African Villages Glow With Renewable Energy 172
Peace Corps Online writes "The NY Times reports that as small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries playing an epic, transformative role. With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford. 'You're seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts,' says energy adviser Dana Younger. In addition to small solar projects, renewable energy technologies designed for the poor include simple subterranean biogas chambers that make fuel and electricity from the manure of a few cows, and 'mini' hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village. 'It's a phenomenon that's sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed,' says Younger."
I hate to be selfish (Score:4, Funny)
But where can I buy these cheap lighting systems? If they're cheap enough for a yurt, I can probably get a payment plan.
Re:I hate to be selfish (Score:5, Interesting)
A lot of the work is being done by http://www.lightingafrica.org/ [lightingafrica.org] and you can look at the member list there. It's pretty unwieldy, since Africa is a giant continent, but the article itself mentions at least two companies:
http://www.fireflyledlight.com/ [fireflyledlight.com]
http://www.huskpowersystems.com/ [huskpowersystems.com]
Re:I hate to be selfish (Score:4, Insightful)
This stuff represents one of the smartest applications of solar power- too expensive to justify at power-plant scales, yet the infrastructure-free nature of panels makes them ideal for distributed generation where the grid doesn't reach.
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A 4W LED will produce approx the same amount of light as a 4.5 - 5W CFL bulb or a 15 - 20W incandescent bulb, in other words, enough to stop you tripping over things when you go to the bathroom at night, but not really any use for anything more than that.
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Not correct. A 25 watt CFL is about the same amount of light as a 60 watt incandescant. A 4 watt LED is roughly the same; LEDs are about as much more efficient than CFLs as CFLs are as incandescents.
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CFLs and LEDs are about the same (unless you want to use only green LEDs): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminous_efficacy#Examples_2 [wikipedia.org]
CFLs vs LEDs (Score:2)
What's happening here is that the solar/battery system is low voltage only (so low cost), driving
This doesn't match my experience (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not sure I agree on your efficiency there. I have replaced 60+W incandescents with the curly CFLs that used something like 15W and am now replacing THOSE with LED that use 8W and are rated as "40W replacements". Except that they produce as much or more light than the CFL in the right fixture! In one case in particular the change in brightness was striking and a very large improvement.
I am using the $30 Sylvania "Ultra LED" lights which are new and part of their High Performance Series. Lowes, in the US, sells these cheaper than anyone I've found BTW. In a "can" fixture in the ceiling in my bathroom they proved to light instantly as compared to the slow glow curlies and to provide MORE light. In the light fixtures on my porch however they proved too directional and created bad shadows. In my normal bathroom sconces they work awesome and in my nightstand lamp they also work great. Used in a freestanding torch sort of light they threw too sharp a shadow line as most of the light went up and not out. I have yet to find one of either CFL or LEF that can replace a single bright 100W incandescent in a ceiling fan I have. :-(
I have begun using some other LEDs in a pendant fixture that used to use incandescent and it's working okay but not as well as the Sylvania bulbs. The LED is a much whiter\bluer light than CFL in my experience so far but they are WAY cooler and use way less juice. The cost is a bit rude but so far they seem to be holding up very well - for the price they had better.
In any case for efficiency I'd argue on the side of LED over CFL for sure based on my experience. Perhaps if I wasn't driving them from 120v mains that wouldn't be the case and I realize that in the case of running them off of a battery they aren't using 120v. I'd still argue for LED though since they are much less fragile!
What I'd really like to know is how well the Sylvania Ultra LED floods work. The price of admission has been too high for me to try them yet but if they work well I have several 150Watt floods I'd LOVE to dump! These are on motion sensors and swapping them so high in the air would be a chore but the overall cost savings long term might be worth it if someone could vouch that they don't suck :-)
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I looked at LED bulbs here http://www.clasohlson.co.uk/product/category.aspx?category=light+bulbs:LEDs&id=88601375&_path=251882;85177594;88601372;88601375 [clasohlson.co.uk]
CFL bulbs here http://www.clasohlson.co.uk/product/category.aspx?category=light+bulbs:energy+saving+bulbs&id=88601373&_path=251882;85177594;88601372;88601373 [clasohlson.co.uk]
and incandescents here
http://www.clasohlson.co.uk/product/category.aspx?category=light+bulbs:incandescent+bulbs&id=88601377&_path=251882;85177594;88601372;88601377 [clasohlson.co.uk]
Incandescent
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Never hurts, but do keep in mind when discussing mercury that simply smashing the CFLs upon EOL (not recommended btw) releases less mercury than would be released by a coal-fired powerplant powering incandescent lights over the same time period. Just something to think about - a lot of people really bring the hate to CFLs over that concern.
Re:I hate to be selfish (Score:4, Insightful)
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Their 150W equal super spot looks an awful lot like the Sylvania Ultra series I've seen in the stores. Checking the Sylvania site though I don't see a bulb that looks like that with multiple lenses like I could swear I've seen in Lowes :-( I would sure like to know more about how these things perform real world before plunking down cash. Buying the $30 units from Lowes (cheapest around I could find) was one thing since I have so many different places to try a standard bulb but floods and spots not so much -
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A 4W LED will produce approx the same amount of light as a 4.5 - 5W CFL bulb or a 15 - 20W incandescent bulb, in other words, enough to stop you tripping over things when you go to the bathroom at night, but not really any use for anything more than that.
I recently purchased some 7W LEDs GU10 Halogen replacements and was told, over the phone, that the conversion factor you should use is 8x. Now they are installed, I'd say that seems a reasonable rule of thumb.
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Directionality of LEDs is not always a bonus. The pelican afterglow PS3 controller has 7 ridiculously bright green LEDs. two of them are pointed directly into your eyes while holding the controller normally. I had to wrap the thing in black electrical tape.
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I know what you mean. My HP printer has a blinking LED that was driving me crazy. I had to cover it up with tape.
This is a spot halogen VS "spot" LED (Score:2)
In this case I have both halogen spots and LED replacements in the fittings and they seem to be about equivalent. What I will have to do, to be more thorough, is to remove all bar one 50W halogen and one 7W LED, point both at a wall, and take a photo to compare the brightness and area of the spots .
FWIW, I also had some older (single LED) 3W LEDs and they aren't a patch on these newer ones, so maybe the tech has moved on.
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Or maybe your older LED bulbs have faded with age, which is something that happens to them.
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Even better, take a reading on "auto" or "program", note the settings, switch to manual, set shutter speed, and adjust aperture only. A
Re:I hate to be selfish (Score:5, Insightful)
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The real reason poverty is so rampant in Africa, however, is not the lack of after-sundown lighting, it's the rampant corruption, preventing anything worthwhile from getting done without copious bribes to numerous officials and people of 'importance'.
Extending education time is laudable, but without addressing the foremost cause of the retardation of development, it's not going to make that big a difference whilst corruption is so widespread and entrenched.
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A 4W LED will produce approx the same amount of light as a 4.5 - 5W CFL bulb or a 15 - 20W incandescent bulb, in other words, enough to stop you tripping over things when you go to the bathroom at night, but not really any use for anything more than that.
I don't know what a yurt is, but I'm guessing it doesn't have a bathroom.
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You can buy one at Ikea for twenty bucks, and they will give another one to Unicef.
http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/about_ikea/our_responsibility/ikea_social_initiative/sunnan_lamp_campaign.html [ikea.com]
Ever been in a yurt? (Score:3, Funny)
A yurt is essentially a surface biogas chamber. Owing mainly to the yak milk they drink all year long.
Nice comment (Score:2)
There's more to electricity than lighting. (Score:2, Insightful)
Without that, all you've done for them is saved them the trouble of lighting a torch. Or a lantern.
Re:There's more to electricity than lighting. (Score:5, Insightful)
"I keep seeing these stories about how some poor sod is able to light his house with HE solar lights. But that is kind of trivial."
Really? Turn off all your lights and leave them that way as an experiment.
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The problem is the food in the freezer possibly going off, and that I can't work on my laptop if the batteries are flat.
So yes, "There's more to electricity than lighting".
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A house lit in a dark evening means more time for productive (i.e. money-earning activity), and more time for study - reading books and such. These can change things.
Re:There's more to electricity than lighting. (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate to break it to you but torches aren't as convenient as the ones in Minecraft (although real-world gamma isn't as screwed up as MC's).
The West had oil lamps long before gas lamps but that didn't stop the brighter but differently-dangerous gas lights from replacing oil lamps. It didn't take long for the much brighter AND safer electric light to replace gas lights.
Any sort of combustion based light (or heat) source is going to give off soot and smoke and carries the risk of easily setting things on fire. None of those are healthy for humans. They also give off limited amounts of light while consuming relatively expensive fuel (do you use the fuel for light or for cooking?).
Clean energy for cooking would probably better than lighting but lighting takes a lot less energy than cooking so if you've only got a handful of watts to work with lighting is the obvious choice.
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Especially if you live in a place where you can broil something by putting it in a tinfoil U or black box at noon...
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Solar ovens work great in most of the 3rd world and provide essentially free energy for cooking on most days. Sadly they don't seem as well known as solar panels and LEDs.
I suppose of the problems is securing your food while you're gone for the day. Don't want to come home to a nicely fed neighbor and an empty oven.
A cheap solar panel can run an iphone (Score:2)
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If you RFTA, it is saving him the money he used to spend fueling his kerosene lamp, and it is more environmentally friendly, and he can recharge his new cell phone with it, which was the main reason for getting the thing.
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RTFA is a crime on Slashdot :P
Reminds me of the "No-Kero"(sene) initiative, for providing solar-powered lamps to poor homes. While it doesn't provide an option to charge your cellphones, it does help eliminate Kerosene-related problems. Also, they are in a single handy, sturdy package, unlike the rather complex solar setup described in the article. They have been installed in places like Kenya and donated to the flood-affected areas of Pakistan.
The current problem is how to mass produce these to avail econo
Re:There's more to electricity than lighting. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. Lighting is the first thing that these poor people need. With lighting they get an extra 4 to 6 hours in a day where they can effectively work in their home without the fuel costs that traditional lighting involves. Like the article said, one woman with the lights noticed her children had dramatically improved grades because they had the opportunity to study at home.
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And THIS is why it may be one of the most important inventions of all time. Nothing will help raise the standard of living and reduce overall pollution in the world as much as increased education.
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But... but... didn't you know? The only barrier to affluence in Africa is the tragic dearth of blenders and powersaws! Every day, you hear it in the villages and in the countryside, the yearning for a Black and Decker...
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"I keep seeing these stories.."
If you'd actually _read_ the fucking stories, you'd know that torches don't grow on trees, or more accurately that all the trees have already been removed for torches. Lanterns need fuel, available only after several hours of traveling and paying up several middlemen and they burn toddlers and risk burning the whole house or village down.
The saved fuel pays for the LED systems.
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Lanterns need fuel, available only after several hours of traveling and paying up several middlemen and they burn toddlers and risk burning the whole house or village down.
Wait, wait... They burn toddlers in Kenya for fuel? Man that's harsh :(
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They are useful amounts of powers. Lighting and communications (i.e., power for mobile or radio) are the most useful things that need electricity.
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and God forbid those pesky Africans be spared of menial work by using more efficient, automated tools.
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Reading light (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Reading light (Score:5, Funny)
Don't underestimate the importance of having interior light after sundown. In many villages, it is impossible to do any reading or studying since there is no artificial light.
I don't understand. Why don't they just switch from e-ink readers to LCD tablets?
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http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/9/
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"I don't understand. Why don't they just switch from e-ink readers to LCD tablets?"
We'll call that comment the "Marie Antoinette response".
Re:Reading light (Score:5, Informative)
I guess I'm still confused how LED lighting can be cheaper than incandescent (or a candle).
Not every place in the world has centralized, reliable electricity. Running a generator in a remote location requires regular maintenance and spare parts, distribution wires to every home, and a reliable source of gasoline or diesel. Using LED lamps means needing less than a tenth of the generation and storage capacity you would need for incandescents -- each home can supply its own needs with a single moderately-sized and -priced panel. Not only that, but LED lamps will last orders of magnitude longer than incandescents (close enough to 'forever' in this application as to make no difference), and are virtually unbreakable -- there are also places on Earth where you can't just drive your SUV to Wal-Mart for a new pack of bulbs.
Candles don't suffer from being off-grid, but have you actually ever tried to light a room using just candles? If you're trying to illuminate (for reading and writing, or any sort of detailed handwork) instead of just trying to get freaky on the couch, candles are a pretty crappy source of light. You need a lot of open flames to avoid eyestrain, which means both a large attendant fire risk and - for the entire village - literally tons of candles every year.
If you give a man a candle, he'll have low-quality light for an evening. If you give a man an LED lamp and solar panel, he'll have light for decades. The higher up-front cost is more than balanced by the near-zero recurring cost and - particularly - by the socioeconomic benefit of reliable, constant, work-compatible night-time light.
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Candles aren't cheap. You only think they're cheap because you never use them. To adequately light a room takes several candles at least, and you need to replace them every few days at best. One of the biggest draws of electric lighting, once it had been fully developed (and before that, gas lighting), was how much *cheaper* it was than using candles.
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He lived in a place were candles were easily available and his family could afford them with no trouble. This is not the situation these folks are in. Even if it was possible. candles are dangerous and expensive in reoccurring costs.
I would be happy to see our tax dollars go for something like this.
Paywall (Score:2)
Wow, lights. (Score:2, Informative)
Woop de doo, poor people in impoverished countries can now spend their entire savings purchasing the solar panels needed to light a few rooms when it's not cloudy outside.
Still doesn't change the fact that, by disallowing them to use the massive amounts of coal under their feet, we're disallowing them to build infrastructure and means of production so that they can accumulate capital. They need to be more than plain consumers to bring themselves up to our standards of living, and for that they need cheap, p
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Infrastructure requires stability, something that is lacking in those areas.
Re:Wow, that's amazingly obtuse (Score:5, Interesting)
...of you, to not know about the central problem of development we've been discovering since the 1960's. By the 90's, it was accepted wisdom and changes slowly began to be made, despite all the money to be made from selling them hydroelectric dams.
You see, attempting to catapult unready societies into the late industrial revolution from a 1700's-era starting point kept failing and failing and failing. Books like "The Road to Hell" by aid professional Michael Maren and "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins brought out how so much of that "aid" was to benefit the givers, not the receivers. Perkins was particularly damning about hydroelectric dams and power stations being built all over the world with "aid" money all those loans that went into default. It was a straightforward recipe:
(1) Bogus economic study of how the country would blossom and prosper if only they had power, a market would explode as soon as it was available, and the national or World Bank loan would be paid back in years. (Perkins' job - he goes over it in detail for Ecuador and Indonesia).
(2) Local "400 families" get extravagant cuts of the action, of course, and they approve the deal, being also the government.
(3) Dam is built, Western engineering firms do well, 400 families do well, local people are bumped off the reservoir land, sometimes at gunpoint, etc.
(4) No market actually arises, country wasn't ready after all, loan goes into default.
(5) People of country end up with higher taxes and lower services for about 40 years to pay back World Bank and IMF.
High capital investments come with high risk. You can substitute "coal-fired" for "hydroelectric" if you like, it actually makes it worse since you now have to develop TWO major plants - a coal mine and a power station - with a populace that has trouble keeping a local chlorine-drip 1-man water treatment plant running reliably.
We built up to a massively centralized economy with small numbers of very large stations and plants and factories and so forth for power and materiel production, only after more than a century of slowly scaling up from very small distributed ones. We thought we could take them straight to Big Industry, and we were wrong. And it was not an "honest mistake"; the decision to try that at all was highly affected by the profits to be made just attempting it, because others had to pay the price for the error.
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I agree. The thing I find so funny is how the write up claims this trend is now "exploding".
I remember reading about small bio gas setups in India in the 80s and maybe the 70s. Small solar lights? Yes leds make that a lot more practical.
But to be honest large dams do tend to do more than just make power. They can help with seasonal flooding and with irrigation.
The can also cause other eco problems as well so they are not all sunshine and bunnies.
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Your "exploding' in the 70's and 80's was like the "explosive growth" of Apple II computer sales, into the hundreds of thousands, then, gasp Millions, at the same time. The exponential was slower for this than computers, though. We are now up to the start of the "explosive" growth of the IBM PC DOS era when the cheap clones hit, mid-80's. Still to come: the "explosive" growth after Win95 and the Internet made everybody get one. I'm predicting that for post-2015 when the LED's have really dropped in pr
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But biogas systems have not changed in a very long time. The pick up on these really seems to be too slow and I would love to know the reason why.
Solar plus LEDs make perfect sense but biogas?
Heck a BBC sitcom from from the 70s involved a couple with a biogas powered generator in the basment!
I think it was called the Goode Life.
And community hydropower dates back to the local mills all over New England and I believe England.
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I think some of that comes down to "zero maintenance" vs "any maintenance". Not a knock on the customers overseas; customers here run their appliances into the ground all the time, if they are "any maintenance".
Another moron (Score:3)
Solar panels are also being used to sterilize drinking water, cook, and even more exciting - provide refrigeration. Many batches of vaccines in the past have gone bad because of lack of refrigeration. Refrigeration also helps to preserve
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Still doesn't change the fact that, by disallowing them to use the massive amounts of coal under their feet, we're disallowing them to build infrastructure and means of production so that they can accumulate capital.
How does a single village build a coal-fired power plant?
How does a rural community accumulate capital if they can only accomplish tasks during daylight hours -- and then can only accomplish enough to maintain a subsistence agricultural lifestyle?
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Except as others have pointed out, this yields two incredibly important things:
1. More available hours to work. This means improved education (more time to study) and increased productivity.
2. More reliable communications - the solar power system allows villagers to charge cellular telephones and radios.
These things will improve the villagers abilities to do things for themselves rather than rely on aid dollars. Education and productivity produce wealth, not coal plants built by foreigners. With educatio
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by disallowing them to use the massive amounts of coal under their feet, we're disallowing them to build infrastructure and means of production so that they can accumulate capital.
Bad idea for some obvious reasons and some not so obvious reasons, such as:
- To maintain infrastructure, you need social stability and other supporting infrastructure.
- To make use of infrastructure, you need a society ready to take advantage of that infrastructure.
- Various climate reasons
- Big business vs. little people. In less developed regions, the small people usually have very little say. This is the little people empowering themselves.
They need factories, not tea lights.
I'm not so sure about that. For the moment, cheap tea ligh
Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft (Score:2)
Good for population control (Score:2)
I suspect this also will help reduce population growth, with people able to do also other things after dark. And this isn't meant just as a joke.
Also, condoms are easier to use when there's light, for that theoretical group of people who do know what they are, do have them, are actually willing to use them, but do not have enough light to put them on.
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L
O
L
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good for population control because they can put condoms on better when there is light?
Uh, the "theoretical group of people" was there to indicate that that part was a joke. So, I think I'm allowed to say "Woooosh".
The only thing that reduces population is education. Those who are better educated have fewer children. Being able to study after dark increases one's odds to further their education. It's not rocket science.
Education undoubtedly has a much large effect. However, if you've ever spent a long time with a wife/girlfriend/"friend with benefits" in an environment where there's nothing else to do, and nothing actually stopping you from having sex... Trust me, pretty soon you'll even be willing to take chances with lack of proper contraception... ;-)
You still sound like a moron though.
Hmm mm. It's hard to judge based on just o
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The reason we have not run out of food is that we have engaged in an ever expanding wave of unsustainable agriculture.
When the Ogallala aquifer is depleted in the next 30 years, the US will lose 3/4th or more of its arable farmland. High yield farming techniques strip the soil of nutrients that even chemical fertilizers can not replace. When irrigation fails, the loose stripped soil will be blown away. This is a disaster we have seen before with the dust bowl.
I am not saying over population is to blame for
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Reduce population growth by limiting the availability of basic living necessities such as electricity and power plants?
Not sure what you mean here, as I actually said the exact opposite, that having these will reduce population growth (in a very small way!) by offering... alternative evening/night activities at home.
I suppose you're part of the Malthusian crowd that is suggesting we should rid of the less advantaged for some pseudo-altruistic belief that we'd be much better off if we could just have less of ourselves.
Not at all. However, I'm with the crowd that thinks that evolution will unfortunately take care of any short term population reduction due to improved standard of living. Those that breed despite any obstacles (high standard of living is obstacle in this context) will spread their "advantageous" genes. There's n
This village of mine glows with a renewable power! (Score:2)
Sorry I had to.
Step by step. (Score:2)
“You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines,” said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. “Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets."
Much like wireless "leapfrogged" the need for a heavy infrastructure.
Yet while these off-grid systems have proved their worth, the lack of an effective distribution network or a reliable way of financing the start-up costs has prevented them from becoming more widespread.
Microloans.
Damages caused by mini dams (Score:2)
" 'mini' hydroelectric dams that can harness the power of a local river for an entire village"
These 'mini' hydroelectric dams can destroy an entire migrating fish fauna because of the power for a village. The migrating fish tend to be the staple food for the neighboring villagers, too...
America and Europe have long since understood the , but can afford building fish ladders.
Not to speak of all the stagnant water, which harbor bilharzia and malaria. Don't forget the rotten acidic waters it produces which ero
For those of you who don't understand... (Score:2)
Why is this a big deal? I have seen a few posts here that don't understand this, that don't understand why someone has to use up DAYS of time to charge a phone, why kerosene isn't good enough etc. The best was the guy who thinks solar is crap because his big dollar system only runs a few lights, a TV, computer, and bummer can't run the stove. Seriously?!
READ THIS! -> http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=50799 [expeditionportal.com]
^^ That's a damn good story about a couple who took a trip through The Democrat
LED's Not Yet (Score:2)
It is odd (Score:3)
Sometimes the poorest of the poor lead the way. Adoption of efficient lighting methods reminds me of the tendency of slum dwellers to recycle every item almost endlessly. One pair of pants may be used by three kids growing up. No beer can is safe in the trash from the poor scavenging for aluminum. Folks who are better off lack motivation.
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Google "bugmenot nyt".
Re:Registered users only (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=232874 [tehrantimes.com]
KIPTUSURI, Kenya (The New York Times) — For Sara Ruto, the desperate yearning for electricity began last year with the purchase of her first cellphone, a lifeline for receiving small money transfers, contacting relatives in the city or checking chicken prices at the nearest market.
Charging the phone was no simple matter in this farming village far from Kenya’s electric grid.
Every week, Ms. Ruto walked two miles to hire a motorcycle taxi for the three-hour ride to Mogotio, the nearest town with electricity. There, she dropped off her cellphone at a store that recharges phones for 30 cents. Yet the service was in such demand that she had to leave it behind for three full days before returning.
That wearying routine ended in February when the family sold some animals to buy a small Chinese-made solar power system for about $80. Now balanced precariously atop their tin roof, a lone solar panel provides enough electricity to charge the phone and run four bright overhead lights with switches.
“My main motivation was the phone, but this has changed so many other things,” Ms. Ruto said on a recent evening as she relaxed on a bench in the mud-walled shack she shares with her husband and six children.
As small-scale renewable energy becomes cheaper, more reliable and more efficient, it is providing the first drops of modern power to people who live far from slow-growing electricity grids and fuel pipelines in developing countries. Although dwarfed by the big renewable energy projects that many industrialized countries are embracing to rein in greenhouse gas emissions, these tiny systems are playing an epic, transformative role.
Since Ms. Ruto hooked up the system, her teenagers’ grades have improved because they have light for studying. The toddlers no longer risk burns from the smoky kerosene lamp. And each month, she saves $15 in kerosene and battery costs — and the $20 she used to spend on travel.
In fact, neighbors now pay her 20 cents to charge their phones, although that business may soon evaporate: 63 families in Kiptusuri have recently installed their own solar power systems.
“You leapfrog over the need for fixed lines,” said Adam Kendall, head of the sub-Saharan Africa power practice for McKinsey & Company, the global consulting firm. “Renewable energy becomes more and more important in less and less developed markets.”
The United Nations estimates that 1.5 billion people across the globe still live without electricity, including 85 percent of Kenyans, and that three billion still cook and heat with primitive fuels like wood or charcoal.
There is no reliable data on the spread of off-grid renewable energy on a small scale, in part because the projects are often installed by individuals or tiny nongovernmental organizations.
But Dana Younger, senior renewable energy adviser at the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank Group’s private lending arm, said there was no question that the trend was accelerating. “It’s a phenomenon that’s sweeping the world; a huge number of these systems are being installed,” Mr. Younger said.
With the advent of cheap solar panels and high-efficiency LED lights, which can light a room with just 4 watts of power instead of 60, these small solar systems now deliver useful electricity at a price that even the poor can afford, he noted. “You’re seeing herders in Inner Mongolia with solar cells on top of their yurts,” Mr. Younger said.
In Africa, nascent markets for the systems have sprung up in Ethiopia, Uganda, Malawi and Ghana as well as in Kenya, said Francis Hillman, an energy entrepreneur who recently shifted his Eritrea-based business, Phaesun Asmara, from large solar projects financed by nongovernmental organizations to a greater emphasis on tiny rooftop systems.
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Mod this up,
+1 copyright infringement
So many questions. (Score:2)
The article makes absolutely no sense. There are no supporting details.
She travelled 3 hours by motorcycle taxi and waited three days to charge her cell phone? How many things are wrong with that picture?
She spent $80 on solar panels primarily to charge a cell phone? Again, what is wrong with that picture?
Sounds like there is a market for cell phone charges that are either hand cranked, solar powered, or apparently motor-cycle powered. What would solar cell capable of keeping a cell phone fully charged cos
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If the nearest town with electricity is 3 hours away, how are they powering the towers? Why would they even have towers around there?
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Didn't Russia attack Mongolia and annex it to Africa?
Wait, that's not right. Is it? I can never remember if annex means what I think it means.
Re:Panels and batteries still pricey and crappy (Score:4, Informative)
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According to TFA we're talking about China selling directly to Africa. Aside from the lack of safety concerns I think they also have an advantage in that they aren't being held back by a billion patents and trolls.
Also (Score:2)
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Imho thats the real difference between this and other "solutions" the first world throws at africa. Infrastructure solutions like these solar panels can actually be installed, maintained, and used readily with minimal outside help.
Dumping a bunch of unmaintainable infrastructure down there won't ever get anywhere, but if everyone got together and made a bunch of really durable "just good enough" solar panels with really simple and easily repairable parts and just flooded the place with them then a whole lot
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According to TFA we're talking about China selling directly to Africa. Aside from the lack of safety concerns I think they also have an advantage in that they aren't being held back by a billion patents and trolls.
I think also without the limitations of those billions of patents and the trolls that go with them, we can see villages innovate new uses beyond what is already being done with these small power generation units.
Re:Panels and batteries still pricey and crappy (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Panels and batteries still pricey and crappy (Score:5, Insightful)
Aside from what other posters have noted, I think you forget one crusial point: You have access to a well maintained electrical system, an African village does not. The alternative to using decentralized renewable energy sources is to wait for the central government to build power plants and wires all over the country. Which requires a lot of organization and stability, not to mention that such structures are prime targets during the unrests that plague Africa.
To some extent this is similar to how phone networks are spreading in Africa. Building centralized phone networks and putting copper in the ground requires a large investment, making it somewhat infeasable. However, building a few mobile phone towers is a much smaller investment and, thus, much more feasable for a business. Over time, if the business yields a profit, more towers can be constructed, giving better coverage. Or one can make trade aggreements between the different service providers to ensure maximum coverage.
Re:Panels and batteries still pricey and crappy (Score:5, Interesting)
Bingo. Most of these commenters are clearly not reading TFA. It describes the woman having to take a 3-hour ride and pay a fee *to charge her cell phone*. This economic decision of hers wasn't made lightly, she shopped and worked it out the way you'd have to justify buying a car. With this trickle of power, she has lighting at night, and she can charge the cell phone, and she can charge others in the village to charge *their* cell-phones, though that payback is just for early adopters; everybody in her village will have them soon.
The picture gets better going forward five years. By then, most poor Africans will have cell phones. LED lighting is expected to double in lumens/watt efficiency in that time, and more so in economic efficiency as prices may drop by 40%. (The market for LED over here is going to explode soon, because Compact-Fluorescent is always going to look bluish and cold, but LED's are coming out now with CRI [colour indexes] as nice as incandescent. The economies of scale will start to kick in then.) And, of course, solar panels are improving too.
At some point, development in these places will reach a point where they have so many electrical needs that they will pay for a few local wires to a small generator. Once the locals pay to wire up the village, a market has just appeared for an entrepreneur who can get a line out to them from a real power station. At least we can hope that works, since 50 years of attempts to teleport these villages from nothing to mid-20th century in one Big Development have done almost nothing but fail.
It doesn't take much to improve rural people (Score:3)
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I've put a solar panel array in the back yard....it wasn't cheap...
How much would it have cost you to have grid power if it hadn't been installed already at your house? If the nearest bit of the grid were just a mile away, you'd probably be out a good $50,000 -- and a lot of these villages are a lot further from reliable power than that. Don't forget that in some of these remote areas a long stretch of unguarded power line might as well have a "Steal me for free scrap metal!" sign on it, too. Gasoline or diesel (not to mention spare parts) for a generator are going to
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To build a power grid and generating stations, you'd need to gather the money from all those local people to pool it. And in countries like Kenya, rife with corruption, once you do that, the people in charge of said pool are quite likely to help themselves to very liberal amounts from it - so end result is a few richer politicians, and still no electricity. Even if you get the grid built, it then has to be run - and there again corruption enters the picture, giving poor service for high prices.
The locals, o