http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2015/0125/Africa-s-quiet-solar-revolution
[O]ne afternoon, the Noahs had an unexpected knock on the door. An agent for a new electrical company called M-POWER said that, for a sign-up fee of only 10,000 shillings ($6), he could install a fully functioning solar home system in their house – enough to power several LED lights and a radio. The payoff was immediate. While Noah used to spend $18 a month on kerosene, she now pays a monthly average of $11 for her solar lighting, and she no longer has to go into town to charge her cellphone.
...
CGAP sees such technology as allowing developing countries to carve out an energy future that is smarter, cheaper, and cleaner than the one the West pursued decades ago. As energy consultant Julian Popov put it in a recent opinion piece he wrote for Al Jazeera, most African countries never did string phone lines to every home and business – and in the end, they didn’t have to. Just as African mobile-phone networks skipped the land-line phase, he believes that African solar companies could bypass the fossil fuel era.
...
Investors as far off as Silicon Valley are starting to take notice of the technology. More than $45 million flowed into the off-grid solar sector in the first four months of 2014. M-POWER’S parent company, Off-Grid Electric, completed a $7 million round of funding in March, with Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, the US solar firm SolarCity, and Omidyar Network as lead investors. In February, M-KOPA Solar, a Kenyan pay-as-you-go company, announced that it had raised $20 million to fund the expansion of its customer base – a record amount for the sector.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday January 27 2015, @06:52PM
The article is too narrative in framing to understand the serious implications.
Is it just a few thousand Tanzanian farmers? That's good and saves lives and improves productivity, but it's not going to solve Africa's bigger problems.
Is it something actually expanding rapidly(instead of just "growth potential)? Because that could be a revolution.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday January 27 2015, @07:04PM
I'd hope that a $20 million dollar customer expansion is a lot of customers. I like the idea that incredibly poor regions skip intermediate technology steps. Think anyone will skip the road-building step (someday)?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28 2015, @05:32AM
whereweregoingwedontneedroads
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday January 28 2015, @06:49AM
Skip Road Building?
Not if you expect to sell your crops to buy clothing or such. Trade requires roads. And, no, rail roads aren't going to cut it.
Oh, you were expecting flying cars?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday January 27 2015, @07:27PM
Something I always worry about this is exploitative financialization because historically its been a thing and its very popular in the general economy right now.
So the poor bastard pays $11 instead of $18 until the local kero dealer goes out of business at which point it goes to $30, because the junk bonds sold in NYC to pay for the panels demand 15% rate of return and somehow eventually everyone both in africa and owners of the junk bonds get screwed out of all their money except the lawyers and the commissioned salespeople. That's how real, modern economies work in reality.
Another interesting exploitative problem is liability. You can't steal someones land and property by letting them buy kero. But you can legally steal their property if you put a lein on their house worth a year or two's income for the cost of the solar panels because some kid put a soccer ball thru the panel. Rule #1 for dumb poor people is never sign up for a liability you're not willing and able to pay, and if you CAN afford to pay for a replacement solar panel, why are you enriching this middleman dude instead of talking to the chinese directly?
I mean, whats their secret sauce such that they're necessary? I hope its not capital, because VCs don't loan their money for free and the little guy always gets screwed in those transactions. So what do they offer thats benefits the customer, if anything, as opposed to the VC fund?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday January 27 2015, @07:44PM
While those are legitimate worries, it's also true that most people (including me) don't want to handle installing their own electrical system. So the purpose of the middleman is the same as that of the IT department. (OTOH, it also allows financing to be managed by someone who can get a better rate on loans in return for guaranteed business.)
So the devil is in the details, and you are right that the details are important, but wrong in presuming that the "middleman" has no justification.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:24PM
True, although when I had my HVAC system replaced I had a local do the electrical wiring instead of contracting out all the way on the other side of the planet for someone in Africa to general contract and oversee the work, which is a pretty similar scenario with geography reversed.
That's the part that doesn't ring true, some Africans getting together and doing this with locals sounds like business as usual. Some dude in Silicon Valley raising VC funds to middleman it sounds superficially super sketchy. Hopefully its not all a scam.
(Score: 1) by dry on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:05AM
It's funny, back in the '70's the future was considered LVDC where you'd have 12 volt DC wiring in your house along side the high voltage AC (is 120 volt really now considered HVAC now or are you talking 240 volt?) with more and more appliances and things like light bulbs running on 12v. Now that solar is actually taking off, light bulbs are LED along with TVs and most electrical stuff we still see people posting how they had to rewire their house for 120 or 240 volt AC. Be so much simpler just to have everything 12 or 24 volt DC.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday January 27 2015, @07:47PM
Yeah, one thing I've been wondering about is what homesteading in the 21st century could be made to look like.
Could one have a small concrete block structure which could be mass-produced (or poured on site?), which filled w/ a reasonable set of devices would afford all the necessities of the modern world?
- rainwater collection system on roof (and a water filtration system)
- composting toilet
- electrical panels
- a bicycle (which when mounted in its place could be used as a generator)
- windows which double as terrariums to grow food (perhaps one could be an aquarium?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @08:58PM
one could be an aquarium?
Maybe on the north side of the structure.
On the south- or west-facing wall, I can see pre-cooked fish.
It seems that with flora or fauna you'd need some mechanism to vent|regulate the heat in the warm seasons.
A terrarium (mini greenhouse|cold frame) could extend your growing season by a few weeks at the beginning and end.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:00PM
Having looked rather seriously into this: The biggest challenge is not electrical power, but efficient heating and cooling. Between wind, solar, and a battery system, you can generate enough power to run the lights and such, but keeping your home a comfortable temperature without putting a lot of energy into it takes significant pre-planning.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 27 2015, @10:34PM
What do you think is a comfortable temperature for a person born and living in the African country-side who, until nowadays, most probable haven't had any air-conditioning?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 28 2015, @05:11PM
A comfortable temperature would be 10-30 C (50-85 F). And yes, rural Africans do their best to make that happen with the resources they have available.
My point is that doing that is one of those things that affects everything about how you build a home: Where you put it, what angle everything's at, what materials you use, where the windows and skylights and doors are, how you manage the water pipes, and so forth.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by fritsd on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:11PM
Maybe it would look a bit like this: GVCS (Global Village Construction Set) [opensourceecology.org].
I don't know how that project is doing, but I find it very inspiring. (Just like this project in fact).
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:19PM
Yeah, they list the Shapeoko on one of their pages: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Shapeoko [opensourceecology.org]
(but I wish they'd focus more on the wiki and less on the company which is selling the soon-to-be-replaced Shapeoko 2)
it really seems to me that they should worry less about the interchangeable components and more on leveraging existing projects.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:16PM
Concrete is energy intensive, expensive, heavy, dense. If you've got the infrastructure to handle it, its pretty awesome because of thermal mass effects. Also concrete forms tend to be brutally tough because concrete is heavy. So you either need highly skilled masons with cheap light styrofoam or brutally tough wood forms (made by highly skilled carpenters) not much free lunch opportunity.
My gut level guess is you'd be better off with a mostly redesigned mobile home concept. So bolt the stuff you list into place instead of whatever mobile homes currently have. There are some interesting long term durability issues with existing mobile homes where the existing product lines tend to be sold to people with intense interest in minimizing capital spend at the cost of long term maint expense and product lifetime. The flat leaky roof, thats gotta go, just for starters. Typically very poor energy efficiency. However, just because existing products suck, that doesn't mean theres any technological reason an uber-eco-permaculture mobile home couldn't be made, assuming you can get past the existing market players and laws that wouldn't really fit the new mold.
Shipping containers make extremely poor long term habitation although like moths to a flame you can't keep some people away from them. However I could see shipping the whole works for this "eco-shed" or whatever in one standardized container for convenience factor. That helps a bit with extremely tight windows etc that might be a bit hard to trailer haul like a mobile home.
As for shopping lists, I wonder if southerners know what a cold frame is, its basically a non-human size greenhouse for seedling size plants. We use a lot of them up north. The shipping latitude might have some impact on what you ship out to the site. Out west you have to go to extreme measures to gather enough water to live, out east where I live we have to go to extreme measures to handle the ridiculous abundance of water... While you're making shopping lists for "village in a box" optional ideas come to mind like beehives.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Tuesday January 27 2015, @10:25PM
The only problem with the mobile home concept is that you now have a hurricane magnet. Might as well paint a bulls eye on your town.
That is the real cause of all these natural disasters... not global warming... the spread of mobile homes!
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 27 2015, @10:44PM
(side note and OT to the topic you touched, I know; but interesting for other problems the African population need to deal)
Apropos "brutally tough wood" and "free lunch": like the gum-tree acclimatized in Kenya which, being considered a "cash crop", displaced their staple food crops [capitalfm.co.ke]?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28 2015, @01:43AM
...what homesteading in the 21st century could be made to look like.
A lot of research has been done along these lines, for example, try googling "new alchemy institute".
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:05PM
You make excellent points, and you're probably right. But if more people can skip fossil fuels then that still feels like a net gain to me, because of all the high negatives they bring (geopolitical uncertainty, price spikes, climate complications, etc.). There's also the potential positive knock-on effects like making solar so universal and mundane that all the snide comments and FUD from fossil fuel boosters loses all currency, and leads to a positive feedback loop of people competing to make better and cheaper solar panels.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:29PM
A notion that came to mind on seeing Solar and Africa in the title:
Solar stove [google.com]
They can be as simple as a foil-lined box or as fancy as a chrome-plated parabolic deal that tracks the sun.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by LancePodstrong on Tuesday January 27 2015, @11:21PM
These are shockingly effective. I spent a winter in Tucson and did all of my cooking in one of these a friend let me borrow. Works about like an electric slow cooker, except you have to point it a couple times a day.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 27 2015, @10:29PM
Oh, come ooon!
International standards for solar panels require they are manufactured to withstand hail of 1 inch diameter impacting at 50 mph - the terminal velocity for a hail this size (some are manufactured to withstand even more [renewableenergysolar.net] - watch the solar panel being abused in various ways, including driving an SUV on top of them).
Why are you buying from Kmart instead of buying from Chinese directly?
Why "free solar panels" [solarchoice.net.au] are popular in US? Even if they come with some nasty strings [bloomberg.com] attached?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @09:11PM
When blockquoting, use the blockquote tag.
Yeah, I forget sometimes too.
When blockquoting, I try to keep the text Googleable.
[O]ne breaks this meme.
[One] would convey the same information, yet remain Googleable.
If the little change that I make doesn't alter the Googleability of something (e.g. adding a comma; changing the case), I don't even note that in my submissions.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by LancePodstrong on Tuesday January 27 2015, @11:17PM
Duly noted, thanks for the feedback. This was my first submission.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 27 2015, @11:49PM
Isn't kerosene a fossil fuel? If someone is paying $18 a month for kerosene, I'm pretty sure you're in the "fossil fuel era". You may be able to move on from it. Bypass sounds like you're saying skip it entirely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28 2015, @09:31AM
having some light during the night is really number one problem.
second one would be food refrigeration.
from light to fridge it is unfortunately at least 2 magnitudes (x 100) of electrical power requirement.
if only light is required then single stand-alone PV system are the easiest way to go.
on the other hand if some refrigeration and maybe manufacturing (motor) is desired then a mini-village grid is the way to go.
A village wide mini-grid would likely have to be AC.
this could be accomplished with one ALWAYS ON generator that gives the grid "pulse".
the generator could be a micro hydro turbine that can blackstart and only needs to be able to provide a basic 50 Hz AC output.
it would be disconnected during night
During the day it would be connected to the wire-grid and lots and lots of grid-tied solar inverters of all shapes and sizes.
during the day a battery could be filled from the grid for night-time (off-grid) use ...
*shrug*. Oh! don't open the fridge at night : ) extra points for manufacturing solar-panels in the village.
actually one could "cheat" by filling a water-tower with water and installing a micro-hydro turbine at the bottom.
when the sun comes up one opens the valve to power the hydro-generator which energizes the grid and provides a 50 Hz pulse to which the grid-tied inverters then can latch on.
some of the solar-output would drive a pump to fill the tower top again.
don't forget to close the valve at night : )
(Score: 1) by riT-k0MA on Wednesday January 28 2015, @11:48AM
Screw the rest of Africa, bring this tech to South Africa. We're currently experiencing daily rolling blackouts and I would kill for a cheap solar system. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to shut down my PC. It's my turn for 2.5 hours of "loadshedding" in about 10 minutes.
F*****g Eskom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 28 2015, @03:13PM
Have you been living under a rock?
The government has been handing out free solar geysers to the poor for some time, and the rich lining up to buy their own. Domestic solar PV is common enough that I can get it from multiple companies in my immediate area.
Maybe you should switch that thing off once in a while.