I once had to do a mobile money integration with a Zimbabwean bank. A dozen skype calls led to nothing. Then I visited the country, bought a local cell phone, made a few phone calls, and within several days I'd reached the developer I needed. He said: "Wait all I need to do is add this string?". "Yes.". He did so at midnight and our integration worked. Next evening we partied.
It shows how integrations are often more of a human/organizational navigation more than anything technical.
As for the article; the tone is hyped, and it is also somewhat true. Hundreds of millions will be using electricity. Still I want to point out one thing: This is all Solar powered DC electricity. No inverters! So you are looking at powering DC only appliances! Inverters are generally simply too expensive for this. Also the impact on income is very limited; you can't really do anything significantly more productive with the electricity, as several reports have shown. But I don't want to downplay the impact; The quality of life improvement is hard to overstate. Maybe somewhat comparable to say; you are forbidden to use any form of transport (bike, car, bus) to suddenly having all 3. Life becomes so much more convenient. For example: You don't have to take the bus anymore to town to charge your phone - yes people do this.
People are paying off these devices and then once they have paid them off, they break and people in these areas don’t have the skills or resources to fix them.
This has led to over 250 million of the units lying around broken in peoples homes, leading to solar being one of the fastest growing e-waste streams in the world.
It’s hardly solar punk to sell people cheap crap at a 10x mark up that pretty much immediately breaks once the warranty period is over.
More details for the interested here: https://solar-aid.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/State-of-Re...
> A company (Sun King, SunCulture) installs a solar system in your home > * You pay ~$100 down > * Then $40-65/month over 24-30 months
But also:
> The magic is this: You’re not buying a $1,200 solar system. You’re replacing $3-5/week kerosene spending with a $0.21/day solar subscription (so with $1.5 per week half the price of kerosene)
$1.5 week is $6 a month, not $60.
Meanwhile, developed nations have millions of people who pay up to 500% interest on payday loans, 29% interest on credit cards, and can't get bank accounts. Small businesses can't grow quickly due to (among other things) high transaction fees cutting into already-meager profits. We only hear news about big business and products and services for people with money. We forget that if we want our economy to grow, and adopt things like increased personal/residential solar power, we need to unburden the poorest, grow their own wealth, and infuse that back into the economy.
Perhaps we should stop obsessing so much over AI, and obsess a little more over making it less expensive and difficult to be poor. Seems to be working in Kenya.
Now imagine a world where there's tons of bribes to government officials all along the way to get a grid going (in the US you just need to bribe landowners and hold-outs). Or there's bribes to get a permit for the large centralized electriticy generator. And you have to deal with importing a whole new skill set and trades, on top of importing all the materials, fuel, etc.
Decentralized solar plus batteries is already cheaper than electricity + transmission for me at my home in the US. The only thing stopping me is the permitting hassle or the contractor hassle.
Out in greenfield, solar plus storage is so revolutionary. This is bigger than going straight to mobile phones instead of landlines.
Africa is going to get so much power, and it's all going to be clean, renewable energy. Thanks to all the entrepreneurs and engineers over the past decades that have continuously and steadily improved this technology, it's one of the bright lights of humanity these days.
[1] https://www.utilitydive.com/news/maine-jury-clears-avangrids...
I want to hear from the people affected.
Even North Korea is undergoing some changes. The country has long suffered from energy shortages, and the gradual spread of solar power can help address some of these issues. However, I doubt that North Korea’s geographic conditions will allow for much improvement.
And considering geography, if I understand correctly, the Middle East has once again gained a significant advantage?
This a thing that needs to be more widely known. If you saying, as people here sometimes do, "oh but my new tech could help people move money in poor parts of the world" (not mentioning any specific tech right now) and you're not familiar with M-PESA, then you're just out of your depth and talking foolishly. The real world has already moved past you.
The solar system is the Trojan horse. The real business is the financial relationship with 40 million customers."
Soooo... they have a good thing going, there is an opportunity to fsk them over? Like more centralized fees?
They did the same thing with internet. Went straight to cell/fiber. If you've never heard of M-Pesa, I highly recommend learning about it.
He said in the early days of American electrification, private power companies wouldn't build lines to rural customers because it wasn't expected to be profitable. So rural customers joined together and formed public power companies and got the job done. Not only that, they innovated many cost saving technique which the private power companies eventually adopted.
Public power cooperatives still exist, but have themselves become ossified and commercialized over the years.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miyfj98lR38 (starts at 21:18)
After COVID, grid electricity became hugely expensive, but the pushback was massive and unexpected, as people transitioned from a fixed supply to a hybrid online or offline (battery-powered) system.
Grids require an amount of cohesion that isn't always on-hand in that part of the world (a fancy way of saying "When they built the grid in Europe, they could mostly put copper on telephone poles and assume nobody would just show up and steal it later"). But a cellular node can be built to be self-contained and protected by a single property owner with a shotgun.
It became a much faster and cheaper rollout solution and the demand created a market to justify the cost of improving and perfecting the technology.
Lithium is abundant in the United States. Nothing in the component chain of solar and battery systems is so complex it couldn't be made here. We could establish trade with African countries like China has, instead of doing these pointless tariffs. But for idiotic cultural reasons, we are not doing any of those things.
The world will permanently shift away from the fossil fuel economy sooner than most people think, and it will disrupt the entire system of dollar-denominated oil that underpins the U.S. empire. It's glaringly obvious where this is headed. And yet!
I've heard/read common criticisms about NGO's having more power and private funding than weak and poor governments, but then again, if there isn't a centralized effort to develop infrastructure, citizens are more likely to prefer outside funding/investment https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/internation...
My parents are involved in an organization that helps developing parts of Togo. They helped build wells, structures (schools, bathrooms, .. ) and give material for agriculture and light manufacture, fund for tutoring, such things. All the electric and mechanical machinery they donated, including vehichles, are older models and the reason is simple: they must be serviced with the available technology, and they must be simple to service.
They made a conference in our town to showcase the project and i addressed the obvious elephant in the room: what about electricity? They are dependend on china for cheap panels and inverters, and they do not want to use alternative sources that require way less tech to operate: biofuel for example. They say it's not as efficient, and i concour, but i feel there is also a geopolitic issue, they do know they are making themselves dependent on china and there might be a small print condition for the cheap solar.. and they were elusive on the answers.
Also, not programs to train electronics technicians in the next future. If i ever get involved i'd like to help with setting up repair shops and train technicians. We'll see in the next few years what happens.
Inspiring. My only critique would be that the excited tone (and exclusivity) ends up detracting from the achievement and opportunity.
>2008: $5,000 (affordable only for wealthy urban Kenyans)
>2015: $800 (middle-class farmers)
>2025: $120-$1,200 (true smallholders)
How does US solar cost so much?
It was good in the moment. The issue is maintaining it without the same cheap labor and materials. PG&E in California is a perfect example. There is no way for them to maintain the grid which is aging and causing fires. We are going to have to switch to a slightly similar regional power generation/storage model.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis
Here is the actual numbers from Sun King on their entry level system (Home Plus):
Basic (dc-only) panel for lighting and cellular/usb use:
Lighting: 1 x 240-lumen LED tube light, 2 x 120-lumen LED hanging lights. Up to 43 hours of light on a single charge on low-power mode
Battery: 3.2 V, 19.2 Wh lithium ferro-phosphate (LFP) battery. 10-year battery lifespan with typical daily use (over 2,500 cycles)
Solar: 7 Wp, 9 V solar panel with 8-metre rodent-resistant cable
Output ports: 2 x 12 V DC output ports for lighting (550 mA max. total), 1 x USB-A phone charging port (5 V, 1 A)
>₦2,000 per week ($1.39 USD/week) x 60 weekly payments, ₦3,500 down payment ($2.43 USD)
= $85.83
=~ 20kWh over that 60 week period (Just over 1 year), over 10 years = ~200 kWh... ~$0.429/kWh (reasonable given the lighting hardware is included, and the only thing that should need changing during that time is the lfp battery which the price is dropping very quickly on).Larger dc system:
Home 500X + Pedestal Fan
Lighting: 4 x LED tube lights with individual wall switches, 200 lumen per tube light on max setting, 20 times brighter than a kerosene lamp, One motion-sensing 100 lumen security lamp
Battery: 141 Wh lithium-ion NMC battery, Up to 19 hours of runtime on low power mode. 5-year battery lifespan with typical daily use
Solar: 50 W, polycrystalline solar panel with aluminium frame and a 6 m cable
Charging Ports: 2 x 5 V/1.8 A USB ports for charging mobile devices, 4 x 12 V(+/-3 V) ports. One port is specially designed to power Sun King DC appliances
>₦5,600 per week ($3.82 USD/week) x 60 weekly payments, ₦15,500 down payment ($10.78 USD)
= $239.98
=~ 147kWh over that 60 week period (Just over 1 year), over 10 years = ~1300 kWh... ~$0.184/kWh (again very reasonable given the lighting hardware is included, and again the nmc battery at 5 years which the price and quality of is improving very quickly on).So yes, this does seem pretty viable in terms of Upfront, TCO and payment options.
To what historic people did electricity come all by itself, without them having to figure out and build anything themselves?
For all those who have electricity, who was their "cable guy"?
The article zooms in on cliche 2-3 use cases that while important show a lack of imagination and awareness of what's actually happening. Here are two more not mentioned in the article, at all. And they are transformational.
1) EVs. By that I don't mean the luxury four wheel road yachts common in the rich part of the world but its much more common two wheel variant: the e-bike. These are being produced by the hundreds of millions. The four wheel versions are are a rounding error. They show up all over Asia and Africa. We in the west have no concept of how important these things are to the local economies there.
You can charge those for next to nothing with solar. Most of these things only have a few hundred wh of battery on board. A single solar panel can top them up in an hour or so. What's the impact of that on in a place where subsistence farming is common and people have to walk hours to find a generator powered point to charge their phone or get some water? Well the obvious thing happens: lots of people now have affordable transport that doesn't require an arm and a leg to power.
2) AI. I know, we're all tired of the daily dose of AI utopia on HN. But like world + dog in the west has access to ChatGPT for free, so does all of Africa. "Hey chatgpt, what's a water pump and where can I find water here?". That's already a thing. AI usage is widely spread across Africa; and not just among the elite. Every subsistence farmer with a smart phone (most of them at this point) can now ask questions like that. That's massive. Knowledge is power. This is hugely empowering. People are naturally curious and now they can ask AIs for information instead of having to ask the local witch, village elder, or the nearest white person that actually had an education. That's very liberating.
Solar panels are going to be like smartphones were 15 years ago, everybody will have access to cheap power. And yes you can power one with the other. But it's really about what else you can power? IMHO this will transform some of the poorest/undeveloped regions in this world in a few mere years/decades.
Solar is scalable. The cheapest system 10W with a powerbank and phone charger and 3 x 3W LED lights as about USD 20. Next level is more lights and a fan and the high end is a TV and fan powered by solar.
I’ve heard that if you have a solar system and a battery system connected to the grid, if the grid goes out for whatever reason, your battery gets cut off as well. Meaning that it’s essentially useless as power backup.
Is this true? Can you really go fully off-grid in Australia?
I’ve heard this from rural people in Victoria, where they do experience blackouts and where an actual backup would be useful.
> This worked great if you were electrifying America in the 1930s, when labor was cheap, materials were subsidized, and the government could strong-arm right-of-way access. It works less great when you’re trying to reach a farmer four hours from the nearest paved road who earns $600 per year.
It's structured like a contrasting pair of sentences, but it just doesn't make any sense. The things it's calling out in 1930s America aren't - or don't have to be - dissimilar from modern Africa. The farmer making $600/yr is kind of a non-sequitur.
> But there was still a massive, seemingly insurmountable barrier: $120 upfront might as well be $1 million when you earn $2/day.
No, it's 60 days of earnings. It's just a weird sentence. Taking a median US wage of $60k/yr or $165/day, 60 days of earnings is $9,900. "Might as well be $1 million" is a wild take, and a sloppy way to say it.
The ROI of using a diesel-powered pump isn't so high so few farmers have one. It means, they work well and those who don't have one, still get some water for their fields, too.
A solar pump is many times cheaper to run. It means ROI of using it is huge and many more people will get them. But it doesn't mean there will now be magically more groundwater to pump!
Which mean, those who don't have a pump, will soon find themselves completely without water - it will be all sucked out by people with pumps. So they will also HAVE to install those pumps.
As a result, no one will be better off because same amount of water will be redistributed among same number of farmers. Even an "arms race" of more and more powerful pumps is likely when people will realise theirs are not working as good anymore now than everyone has one.
All until the point where ROI of having a solar pump will become negligible.
Farmers will not be better off - they will be worse off. Chinese will make money - money funded by Western funds for "reducing" carbon emissions which do not really reduce anything as they are "replacing" diesel pumps 90+% of which did not exist.
And yes, people will also have a little bit of electricity at home - about 100x less than in grid-connected Western homes - a 200-watt panel per household at about 15% average output or maybe 20 KWh per month. It's not enough to run a blowdryer, or kettle, not even a fridge. But enough to charge a tablet to watch online TV - and become far right.
Bingo, enshittification comes to Africa, in it's purest form.
Only good thing about it is that money will go to Chinese vs Arabs for diesel fuel. Chinese are a problem that will gradually solve itself due to demography, while Arabs will not.
Except that chip that can remotely shut it off is still in it, waiting for a ransom attacker.
To what historic people did electricity come all by itself, without them haivng to figure out and build anything themselves?
Different countries in Africa have better grids than others, and different countries in Africa have stronger penetration of digital banking and DBT than others.
A country seeing a boom in domestic solar because of government subsidies and policies like Nigeria [0] is different from a country seeing a domestic solar boom because of a collapsing electric grid and regulatory failure like South Africa [1] or Pakistan [2] (not Africa but the same point holds).
At best this is an AI generated article, at worst this is someone who is truly misinformed and thinks about Africa this reductively.
[0] - https://nep.rea.gov.ng/solar-hybrid-mini-grid-for-economic-d...
[1] - https://globalpi.org/research/south-africas-solar-boom/
[2] - https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/pakistans-solar-revo...
Some solar panel companies in China are trying to extract the idea of value from farmers whose hands change actual currency a couple of times a year to whoever brings it to market, all other times "money" is sent around in SMS. That bit of extracted wealth pays out in volume, eventually, but they also get a huge boost from selling "we did an environmentalism" dollars to corporate social responsibility brokers who are trying to help ai and oil and gas companies convince legislators that actually their businesses don't harm the environment because they bought the magic dollarydoos from the Chinese solar panel vendors who are making money selling solar panels but also selling magic dollarydoos.
It seems madness. This system is efficient and the best one we can do?
Who else could?
I swear: this was meant to be the pitch for like 99% of blockchain companies, only in this case they managed to do it. This is super interesting on so many levels.
The zero-cost payments with a low-barrier to entry. Again, this is what digital currencies were meant to do. Only, it turns out that at scale a combination of tech problems and legislative red tape made everything break. Just solving this one problem here is industry-defining in its own right. And shows the kind of products that open up when banking is enabled to everyone.
What about the hardware though? Well, I've worked at startups that were exactly dedicated to this kind of IoT stuff. They even were linking it with payments. But can you guess what happened? Well, of course: it had to be linked to blockchain shit, you know, just because... Then on the product side of things: nothing ever left the lab... Not that customers would have been able to use a blockchain-based payment rail anyway...
Getting reliable IoT hardware is hard enough but you still have to build customer relationships. They did it all through a simple technology the users were already familiar with. You don't need a frigging comp sci PhD to use SMS mobile payments. I think that's genius and blockchain tech bros could truly learn a lot from this. Pay-as-you-go here is also genius because as the author states: the chances of the owners having tons of disposal cash around to outright buy equipment are slim. Yet offering equipment to strangers under a pay-to-buy scheme by itself is risky for the lender and would typically lead to the kind of bureaucratic red tape that would slow down financing. With the IoT stuff, they can shut off the equipment on non-payment. But also: the economics are already there because the only other game in town is expensive disposal fuels like kerosene and petrol.
Don't engage with slop that seems lazily written, if not completely generated by Claude(sorry author if I'm wrong, I know you are claiming you wrote it but idk). This stuff kinda comes off like an article written on behalf of SunCulture or SunKing so they can go, hey guys look we were featured on a front page of HN article.
Flagged.
" Let’s dive in"
" Want to fight climate change?"
Seven hundred bullet points in the article, etc.
But who is driving cost of solar? Is it China?
Are massive infrastructure projects a failure ? Most definitely. But is corporate driven development the panacea this articles makes it out to be ? I don't think so. Especially telling is the last bit explaining how 3 households of a village sign a contract, then 30, but never does the whole village get solar. Public projects have that universality that is sorely needed. Should that one person that can't pay be left in the dark ? Too poor, too sick, too old, too unique, not profitable!