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For climate and livelihoods, Africa bets big on solar mini-grids
- Filligree 2y agoBecause they failed to maintain or invest in a regular grid. Off-grid, battery-backed is far more expensive than generator-backed at scale… at least for now. And you still need generators for poor weather.
- thinkingkong 2y agoYoure also forgetting another component which is that the instrastructure gets torn down or stolen because it has market value. The replacement, maintenance, and security of wired grids is likely higher.
- curiousmind96 2y agoWhy would infrastructure get torn down once it’s in place?
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- dgacmu 2y agoCopper wire has high resale value. So do solar panels. Copper theft is a problem worldwide, including the US.
- atonse 2y agoI was at my local Home Depot last weekend and the rep told me that just a few weeks prior, a couple people stole a couple rolls of electrical wire (romex) and the value was over $4,000 because of the cost of the copper in it. I was buying a 15ft strand and it was $18.
- philipkglass 2y agoCopper as a commodity is currently worth under $5/pound: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper It's probably worth even less if you have to resell wire to recycling businesses of the "no questions about where you got it" variety. Are these wire rolls large enough to contain a thousand pounds of copper?
- atonse 2y agoNot sure but the price tag of each roll was about $1,500. So I think it was a 1000ft spool.
- zdragnar 2y agoThe local militia or government wants money and doesn't care overmuch about the locals themselves, presumably.
- soulofmischief 2y agoYou seem to have conveniently forgotten about centuries of colonialism, resource exploitation and state-sponsored regime changes, which still plague Africa today.
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- curiousmind96 2y ago[dead]
- twoodfin 2y agoHow would you differentiate Africa from East Asia in those regards?
- ForTheKidz 2y ago1) se asia is a much more densely populated region, making infrastructure cheaper per capita to produce (some things scale better, most do not) and 2) se asia has capital flowing through it at a far higher volume, mostly because of manufacturing. I can't speak to why there historically hasn't been as much manufacturing in Africa—I'm guessing it's just cheaper to colocate with others for lower costs across the board? Regardless, (neo)colonialism does dominate both regions—it's a hard state to avoid if you want to interact with a global economy at a deep financial disadvantage.
- alephnerd 2y ago> se asia is a much more densely populated region, making infrastructure cheaper per capita to produce Most of South East Asia has developmental indicators comparable to most of Sub Saharan Africa. Sub Saharan Africa has plenty of basket cases (DRC, CAR, Mozambique), but it also has plenty of countries on the same general trajectory as South East Asian countries (Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Senegal). "Africa" and "Asia" is broad and it's dumb ti compare the two. > se asia has capital flowing through it at a far higher volume, mostly because of manufacturing Not exactly. Much of South East Asia has strong capital market integrations with Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, and South Korea which makes it easier for liquid capital to flow. African nations that have integrated their capital markets with foreign markets open to taking risks in LDCs (UAE, China, India) have seen a leapfrogging in economic capabilities. You see this with Ethiopia, Nigeria, Kenya, and Uganda. > se asia What do you mean by SEA? And what do you mean by East Asia?
- toomuchtodo 2y agohttps://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/solar-pv-prices https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline https://developmentreimagined.com/infographic-exploring-africas-renewable-solar-power-potential-in-2023/ https://developmentreimagined.com/infographic-exploring-afri... https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly https://app.electricitymaps.com/map/72h/hourly (center map on Africa) Africa is leapfrogging legacy electrical infra models, and likely has no need for the legacy model of centralized generation and long haul transmission to load centers. (the battery costs in the Our World in Data citation are already out of date, and as of 2023, the average global price of batteries was $95/kWh, see https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/china-s-batteries-are-now-cheap-enough-to-power-huge-shifts https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-07-09/china-... | https://archive.today/DklaA https://archive.today/DklaA for more)
- astral_drama 2y agoI recently bought 4 lifepo4 12v 100ah ~1200 wh for $159 off Amazon as a retail customer. Battery storage is indeed cheap and accessible to the average person. Pair it with new 24% efficient solar panels and you can see why there's little to be gained by running expensive lines to distribute power when it can be sent everywhere wirelessly. It's not too different to how developing counties rolled out wireless Internet and gained a huge benefit without much infrastructure investment.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoIndeed, and that is current state; renewables and battery manufacturing continues to ramp, which will encourage further cost declines. This is objectively good, it democratizes low carbon, cheap energy.
- breakyerself 2y agoIt's been obvious for a long time this was going to be the development path for Africa. Just as they leapfrogged land line telephones for cellular. Africa was never going to build out massive coal and natural gas based electrical grids with transmission lines substations and utility poles bringing electricity to every home. The capital isn't there and the cost of renewables keeps falling.
- bluGill 2y agoGrids are better if you have the capital to build them. Most of arfica has been too unstable to safely invest in. Everytime things start looking up there is another revolution and all investment is lost. Of course with the large number of countries there, that generalization is false. But it is overall close a enough to true.
- alephnerd 2y ago> Most of arfica (sic) has been too unstable to safely invest in. Everytime things start looking up there is another revolution and all investment is lost You can't view Africa with such broad strokes. A West African country with British administrative norms like Nigeria is going to have entirely different outcomes compared to a former Portuguese colony impacted by the Colonial Wars like Mozambique. Reality is, plenty of African countries do have the right building blocks, and are seeing a significant amount of capital investment from the Gulf States, China, and India because their investors understand how to operate in similar conditions from 10-30 years ago. Whenever an African country like Nigeria or Kenya does something good, it's positive attributes as masked as part of "Africa" so Western donor organizations can continue to justify spending in basket cases like Rwanda or Mozambique, which is what this article itself is doing. The Mini-Grid project in the article is a program that private and public sector players in Nigeria worked on, and only succeeded because of Nigeria's administrative apparatus and 10 years of hard work (started back in 2015-16). The only learning this provides is that 1. You need a relatively competent bureaucratic system in order to actually execute on initiatives 2. You need to have a robust domestic private sector that works closely with the public sector and foreign investors 3. This can only be done through a profit motivation, not a local or international non-profit boondoggle, as that's the only way to unlock the economies of scale needed and incentivize execution
- postepowanieadm 2y agoMini-grids may be the part the EU is missing. Selling your surplus ev power to grid is a huge waste, charging your neighbours car is a better use.
- shawabawa3 2y agoBut with mini grids you'll just end up with over supply during sunshine/wind with nobody at all to sell the excess to
- rssoconnor 2y agoCan you use the spare electricity to stockpile some sodium hydroxide or something?
- adrianN 2y agoIn the near future most cars could be happy to accept a charge
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago> you'll just end up with over supply during sunshine/wind You will only need enough storage to cover 12-24 hours to reduce that a lot: Much of the surplus power can be put into vehicles when they're resting at home overnight, or for evening and next morning peak. For the rest, well, so what? Temporary "oversupply" on days when there's lots of sun and no vehicle to charge up is not the worst problem to have - it won't kill anyone. The worst that you can say about it is that it's a misallocation of resources to sometimes have the power supply that you can't use or sell. But solar panels and batteries are becoming cheap. So the upside of having occasional surplus remains, the downside diminishes.
- bpfrh 2y agoThe problem is not necessarily day/night but summer with solar+and possible wind and winter with less solar and possible no wind. So you need to store energy for more than a few hours or generate it from something else. You then have the choice to use batteries(costly for megwatts as of now), things like hydrostorage, fossil fuels(gas/coal/oil) or hydrogen generated from renewable sources. If you need big energy storages anyway, it makes more sense that communities pool their money together and invest in something like hydrostorage, but then you need a grid to connect the communities and if you do that, you might as well connect everything in the country so the grid is better at balancing.
- alephnerd 2y agoSmall pet peeve - saying "Africa" is too broad a statement for a continent with 54 countries, and does a disservice to the actual government institutions working on development. They should explicitly call out Nigeria instead of treating it as "Africa". Nigeria is unique in how they actually have a formal industrial strategy for mini-grids [0] thanks to World Bank support [1] It's a uniquely Nigerian program and Nigeria's Rural Electrification Administration (REA) should be given it's due credit. When Boko Haram does something bad it's "Nigeria", but when Abuja does something good it's "Africa". Finally, what works for a federal state with a relatively strong civil service like Nigeria cannot be replicated in every "African" country, due to entirely different administrative and bureaucratic norms and capacity. [0] - https://rea.gov.ng/minigrids/ https://rea.gov.ng/minigrids/ [1] - https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/1ea00bb3-aaab-54c0-80cd-dcec0f0db396 https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/1ea...
- frereubu 2y agoThis gets my goat as well, particularly given how vast Africa is (the Mercator projection does it no favours in that regard) and the diversity of cultures.
- alephnerd 2y agoAmen to all of that. It feels like all discourse about Africa is either super negative ("heart of darkness") or super paternalistic ("white/outsider [asian and middle eastern countries use the same discourse] savior complex"). It's similar to the discourse I'd see about Asia as a kid 20-30 years ago, and ignores a lot of the tangible on the ground innovations happening.
- mmooss 2y agoThat was my first thought. Let's say you are an editor: You can be accurate and write 'Nigeria' in the headline, but you realize that most people have no idea where or what Nigeria is - that's a bad thing, but true. If you write 'Africa', then many more people will learn about Nigeria. I don't have a good answer. Maybe they should squeeze both into the headline: 'For African climate and livelihoods, Nigeria bets big ...'
- johnohara 2y agoTo get a good insight into the problems faced by nations in West Africa and Southwest Africa as they try to implement electricity-based technologies to their populations, I highly recommend watching Season 7 of Itchy Boots on YouTube [0]. Her experiences as she "adventure rides" through this region tacitly documents the true nature of "life as it is lived" by the millions and millions of human beings residing there. It is stunning to consider and is an Africa I never knew existed. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8M9dV_BySaXNvQ_V1q4UU-DirPQlX0ZP https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8M9dV_BySaXNvQ_V1q4U...
- jpm_sd 2y agoOnePower is another organization doing this very successfully in Lesotho https://1pwrafrica.com/ https://1pwrafrica.com/
- NullPrefix 2y agoWhy are solar panels subject to VAT? If it's the way of the future and we want everyone to buy and use them then why are there taxes on them?
- HPsquared 2y agoIf people are buying them because they're a good idea and profitable / economical.. of course the state will want a cut. That's how it always works, everywhere.
- NullPrefix 2y agoState wanting a cut proves that the clean energy is not the number one priority
- HPsquared 2y agoWell that goes without saying.
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- dzonga 2y agosolar power is nice on a household and retail level. but let's be frank solar will not power industrial machinery needed to change africa's fortunes. hydrocarbons are cheap. solar yeah can be free but the capital needed to say a 1MW solar plant is about 350K USD while a 1 MW generator can be from 25k USD to 200K depending on manufacturer, type of fuel etc. Plus the generator can run all night.