated battery, LED, phone charge, and outlet for a small appliance). Community power systems are providing transport as well. It’s going to be transformative. As I’ve mentioned here before, it means kids can do their homework at night, food stays fresh for longer thanks to being able to run a fridge, and respiratory health
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and yet, they still whole-heartedly support el Bunko. I think their economic philosophy means shit to tree. Their only actually philosophy is to make money off whatever political grift-horse is current.
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In Soviet America, the industry and market winners pick the government!
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> In Soviet America, the industry and market winners pick the government!
Nope, the voters pick the government. It's still one person one vote. The problem is the voters don't do any homework. They just vote for the politicians that tells them the most virtuous sounding story, actual accomplishments in the realm of problem solving are not required. Promise to address homelessness and fail to do so as mayor, then promise to address homelessness and fail as state governor, wasting billions of dollars along the way that helped few but enriched those "researching" the problem and "pr
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Not for President or Vice President, that's the Electoral College, so everyone's been wrong when everyone blames us for Trump.
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Not really.
(1) Candidates do not try for the popular vote, they try for the electoral vote. They run their campaigns completely differently as a result. If the popular vote had been the goal then all candidates would have had very different campaigns. It is a logical failure to look at popular vote results when no one was trying for that, when they were pursuing an electoral vote strategy that was intentionally suboptimal with respect to popular vote.
(2) The electoral college is itself has a very minor
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Correct, but tons on here (I don't have a list... don't even know if that's possible to search for) blame the people (me, you, rsilvergun, everyone) for who's in office... even though none of us have any real influence.
What proportionality? There is none, unless everybody (and, I use the term loosely) voted for an equal split between Republican and Democrat... and, I doubt that's gonna happen... it's basically always gonna come down to who has the seemingly best policies based on who's up for election. An
Not really - gerrymandering matters... (Score:2)
Maybe one person - one vote, but some votes do not matter while other matter a lot due to sick electoral laws and gerrymandering...
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> Maybe one person - one vote, but some votes do not matter while other matter a lot due to sick electoral laws and gerrymandering...
Not really. Reality is that the electoral college has a very minor influence. Small states get a very small advantage in the electoral college, and the electoral college and two senate seat ideas was an essential compromise to create the United States in the first place. It prevents the agricultural regions from effectively being the serfs of the urban regions. The real problem is winner take all states. If states proportionally allocated electors things would be much better. Its the states, not the elector
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Nope, voters are secondary. Before you ever get to vote, the candidates on the ballot have been voted for with their wallets by campaign contributors, who do not contribute if there is no clear ROI for them. No contributors means no advertising means no votes. So the primary concern of any politician is to make and keep promises to the donors, and only then to figure out how to woo the voters.
Now the thing is, the interests of the donors and of the voters are often in conflict, so you usually can not keep b
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> Nope, voters are secondary. Before you ever get to vote, the candidates on the ballot have been voted for ...
By the same voters, but in the party primary elections that precede the general election.
> Sometimes we also have weird flashes like AOC or Mamdani, who maybe did start out with principles ...
Nope, nearly every first time winner is elected due to the perception of having principles, about caring for something the voters believe in. The issue just changes depending on the demographics of the district. Once in, incumbents have a huge advantage regardless of performance. They just need to project caring again during the re-election.
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Party primaries are in the $1B range now. This money comes from the same donors, not the voters, not the party, and in exactly the same way as presidentials. Sell the voters and the country out to the donors, get financing, create messaging, advertise, get votes. The same goes for all elections big or small. It's turtles all the way down.
Principles, yeah there you are just repeating what I said.
Money is a secondary thing ... (Score:2)
> For tl;dr take a look at this study from Cambridge [1]https://doi.org/10.1017/S15375 [doi.org]... voter preference has no correlation with policy outcomes in the US. But money does.
You are having a causation/correlation problem. Money is actually a secondary thing. It is incredible useful in building the perception that a candidate cares about an issue. To persuade the voter. Yet it is a secondary factor. The most successful and influential lobbyists (ex AARP, NRA, ...) are those that deliver voters, not money,
Again, it is voters that pick candidates, and decide their elections. You are just pointing out that voters who don't care too much about a given issue, who are not well info
[1] https://doi.org/10.1017/S15375
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And how does the AARP, or NRA, or anyone end up endorsing a candidate? They get a nice bite out of the campaign budget, and come to the realization that candidate x is indeed the best choice. Money spent, votes gained.
If voters decided elections, Sanders would have been president.
But you are missing my point. Who wins does not even matter. Every candidate who will be allowed to get anywhere works for the same donors, and will be delivering essentially the same policy. Your choices are candidates x, y, and z