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It really is a huge service not just to the developed world that needs to decarbonize but also a huge service to the developing world. Solar can be put up quick
by hangonhn 11mo ago
It really is a huge service not just to the developed world that needs to decarbonize but also a huge service to the developing world. Solar can be put up quickly and cheaply and is good for about 2 decades and can be paired with cheap LiFo batteries to give round the clock electricity. Both of these are relatively portable. It can really bootstrap the economies of local communities where infrastructure hasn't been built out. Then combined that with portable Internet connection via something like Starlink or one of the competitor networks, we can really enable the available human capital in developing nations to realize their potential.
It's all very exciting I think.
- jacquesm 11mo agoThe biggest bottle neck to really solving the energy problem is now the price and fragility of high voltage DC long haul connections. Between those and solar you can have energy anywhere any time.
- svara 11mo agoGreat point, you might dream of long range connections sending solar energy from the day into the night around the world. But, what exactly do you mean by fragility? In what way are they fragile?
- jacquesm 11mo agoThat they carry massive amounts of power so they'll help you to destruct themselves once the barrier is penetrated, are actually quite complex and can be sabotaged easily. This is a nice text on the underwater version: https://europacable.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Introduction-to-HVDC-Subsea-Cables-16-July-2012_.pdf https://europacable.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Introducti...
- more_corn 11mo agoIf only there was a way to deploy solar production at the point of consumption so power didn’t need to be transferred. We’d need large chunks of unused flat surface pointing towards the sky, preferably at an angle. Oh wait we have that on top of every home (coincidentally the south or west face of every roof provides about enough surface area to power most homes). Now we need some cheap way of storing energy produced during the day for use at night. Humm. Got that too. Government don’t even need to pay the full price for this resilience and climate mitigation. Programs offering fractional tax credits have shown great success in increasing deployments of rooftop solar and distributed battery storage.
- jacquesm 11mo agoYou missed the point entirely. If you can distribute the energy you don't need the storage and the storage is the problem right now.
- bryanlarsen 11mo agoStarlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. The solar+battery revolution is doing for power what cell phones did for communications in the third world in the 90's and 2000's.
- skydhash 11mo agoThe one issue with cellular connection is that some software and OS slurp data like there’s no tomorrow and you’re not paying for the connection.
- rdm_blackhole 11mo ago> Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. There is a huge swath of Australia that does not have good internet access and/or very poor cell phone coverage. And I am not talking about about people living in the middle of the desert, I am talking about people who are 10 to 15 minutes away by car from a small town. So yes Starlink or it's local equivalent are necessary.
- maccard 11mo agoMeanwhile here in UK, we’re unable to get phone signal in the middle of major population centres
- floam 11mo agoNot literally no signal/service, right? More likely “I have a few bars but data doesn’t seem to work… calls often won’t initiate unless 911?” thing you get when there’s too many devices connecting to an overburdened tower, in a network that needs more cells or something, and QoS/qci says no? If it’s a population center someone would probably have put up a tower on their land ll
- maccard 11mo agoYes. In the context of “cheap mobile data devices are widely accessible” I don’t think the distinction matters. If you’re relying on your £1 sim to trigger your solar battery charger and it doesn’t, then it doesn’t matter if you technically had signal or not.
- metabagel 11mo agoIt is exciting. > On farmland and on rooftops, Iraqis turn to solar as power grid falters https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/farmland-rooftops-iraqis-turn-solar-power-grid-falters-2025-08-05/ https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/farmland-rooftops-ir...