7 ms·

Off-grid solar brings light, time and income to remotest villages

214 points by zdw 4y ago

epistasis 4y ago
For years (decade? decades?) this has been the promise of distributed solar and storage, and been analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage. The grid is very valuable, but it's also very expensive, and as storage and solar get really cheap, while grid costs stay stagnant, we may arrive at a future for which decentralized, disconnected microgrids are the cheapest energy solution for large chunks of the world.
- gpm 4y ago
  I'm not convinced that this is a case of leapfrogging. Off grid solar+storage is great when you and everyone around you is using very little electricity. It lets you go from "nothing" to "lightbulb at night" very cheaply, which is a huge improvement. Once you're using tons of electricity, list a 1st world home does (refrigeration/ac/microwaves/electric ovens/electric stoves/washing machines/vehicles/...), storage would have to be absurdly cheap for it to not be worthwhile to start hooking homes together to load balance and reduce (not eliminate) the need for storage. And then the same logic applies to hooking up cities/towns/villages. And in the end it almost certainly turns out that by the time you're a huge consumer of electricity like the 1st world you have a grid. A different path, but the same end result.
  - bryanlarsen 4y ago
    These are small islands. More storage is almost certainly cheaper than inter island connections.
    - gpm 4y ago
      All the pictures in the article are Sumba island, which has an area of 11k km^2 and roughly 800k people (slightly less population density than the state of California), I'm not sure that really counts as small. Yes island interconnects seem reasonably unlikely. Similarly Hawaii has no interconnects between the main islands [0] despite being a first world locale. A different geography leading to a different grid structure the mainland US isn't "leapfrogging", it's just a different geography leading to a different grid structure. [0] https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/ https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/
      - rippercushions 4y ago
        Indonesia has around 10,000 inhabited islands, although around half the population is on Java and most of the rest on the next big five (Borneo/Kalimantan, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali, Papua).
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - seb1204 4y ago
    Since there is a limit with what the solar system can provide the user/community will work with that. No need to say it can't accommodate a wasteful western way to use the energy.
    - gpm 4y ago
      If you mean to say "as long as they can't afford luxuries they'll do without them" that is no doubt true. However to suggest that once they can afford luxuries that are most cheaply acquired by going beyond a single-household electricity setup, that they will continue to do without them over some attachment to not having a grid, that claim seems almost certainly completely incorrect. It also needs to be said that electricity isn't just used for "wasteful things", it's used for making things more efficient, so that people can do more. The article talks about this in the context of lighting, but it's no less true in the context of washing machines, and dishwashers, and microwaves, and air-conditioning [1], and mechanized transportation (electric bikes/cars/...), and ... [1] http://corporatemechanical.com/how-air-conditioning-impacts-productivity/ http://corporatemechanical.com/how-air-conditioning-impacts-...
    - hedora 4y ago
      Wasteful is relative. Our house produces 250-300% of our usage most days, but 5-50% of our usage some weeks. Heating and cooling (and the computers that manage the batteries, which draw about 200W, including internet!) is hard to timeshift, but everything else is easy to move to sunny days. Anyway, on those sunny days, electricity is literally free. I wish I could just dump it into a magic box that pulled charcoal out of the atmosphere.
      - sdenton4 4y ago
        At some point I got an itch and looked into what it would take to run such a magic box myself. The lightbulb moment was realizing that of I did manage to pull a ton (or 15) of carbon out of the air by whatever method, I would then have to move that carbon... Somewhere. I had been looking especially at algae bio reactors, which leave you with a particularly soupy waste situation. :)
  - hedora 4y ago
    I’m not sure having a grid is the end state. The US is abandoning the grid in Puerto Rico and California (though the politicians won’t admit it, and the pork is still flowing). If solar and batteries continue to get cheaper, the cost of the grid hookup will eventually stop making economic sense for new construction.
  - epistasis 4y ago
    That sort of lifestyle is really feasible on solar. Rooftops alone are likely enough, or at worst some bit of agrovoltaics. The vast majority of Western energy is wasted, rejected as waste heat. Solar electrification skips over a wasteful thermodynamic conversion of heat to electricity. Even the rare case where fossil fuels seem at first glance as efficient, such as for heating water and homes, it turns out that 99% efficiency of conversion of fossil fuel energy to heat still requires 3-4x as much energy as a heat pump to get the same result. And don't get me started on how incredibly wimpy and inefficient ICE cars are.... unreliable bad machines. And the only, literally the only time I have seen somebody come up with napkin math to say that solar would be hard to install in sufficient quantity to meet existing lifestyles in countries with normal insolation, it has been using total energy, rather than the actual useful amount of energy. Solar and storage are gigantic technological marvels compared to the tech that delivered energy to us in the 20th century. Unless one's earning are tied directly to spreading FUD about these new technologies, it makes no sense not to acknowledge both the amazing tech curve of the past decades, and to speculate won the wonderful places that solar and storage in future will take us.
    - gpm 4y ago
      > That sort of lifestyle As I said in another comment, once people can afford a better lifestyle, they aren't remotely likely to choose to keep living the worse one. On the other hand, I too am a fan of solar and electricity. I completely buy the solar + storage + grid is sufficient for a western lifestyle. I'm not arguing against solar, I'm arguing against lack of grid, that connecting houses, towns, and cities together can save more money on storage than it costs to run the wires. You want to plan for very-close-to-worst generation + storage >= very-close-to-worst-case load over all time frames, and grids smooth over variations in both generation and load, which makes the worst cases go way down, which means that that equation requires a lot less storage (not none, but less). Incidentally I also think that "solar + wind + storage + grid" is an even better combination... and that wind power only works with a grid (because the scaling rules around them mean you want giant wind turbines that put out enough power for many houses)... but even with only solar grids just make too much sense.
      - 4y ago
  - neltnerb 4y ago
    Maybe it makes sense to truly integrate generation and storage with your neighbor. Between two towns separated by forty miles of roads? I don't think you get to the same end result. When production is in the same location as consumption, the interconnects can be way less expensive and in a disaster the grid has more redundancy. Plus it bootstraps way better, locally people get access to the initial benefits before the entire grid has been planned out. And as others suggest, those interconnects might go mostly unused, storage and generation is pretty impressive nowadays. But even besides the timing advantages, you just end up in a situation where the power grid is closer to the internet in architecture where sources and consumers of electricity are all over. We have the technology to handle that.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - 7952 4y ago
    A lot of places in the developing world have a large rural population that is widely spread out. You may have a family dwelling every 100m surrounded by a small farm with each dwelling connected by foot tracks. It is like taking a large city in America or Europe and spreading the population out across the entire county. This is a different challenge to connecting urban areas and small towns to a wider grid. IMHO it would be useful to have grid technology that could work as a web of low voltage/low current connections. Something that could be installed without needing lots of expertise and be intrinsically safe. Maybe even in the same package as water pipes.
    - joncrocks 4y ago
      The reason that high voltages are used is transmission efficiency. Low voltage = high current = less inefficient, less dangerous. High voltage = low current = more efficient, more dangerous. There's good reasons why overhead power lines are very high voltage.
- datadeft 4y ago
  This sounds nice but in reality you need sophisticated grid controlling measures to have a fixed frequency for many things. This is doable just good to be aware of it.
- jillesvangurp 4y ago
  In many parts of the world the grid is a combination of unreliable or not there at all. And the required level of investment to fix all that is at least short term not keeping up with the increase in demand. So, things are getting worse for people dependent on the grid. And where grids are actually available, they aren't necessarily cheap, which incentivizes people that use a lot of power to invest in alternatives. You see this with e.g. companies exploiting vehicle chargers. They all end up installing solar panels and investing in electricity infrastructure rather than just paying per kwh to their local grid provider. The grid is a last resort for them. This is going to be true for any business where energy is a big component of their cost. To get reliable and cheap power, people have to invest in their own generation. That's still expensive but increasingly more feasible and critical for especially small businesses. If you run e.g. a small shop and you have perishable goods in a fridge in a tropical country and the power goes out, you basically have a lot of melted / rotten goods after a few hours. Not great. If that happens a lot, your business dies. In the same way, having the AC on or off in a hot country can mean the difference between having your place full of customers or not. It's not optional. If grid power is only available a few hours a day, your business is at risk unless you fix a more reliable supply. Many grids in e.g. Africa are very unreliable and don't have enough capacity. In many countries people are still relying on generators for this but increasingly solar and batteries are becoming a viable alternative. The upfront cost of this is a big obstacle for many smaller businesses. As is the availability of components. But generators and fuel are also not free. And they break down and need maintenance too. And the exhaust fumes cause health issues. However, solutions in this space actually have a value and return on investment. So, providing lines of credit for this is actually something that is potentially a profitable business and not just charity. Plenty of entrepreneurs in Africa, the Middle East, parts of Asia, etc. that could use that to bootstrap their businesses and would be able to pay back loans with interest. I'd say micro grids will be a reality long before, if ever, people figure out cheap, reliable grid power in many of these places.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  > analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage Another example of this sort of dynamic are skipping credit cards for app based payments. Or not having much of a postal service because email. In all these cases I think its more of a shortcut than truly leapfrogging. Not as good in terms of redundancy (good for reliability) and interoperability.
CHB0403085482 4y ago
I think I use the same generator for my RV.
DoreenMichele 4y ago
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. Helping kids study, parents make money, people get together to watch shows on cell phones. It's a big deal and helps them connect to the larger world.
- photochemsyn 4y ago
  The unstated statistic in this article is that Indonesia's reliance on coal has grown from 20% of national energy production to 40% of energy production over the 2005-2020 period, which accounts for most of that 85% to 97% growth factor. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-clings-coal-despite-green-vision-economy-2021-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-clings-coa... The slow growth of renewables particularly in remote locations is certainly a good thing, but the actual nation-wide picture is just business-as-usual: > "The government has pledged to increase the renewable share to 23% by 2025. Still, data from energy think-tank IEEFA shows that about 16 GW of new coal power capacity is expected to come online between 2021 and 2030."
  - rippercushions 4y ago
    This is particularly sad since Indonesia is volcanically very active and has tons of potential for geothermal power. Many of its islands are also quite dry, which couples with the equatorial location makes them great for year-round solar.
    - twelvechairs 4y ago
      Nearly 60% of indonesias population and most of its industry are on Java, the most densely populated island in the world. 150m+ people on a place the size of Pennsylvania or Mississippi. Its absolutely not easy to find space for solar at scale in such a space constrained environment it would really require some massive infrastructure to a solar farm in the sea or another island. Singapore is a good comparison - a much richer country also space constrained they are only starting to develop renewables seriously now (solar farms in the sea etc.) Less populous islands sure but its a small proportion and they tend to have less money to tackle these issues also
sokoloff 4y ago
> Solar power is still fairly rare in Indonesia. 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. Most of the article is talking about homes that aren't even connected to the grid, so there's no grid to sell power back to in the first place. Sure, maybe there's also a law against it, but if the starting condition is "no electricity", it doesn't seem like the law is much of an impediment.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  From TFA: 97% of Indonesians are on the power grid; those are the ones who'd ostensibly be selling back (not these microfinanced units in the remaining 3%).
ronnier 4y ago
What’s going to happen when the haves can afford to buy solar and go off grid leaving the have-nots left on a grid increasingly void of people who can pay for it? I suspect off grid users will be taxed heavily and/or it’ll be illegal to not pump back into the grid. Will probably be illegal to go off grid in the future
- rektide 4y ago
  This was kind of the rural electrification challenge the US faced. Opting to wire almost everyone up was a costly endeavor at the time. But one we take for granted now. Given where the world is now, given how much easier decentralized solar & renewable are than the massified power generation of yore, I'm more conflicted today than I am comfortable with. The idea of sprawling microgrids, communities giving local access maybe cheap may grow up, but likely undrr diverse & inconsistent & biased policies... Likely as an Uberified enshittifying take on what a public utility ought be.
- jltsiren 4y ago
  I find it more likely that the poor will want to disconnect from the grid, because the grid is fundamentally about reliability. When your own systems fail, you still want power while you are waiting for repairs. At least if you can afford it.
- stephen_g 4y ago
  I hope to get a battery system to offset some of my costs, but I can't forsee not being connected to the grid as backup and to sell some excess energy back anyway. I don't have an electric car either, so while my current solar system (6.6kW) could power my current household energy use basically year-round (if I had sufficient battery capacity), I would only be able to slow charge solely off that, so I expect I will still be buying energy from the grid once I get an EV for times I want to fast charge (probably 11kW three phase), even with the solar and a hypothetical battery.
- zo1 4y ago
  This is already happening in South Africa. The grid pretty much can't provide and is now turned off for people for up to 40% of the day. So over the last decade, a huge amount of solar installations have made people a few small steps away from going off grid. But separate to that, they're paying less and less (0 in some cases), so "the grid" is stuck keeping: subsidized customers, customers who use almost 0 and customers that use lots illegally and don't pay. The power utility's answer: tax users that don't use any electricity. And not just a connection type flat fee. They want to punish people that use very little, ironically after begging people to "please stop using so much electricity".
quechimba 4y ago
Many families in the nearby village run generators at night. They can't afford solar panels so they pay 5 soles for gasoline just to have lights on when it gets dark. If they could afford solar they could have lights on every night for a one time cost. Most family don't have the luxury of running generators though. This project sounds really cool. I wonder if this can be done in the Peruvian Amazon. I'm sure several families could share the same solar panel and battery if they only use it for lighting and charging phones... Funding would be difficult, no one has money here.
- rektide 4y ago
  I can get quite a lot of night time light out of a $65 100Whr lipo and a $50 inverter. That sounds much better to me than a generator.
  - latchkey 4y ago
    You can get quite a of of it, at that price. Shipping to a remote island in the middle of nowhere, is more expensive.
    - rektide 4y ago
      In my mind I was comparing versus the alternative stated of buying a generator & fuel for it. The generator will be up-front pricier, weightier, and bulkier, by far on each count. So it still seems like a huge win to me versus what's available now, if the use case is as described.
      - quechimba 4y ago
        I'll try to find out how people could afford buying generators. Solar shouldn't be much more expensive but I can't find any prices online.
        notahacker 4y ago
        I think there's also the sunk cost aspect. You saved for a long time for the generator on the basis it would provide power for you for a very long time so an alternative to this prized asset isn't high on your list of things to spend all your savings on (even if on paper it was economically rational to do so)
gabereiser 4y ago
Water turbines can help too. If you combine solar, water, and wind with a decent storage system you could do all sorts of things. Automated irrigation of agriculture. Self-running aquaponics. A induction electric oven and cooktops for a restaurant, let alone the lighting and A/C.
rd07 4y ago
> 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. I little correction here, Indonesia do have a regulation that allow households to sell power back to the grid[1]. [1] https://money.kompas.com/read/2022/01/22/171500226/aturan-baru-plts-atap-terbit-kini-pelanggan-bisa-ekspor-listrik-100-persen-ke https://money.kompas.com/read/2022/01/22/171500226/aturan-ba...
- JamisonM 4y ago
  My Bahasa Indonesia is not strong enough to read that article but it seems to be referencing this: https://www.ahp.id/brighter-days-ahead-as-indonesias-ministry-of-energy-and-mineral-resources-revised-regulation-on-rooftop-solar-system/ https://www.ahp.id/brighter-days-ahead-as-indonesias-ministr... Reading the details is seems like it is still pretty true that there are regulations that don't allow households to sell power back to the grind. There are not regulations forbidding the practice but even with these reforms the practice seems regulated in a way to make it difficult and give the power generation and distribution companies total control: "Like the previous regime, the New Regulation limits the capacity of the rooftop solar system installed by the customer of such system within the business area of a state-owned entity holding an IUPTLU to 100% of their connected power. However, rooftop solar customers whose systems are connected to other IUPTLU holders besides a state-owned entity may be subject to a different limitation as determined by the relevant IUPTLU holders. These holders must declare their respective limitation on an annual basis.." My reading of this is that it is now possible for a IUPTLU to allow someone to offset more than 100% of their electricity usage but it is not required for any of them to provide that option, just register the terms with the regulator.
  - greenmartian 4y ago
    There are some interesting points there. 1. (For those on the state-owned retailer/distributor) Although you can't be credited for any generation over 100% (up from 65%), the extra credit does carry over in a 6-monthly cycle (up from 3). Which means, while you can't make a profit out of your generation, it does cater for seasonal variations to keep your bill at zero. Not the best, but not terrible. 2. (For private retailers) As you said, there's nothing requiring them to do anything. Also of interest is that, even with deregulation efforts in the early 2000s, the state still holds near-monopoly level of distribution/retail - especially in the residential market. The small number of private operators are either remote, or focused on industrial complexes. On the generation side, there's plenty of major private players, but most of them simply sell to the state (again, because of the near-monopoly).
cschmid 4y ago
Unfortunately, despite panels and batteries getting cheaper every year, not every rural household has the financial means to access these solutions. I'm really excited about initiatives creating microgrids with peer-to-peer payment systems, like solshare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33ERl42VYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33ERl42VYM
Scoundreller 4y ago
> Children sometimes studied by makeshift oil lamps, but these occasionally burned down homes when knocked over by the wind. So a big issue with these is that kerosene has a flash point of 37C to 62C. So at the lower end of the scale, they’re basically like gasoline and capable of lighting up all at once at barely above room temperature (and the burning flame will likely warm it up a bit). Meanwhile diesel is 52C to 93C and would burn more slowly if a lamp burning it were tipped over (and more likely to just get extinguished) There have been cheap “safety” lamps built that don’t explode when tipped over along with other safeguards for developing countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_bottle_lamp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_bottle_lamp https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/lamp-lustre-1.621831 https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/lamp-lustre-1.621831
- cperciva 4y ago
  Doesn't kerosene burn more cleanly than diesel though? You might save lives from fires but lose them from poor air quality.
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Yes, just pointing out the increased danger from kerosene because not a lot of people know the differences between kerosene and diesel (which can often be substituted)
vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago
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ricardobayes 4y ago
This is great but also I hope the non-profits have aftersale support for the panels. Considering their "copay" is $3.5 over 3 years it's unlikely the villagers would be able to replace a faulty panel. I hope this is not the case of "giving someone a fish", instead of teaching them how to fish.
aaron695 4y ago
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datadeft 4y ago
There are alternative methods that work over night without storage: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484721007022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235248472...
thoughtsbykean 4y ago
is it expected that every remote village has a smart phone?
kaon123 4y ago
I've worked a bit in this sector, and here are my observations: 1. Solar Home sets range from $5 flashlights with solarcells to $150 home lights+panels+phonecharger+radio to $400 sets with TV. The more expensive sets are usually paid off over time. 2. The impact of even the smallest flashlights on human wellbeing is enormous. You may imagine a village in the third world has a cosy campfire. But in truth it is usually too much effort to collect the wood, so people live in the dark half the day. The mentioned kerosine lamps are already a luxury to many. Having a flashlight so you can spot the snakes and spiders when you go outside at night to have a pee, or make sure you do not slip is life saving. Having a 100lumen light in your bedroom so you can see faintly your wife or husband while you have sex is amazing. 3. So this is about improving well-being. Not industrialising. These solar home systems do not significantly make people wealthier or more likely to become wealthy. It just makes them 20% happier. You need significantly more and cheaper power to start a factory. For that, "Commercial and Industrial solar" is a big deal. Where companies in India/Africa/Indonesia buy $10-30k worth of solar panels + battery + inverter to make sure their factories are always powered. Cost of up-front capital and competing with subsidised energy makes this not always a no-brainer. 4. Grid expansion is... expensive. I do not think we'll see the grid covering everywhere by the end of this century. And microgrids are great, but also expensive. How expensive? Consider that connecting your house to the grid in a developed country costs about $10k. Companies have been able to connect villages under the grid for about $1500 per house. Microgrids (with all their limitations) can sometimes do it for $700. If you consider that a household makes anywhere between $100 and $700 per year, then you see that the only way to be able to do this is with heavy subsidies (development aid) from foreign countries. And then you still need to pay for the actual power and maintain the grid. If that costs $300/household/year, and the household makes less per year, then your economics go nowhere. One more thing: A related problem that affects the same population is that of clean cooking. Poor people (women) cook on wood or charcoal instead of electricity or gas. Arguably this is the worst problem in the world (yes worse than war, natural disasters, HIV, Malaria and all other diseases together) as millions of people die from it each year. Solutions are similar: Selling small gas stoves. Tl dr; The real problem with energy poverty is that the people it is trying to reach are unimaginably poor. Way poorer than that great grandfather of yours that grew up in poverty. Solve poverty and you solve energy.
reacharavindh 4y ago
I would really like a setup where my roof top solar panels makes me self-sufficient for energy needs, but the key hurdle is battery storage. In a town house in Netherlands, for a family of three, I use on an average 250 kWh of electricity (excluding heating by gas) per month. I’m getting solar panels installed in my roof to the tune of 10 x 420wp panels expected to generate 280kWh of electricity per month. My primary concern about batteries is the fire risk. Even if I were to take on the risk and have a battery bank in the garden shed, they’d essentially give me a buffer of about half a day’s worth of buffer. This makes it really not worth taking on the risk for such a little benefit, and continue to rely on the grid as my battery. I’m waiting for that energy storage breakthrough that would allow me to store the excess energy generated in the summer for use in the winter. May be producing hydrogen safely in the backyard or have a tank of compressed air below the garden or some kind of flow battery that can be buried under the garden shed etc. Hopefully it comes to life while I still make money and have the interest to do all this :-)
- guiriduro 4y ago
  Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all. There's the cost, fire risk, and just the simple alternative of selling excess production for free/discounted grid usage at other times. You're still saving the planet to the same degree, and doing it more cheaply too, with fewer things to go wrong.
  - lightedman 4y ago
    "Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all." Power load smoothing, emergency backup. I been through a couple of natural disasters, and you quickly realize storage of power is just as key as power generation.
    - tuukkah 4y ago
      To reduce the storage needs, I think most people could be flexible with their power usage during emergencies, high prices or bad (local) production. For example, I can typically postpone big-screen movie nights, doing the hoovering/laundry, cooking in the (electric) oven, heating the (electric) sauna. For one day every now and then, it's no problem to turn off the convenience heating of the bathroom floor either. You can check your power consumption during sleeping hours to get a base level. Then, on a normal day, I use 3 to 10 kWh but can fairly painlessly cut it down to 1.5 kWh if needed, which would be more feasible to store in a battery.
easytiger 4y ago
The problem is, in much of Africa, like anything else, you build a solar installation and don't have an armed guard it will quickly go AWOL

214 points by zdw 4y ago

For years (decade? decades?) this has been the promise of distributed solar and storage, and been analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage. The grid is very valuable, but it's also very expensive, and as storage and solar get really cheap, while grid costs stay stagnant, we may arrive at a future for which decentralized, disconnected microgrids are the cheapest energy solution for large chunks of the world.

gpm 4y ago
I'm not convinced that this is a case of leapfrogging. Off grid solar+storage is great when you and everyone around you is using very little electricity. It lets you go from "nothing" to "lightbulb at night" very cheaply, which is a huge improvement. Once you're using tons of electricity, list a 1st world home does (refrigeration/ac/microwaves/electric ovens/electric stoves/washing machines/vehicles/...), storage would have to be absurdly cheap for it to not be worthwhile to start hooking homes together to load balance and reduce (not eliminate) the need for storage. And then the same logic applies to hooking up cities/towns/villages. And in the end it almost certainly turns out that by the time you're a huge consumer of electricity like the 1st world you have a grid. A different path, but the same end result.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  These are small islands. More storage is almost certainly cheaper than inter island connections.
  - gpm 4y ago
    All the pictures in the article are Sumba island, which has an area of 11k km^2 and roughly 800k people (slightly less population density than the state of California), I'm not sure that really counts as small. Yes island interconnects seem reasonably unlikely. Similarly Hawaii has no interconnects between the main islands [0] despite being a first world locale. A different geography leading to a different grid structure the mainland US isn't "leapfrogging", it's just a different geography leading to a different grid structure. [0] https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/ https://puc.hawaii.gov/energy/
    - rippercushions 4y ago
      Indonesia has around 10,000 inhabited islands, although around half the population is on Java and most of the rest on the next big five (Borneo/Kalimantan, Sumatra, Sulawesi, Bali, Papua).
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- seb1204 4y ago
  Since there is a limit with what the solar system can provide the user/community will work with that. No need to say it can't accommodate a wasteful western way to use the energy.
  - gpm 4y ago
    If you mean to say "as long as they can't afford luxuries they'll do without them" that is no doubt true. However to suggest that once they can afford luxuries that are most cheaply acquired by going beyond a single-household electricity setup, that they will continue to do without them over some attachment to not having a grid, that claim seems almost certainly completely incorrect. It also needs to be said that electricity isn't just used for "wasteful things", it's used for making things more efficient, so that people can do more. The article talks about this in the context of lighting, but it's no less true in the context of washing machines, and dishwashers, and microwaves, and air-conditioning [1], and mechanized transportation (electric bikes/cars/...), and ... [1] http://corporatemechanical.com/how-air-conditioning-impacts-productivity/ http://corporatemechanical.com/how-air-conditioning-impacts-...
  - hedora 4y ago
    Wasteful is relative. Our house produces 250-300% of our usage most days, but 5-50% of our usage some weeks. Heating and cooling (and the computers that manage the batteries, which draw about 200W, including internet!) is hard to timeshift, but everything else is easy to move to sunny days. Anyway, on those sunny days, electricity is literally free. I wish I could just dump it into a magic box that pulled charcoal out of the atmosphere.
    - sdenton4 4y ago
      At some point I got an itch and looked into what it would take to run such a magic box myself. The lightbulb moment was realizing that of I did manage to pull a ton (or 15) of carbon out of the air by whatever method, I would then have to move that carbon... Somewhere. I had been looking especially at algae bio reactors, which leave you with a particularly soupy waste situation. :)
- hedora 4y ago
  I’m not sure having a grid is the end state. The US is abandoning the grid in Puerto Rico and California (though the politicians won’t admit it, and the pork is still flowing). If solar and batteries continue to get cheaper, the cost of the grid hookup will eventually stop making economic sense for new construction.
- epistasis 4y ago
  That sort of lifestyle is really feasible on solar. Rooftops alone are likely enough, or at worst some bit of agrovoltaics. The vast majority of Western energy is wasted, rejected as waste heat. Solar electrification skips over a wasteful thermodynamic conversion of heat to electricity. Even the rare case where fossil fuels seem at first glance as efficient, such as for heating water and homes, it turns out that 99% efficiency of conversion of fossil fuel energy to heat still requires 3-4x as much energy as a heat pump to get the same result. And don't get me started on how incredibly wimpy and inefficient ICE cars are.... unreliable bad machines. And the only, literally the only time I have seen somebody come up with napkin math to say that solar would be hard to install in sufficient quantity to meet existing lifestyles in countries with normal insolation, it has been using total energy, rather than the actual useful amount of energy. Solar and storage are gigantic technological marvels compared to the tech that delivered energy to us in the 20th century. Unless one's earning are tied directly to spreading FUD about these new technologies, it makes no sense not to acknowledge both the amazing tech curve of the past decades, and to speculate won the wonderful places that solar and storage in future will take us.
  - gpm 4y ago
    > That sort of lifestyle As I said in another comment, once people can afford a better lifestyle, they aren't remotely likely to choose to keep living the worse one. On the other hand, I too am a fan of solar and electricity. I completely buy the solar + storage + grid is sufficient for a western lifestyle. I'm not arguing against solar, I'm arguing against lack of grid, that connecting houses, towns, and cities together can save more money on storage than it costs to run the wires. You want to plan for very-close-to-worst generation + storage >= very-close-to-worst-case load over all time frames, and grids smooth over variations in both generation and load, which makes the worst cases go way down, which means that that equation requires a lot less storage (not none, but less). Incidentally I also think that "solar + wind + storage + grid" is an even better combination... and that wind power only works with a grid (because the scaling rules around them mean you want giant wind turbines that put out enough power for many houses)... but even with only solar grids just make too much sense.
    - 4y ago
- neltnerb 4y ago
  Maybe it makes sense to truly integrate generation and storage with your neighbor. Between two towns separated by forty miles of roads? I don't think you get to the same end result. When production is in the same location as consumption, the interconnects can be way less expensive and in a disaster the grid has more redundancy. Plus it bootstraps way better, locally people get access to the initial benefits before the entire grid has been planned out. And as others suggest, those interconnects might go mostly unused, storage and generation is pretty impressive nowadays. But even besides the timing advantages, you just end up in a situation where the power grid is closer to the internet in architecture where sources and consumers of electricity are all over. We have the technology to handle that.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- 7952 4y ago
  A lot of places in the developing world have a large rural population that is widely spread out. You may have a family dwelling every 100m surrounded by a small farm with each dwelling connected by foot tracks. It is like taking a large city in America or Europe and spreading the population out across the entire county. This is a different challenge to connecting urban areas and small towns to a wider grid. IMHO it would be useful to have grid technology that could work as a web of low voltage/low current connections. Something that could be installed without needing lots of expertise and be intrinsically safe. Maybe even in the same package as water pipes.
  - joncrocks 4y ago
    The reason that high voltages are used is transmission efficiency. Low voltage = high current = less inefficient, less dangerous. High voltage = low current = more efficient, more dangerous. There's good reasons why overhead power lines are very high voltage.
datadeft 4y ago
This sounds nice but in reality you need sophisticated grid controlling measures to have a fixed frequency for many things. This is doable just good to be aware of it.
jillesvangurp 4y ago
In many parts of the world the grid is a combination of unreliable or not there at all. And the required level of investment to fix all that is at least short term not keeping up with the increase in demand. So, things are getting worse for people dependent on the grid. And where grids are actually available, they aren't necessarily cheap, which incentivizes people that use a lot of power to invest in alternatives. You see this with e.g. companies exploiting vehicle chargers. They all end up installing solar panels and investing in electricity infrastructure rather than just paying per kwh to their local grid provider. The grid is a last resort for them. This is going to be true for any business where energy is a big component of their cost. To get reliable and cheap power, people have to invest in their own generation. That's still expensive but increasingly more feasible and critical for especially small businesses. If you run e.g. a small shop and you have perishable goods in a fridge in a tropical country and the power goes out, you basically have a lot of melted / rotten goods after a few hours. Not great. If that happens a lot, your business dies. In the same way, having the AC on or off in a hot country can mean the difference between having your place full of customers or not. It's not optional. If grid power is only available a few hours a day, your business is at risk unless you fix a more reliable supply. Many grids in e.g. Africa are very unreliable and don't have enough capacity. In many countries people are still relying on generators for this but increasingly solar and batteries are becoming a viable alternative. The upfront cost of this is a big obstacle for many smaller businesses. As is the availability of components. But generators and fuel are also not free. And they break down and need maintenance too. And the exhaust fumes cause health issues. However, solutions in this space actually have a value and return on investment. So, providing lines of credit for this is actually something that is potentially a profitable business and not just charity. Plenty of entrepreneurs in Africa, the Middle East, parts of Asia, etc. that could use that to bootstrap their businesses and would be able to pay back loans with interest. I'd say micro grids will be a reality long before, if ever, people figure out cheap, reliable grid power in many of these places.
nonethewiser 4y ago
> analogized to how developing countries leapfrogged to wireless telecom without the expensive wired last-mile telecom stage Another example of this sort of dynamic are skipping credit cards for app based payments. Or not having much of a postal service because email. In all these cases I think its more of a shortcut than truly leapfrogging. Not as good in terms of redundancy (good for reliability) and interoperability.

CHB0403085482 4y ago

I think I use the same generator for my RV.

DoreenMichele 4y ago

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. Helping kids study, parents make money, people get together to watch shows on cell phones. It's a big deal and helps them connect to the larger world.

photochemsyn 4y ago
The unstated statistic in this article is that Indonesia's reliance on coal has grown from 20% of national energy production to 40% of energy production over the 2005-2020 period, which accounts for most of that 85% to 97% growth factor. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-clings-coal-despite-green-vision-economy-2021-09-20/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indonesia-clings-coa... The slow growth of renewables particularly in remote locations is certainly a good thing, but the actual nation-wide picture is just business-as-usual: > "The government has pledged to increase the renewable share to 23% by 2025. Still, data from energy think-tank IEEFA shows that about 16 GW of new coal power capacity is expected to come online between 2021 and 2030."
- rippercushions 4y ago
  This is particularly sad since Indonesia is volcanically very active and has tons of potential for geothermal power. Many of its islands are also quite dry, which couples with the equatorial location makes them great for year-round solar.
  - twelvechairs 4y ago
    Nearly 60% of indonesias population and most of its industry are on Java, the most densely populated island in the world. 150m+ people on a place the size of Pennsylvania or Mississippi. Its absolutely not easy to find space for solar at scale in such a space constrained environment it would really require some massive infrastructure to a solar farm in the sea or another island. Singapore is a good comparison - a much richer country also space constrained they are only starting to develop renewables seriously now (solar farms in the sea etc.) Less populous islands sure but its a small proportion and they tend to have less money to tackle these issues also

sokoloff 4y ago

> Solar power is still fairly rare in Indonesia. 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. Most of the article is talking about homes that aren't even connected to the grid, so there's no grid to sell power back to in the first place. Sure, maybe there's also a law against it, but if the starting condition is "no electricity", it doesn't seem like the law is much of an impediment.

woodruffw 4y ago
From TFA: 97% of Indonesians are on the power grid; those are the ones who'd ostensibly be selling back (not these microfinanced units in the remaining 3%).

ronnier 4y ago

What’s going to happen when the haves can afford to buy solar and go off grid leaving the have-nots left on a grid increasingly void of people who can pay for it? I suspect off grid users will be taxed heavily and/or it’ll be illegal to not pump back into the grid. Will probably be illegal to go off grid in the future

rektide 4y ago
This was kind of the rural electrification challenge the US faced. Opting to wire almost everyone up was a costly endeavor at the time. But one we take for granted now. Given where the world is now, given how much easier decentralized solar & renewable are than the massified power generation of yore, I'm more conflicted today than I am comfortable with. The idea of sprawling microgrids, communities giving local access maybe cheap may grow up, but likely undrr diverse & inconsistent & biased policies... Likely as an Uberified enshittifying take on what a public utility ought be.
jltsiren 4y ago
I find it more likely that the poor will want to disconnect from the grid, because the grid is fundamentally about reliability. When your own systems fail, you still want power while you are waiting for repairs. At least if you can afford it.
stephen_g 4y ago
I hope to get a battery system to offset some of my costs, but I can't forsee not being connected to the grid as backup and to sell some excess energy back anyway. I don't have an electric car either, so while my current solar system (6.6kW) could power my current household energy use basically year-round (if I had sufficient battery capacity), I would only be able to slow charge solely off that, so I expect I will still be buying energy from the grid once I get an EV for times I want to fast charge (probably 11kW three phase), even with the solar and a hypothetical battery.
zo1 4y ago
This is already happening in South Africa. The grid pretty much can't provide and is now turned off for people for up to 40% of the day. So over the last decade, a huge amount of solar installations have made people a few small steps away from going off grid. But separate to that, they're paying less and less (0 in some cases), so "the grid" is stuck keeping: subsidized customers, customers who use almost 0 and customers that use lots illegally and don't pay. The power utility's answer: tax users that don't use any electricity. And not just a connection type flat fee. They want to punish people that use very little, ironically after begging people to "please stop using so much electricity".

quechimba 4y ago

Many families in the nearby village run generators at night. They can't afford solar panels so they pay 5 soles for gasoline just to have lights on when it gets dark. If they could afford solar they could have lights on every night for a one time cost. Most family don't have the luxury of running generators though. This project sounds really cool. I wonder if this can be done in the Peruvian Amazon. I'm sure several families could share the same solar panel and battery if they only use it for lighting and charging phones... Funding would be difficult, no one has money here.

rektide 4y ago
I can get quite a lot of night time light out of a $65 100Whr lipo and a $50 inverter. That sounds much better to me than a generator.
- latchkey 4y ago
  You can get quite a of of it, at that price. Shipping to a remote island in the middle of nowhere, is more expensive.
  - rektide 4y ago
    In my mind I was comparing versus the alternative stated of buying a generator & fuel for it. The generator will be up-front pricier, weightier, and bulkier, by far on each count. So it still seems like a huge win to me versus what's available now, if the use case is as described.
    - quechimba 4y ago
      I'll try to find out how people could afford buying generators. Solar shouldn't be much more expensive but I can't find any prices online.
      - notahacker 4y ago
        I think there's also the sunk cost aspect. You saved for a long time for the generator on the basis it would provide power for you for a very long time so an alternative to this prized asset isn't high on your list of things to spend all your savings on (even if on paper it was economically rational to do so)

gabereiser 4y ago

Water turbines can help too. If you combine solar, water, and wind with a decent storage system you could do all sorts of things. Automated irrigation of agriculture. Self-running aquaponics. A induction electric oven and cooktops for a restaurant, let alone the lighting and A/C.

rd07 4y ago

> 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. I little correction here, Indonesia do have a regulation that allow households to sell power back to the grid[1]. [1] https://money.kompas.com/read/2022/01/22/171500226/aturan-baru-plts-atap-terbit-kini-pelanggan-bisa-ekspor-listrik-100-persen-ke https://money.kompas.com/read/2022/01/22/171500226/aturan-ba...

JamisonM 4y ago
My Bahasa Indonesia is not strong enough to read that article but it seems to be referencing this: https://www.ahp.id/brighter-days-ahead-as-indonesias-ministry-of-energy-and-mineral-resources-revised-regulation-on-rooftop-solar-system/ https://www.ahp.id/brighter-days-ahead-as-indonesias-ministr... Reading the details is seems like it is still pretty true that there are regulations that don't allow households to sell power back to the grind. There are not regulations forbidding the practice but even with these reforms the practice seems regulated in a way to make it difficult and give the power generation and distribution companies total control: "Like the previous regime, the New Regulation limits the capacity of the rooftop solar system installed by the customer of such system within the business area of a state-owned entity holding an IUPTLU to 100% of their connected power. However, rooftop solar customers whose systems are connected to other IUPTLU holders besides a state-owned entity may be subject to a different limitation as determined by the relevant IUPTLU holders. These holders must declare their respective limitation on an annual basis.." My reading of this is that it is now possible for a IUPTLU to allow someone to offset more than 100% of their electricity usage but it is not required for any of them to provide that option, just register the terms with the regulator.
- greenmartian 4y ago
  There are some interesting points there. 1. (For those on the state-owned retailer/distributor) Although you can't be credited for any generation over 100% (up from 65%), the extra credit does carry over in a 6-monthly cycle (up from 3). Which means, while you can't make a profit out of your generation, it does cater for seasonal variations to keep your bill at zero. Not the best, but not terrible. 2. (For private retailers) As you said, there's nothing requiring them to do anything. Also of interest is that, even with deregulation efforts in the early 2000s, the state still holds near-monopoly level of distribution/retail - especially in the residential market. The small number of private operators are either remote, or focused on industrial complexes. On the generation side, there's plenty of major private players, but most of them simply sell to the state (again, because of the near-monopoly).

cschmid 4y ago

Unfortunately, despite panels and batteries getting cheaper every year, not every rural household has the financial means to access these solutions. I'm really excited about initiatives creating microgrids with peer-to-peer payment systems, like solshare: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33ERl42VYM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v33ERl42VYM

Scoundreller 4y ago

> Children sometimes studied by makeshift oil lamps, but these occasionally burned down homes when knocked over by the wind. So a big issue with these is that kerosene has a flash point of 37C to 62C. So at the lower end of the scale, they’re basically like gasoline and capable of lighting up all at once at barely above room temperature (and the burning flame will likely warm it up a bit). Meanwhile diesel is 52C to 93C and would burn more slowly if a lamp burning it were tipped over (and more likely to just get extinguished) There have been cheap “safety” lamps built that don’t explode when tipped over along with other safeguards for developing countries: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_bottle_lamp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_bottle_lamp https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/lamp-lustre-1.621831 https://gulfnews.com/lifestyle/lamp-lustre-1.621831

cperciva 4y ago
Doesn't kerosene burn more cleanly than diesel though? You might save lives from fires but lose them from poor air quality.
- Scoundreller 4y ago
  Yes, just pointing out the increased danger from kerosene because not a lot of people know the differences between kerosene and diesel (which can often be substituted)

vrglvrglvrgl 4y ago

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ricardobayes 4y ago

This is great but also I hope the non-profits have aftersale support for the panels. Considering their "copay" is $3.5 over 3 years it's unlikely the villagers would be able to replace a faulty panel. I hope this is not the case of "giving someone a fish", instead of teaching them how to fish.

aaron695 4y ago

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datadeft 4y ago

There are alternative methods that work over night without storage: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352484721007022 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235248472...

thoughtsbykean 4y ago

is it expected that every remote village has a smart phone?

kaon123 4y ago

I've worked a bit in this sector, and here are my observations: 1. Solar Home sets range from $5 flashlights with solarcells to $150 home lights+panels+phonecharger+radio to $400 sets with TV. The more expensive sets are usually paid off over time. 2. The impact of even the smallest flashlights on human wellbeing is enormous. You may imagine a village in the third world has a cosy campfire. But in truth it is usually too much effort to collect the wood, so people live in the dark half the day. The mentioned kerosine lamps are already a luxury to many. Having a flashlight so you can spot the snakes and spiders when you go outside at night to have a pee, or make sure you do not slip is life saving. Having a 100lumen light in your bedroom so you can see faintly your wife or husband while you have sex is amazing. 3. So this is about improving well-being. Not industrialising. These solar home systems do not significantly make people wealthier or more likely to become wealthy. It just makes them 20% happier. You need significantly more and cheaper power to start a factory. For that, "Commercial and Industrial solar" is a big deal. Where companies in India/Africa/Indonesia buy $10-30k worth of solar panels + battery + inverter to make sure their factories are always powered. Cost of up-front capital and competing with subsidised energy makes this not always a no-brainer. 4. Grid expansion is... expensive. I do not think we'll see the grid covering everywhere by the end of this century. And microgrids are great, but also expensive. How expensive? Consider that connecting your house to the grid in a developed country costs about $10k. Companies have been able to connect villages under the grid for about $1500 per house. Microgrids (with all their limitations) can sometimes do it for $700. If you consider that a household makes anywhere between $100 and $700 per year, then you see that the only way to be able to do this is with heavy subsidies (development aid) from foreign countries. And then you still need to pay for the actual power and maintain the grid. If that costs $300/household/year, and the household makes less per year, then your economics go nowhere. One more thing: A related problem that affects the same population is that of clean cooking. Poor people (women) cook on wood or charcoal instead of electricity or gas. Arguably this is the worst problem in the world (yes worse than war, natural disasters, HIV, Malaria and all other diseases together) as millions of people die from it each year. Solutions are similar: Selling small gas stoves. Tl dr; The real problem with energy poverty is that the people it is trying to reach are unimaginably poor. Way poorer than that great grandfather of yours that grew up in poverty. Solve poverty and you solve energy.

reacharavindh 4y ago

I would really like a setup where my roof top solar panels makes me self-sufficient for energy needs, but the key hurdle is battery storage. In a town house in Netherlands, for a family of three, I use on an average 250 kWh of electricity (excluding heating by gas) per month. I’m getting solar panels installed in my roof to the tune of 10 x 420wp panels expected to generate 280kWh of electricity per month. My primary concern about batteries is the fire risk. Even if I were to take on the risk and have a battery bank in the garden shed, they’d essentially give me a buffer of about half a day’s worth of buffer. This makes it really not worth taking on the risk for such a little benefit, and continue to rely on the grid as my battery. I’m waiting for that energy storage breakthrough that would allow me to store the excess energy generated in the summer for use in the winter. May be producing hydrogen safely in the backyard or have a tank of compressed air below the garden or some kind of flow battery that can be buried under the garden shed etc. Hopefully it comes to life while I still make money and have the interest to do all this :-)

guiriduro 4y ago
Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all. There's the cost, fire risk, and just the simple alternative of selling excess production for free/discounted grid usage at other times. You're still saving the planet to the same degree, and doing it more cheaply too, with fewer things to go wrong.
- lightedman 4y ago
  "Don't really see why people with solar that are connected to the grid actually want to install batteries at all." Power load smoothing, emergency backup. I been through a couple of natural disasters, and you quickly realize storage of power is just as key as power generation.
  - tuukkah 4y ago
    To reduce the storage needs, I think most people could be flexible with their power usage during emergencies, high prices or bad (local) production. For example, I can typically postpone big-screen movie nights, doing the hoovering/laundry, cooking in the (electric) oven, heating the (electric) sauna. For one day every now and then, it's no problem to turn off the convenience heating of the bathroom floor either. You can check your power consumption during sleeping hours to get a base level. Then, on a normal day, I use 3 to 10 kWh but can fairly painlessly cut it down to 1.5 kWh if needed, which would be more feasible to store in a battery.

easytiger 4y ago

The problem is, in much of Africa, like anything else, you build a solar installation and don't have an armed guard it will quickly go AWOL