We moved to a new house earlier this year in Kenya and it has solar. Very convenient, as there are electricity outages every few weeks for various reasons (usually trees falling on power lines), not to mention the cost savings. We are basically on the equator so we have sun for 12 hours in theory.
The current geopolitical climate is becoming a blessing for Africa, and much of the developing world. With China's ties with the US all but severed, it is incentivized to redirect most of its resources into building Africa. That in turn will reinvigorate the Chinese economy.
If Africa has abundance of electricity, they can become consumers of Chinese EVs, and more.
And huge mineral wealth and quite a few countries with poor governance. Also far away enough from China that they don’t have any long standing disputes.
Africa being China's China is not a new talking point at all. You're well over a decade late to the party.
You also severely underestimate the amount of work it would take to have better cooperation across the African continent, let alone turn it into a consumer-driven market like the USA.
Africa is a complicated part of the world and it's massive. I really do mean massive.
Decentralised power generation is the future for Africa, many of whose countries cannot rely on central government to efficiently operate a national grid. I am thinking primarily of South Africa, where many businesses and (rich enough) home owners have back up diesel generators to fill in in moments of load shedding. Solar of course is the most decentralised form of power of all. Positive stuff for Africa. This is where China overcapacity really does lead to more equitable power (literally) distribution, so congrats to them also
There are parallels here to the way much of Africa fixed land-lines phones and went straight to mobile. Which has also been powered by Chinese hardware.
Both, in the sense that it was absolutely inevitable (and predicted 20 years past in various looking forward forums), and that China made an informed high level plan to be first on the ground to make things happen in their favour.
Is it smart or stupid business to lose money upfront (subsidise) to establish and secure a market for years to follow?
Closely followed by, is China deeply sinister and evil for having long term plans and seeing them through, or are some simply upset to see China getting there first and doing it better?
It's inevitable, but China accelerated it (as did a few others). And solar isn't alone. Any professor in physics will say that EVs, heat pumps and LEDs are all inevitable.
Sweden's most expensive SE4 Nordpool zone now has almost as expensive electricity as most of northwestern Europe in winter.
EU energy consumption was (_still_ is!) very dependent on cheap Russian natural gas. Moscow leadership abused that geopolitical leverage to the max.
Heavy industry is in tatters in traditional European core industrial areas. EU regions with less expensive energy like northern Sweden pull in some heavy industry investment. It remains to be seen how durable that is. Cluster effects are a thing, and those haven't materialised yet.
At the consumer level, some short to medium term relief will come from HVDC interconnects, more solar, wind and intraday battery storage.
Putin kicking the bucket might not be Europe's get-out-of-trouble card, but chances are it will help.
In the US, it’s to make sure shortsighted investments in fossil fuels pay off (they cap rooftop solar below what makes financial sense for individuals so that rates stay high) or to shelter investors from criminal negligence. (e.g., when PG&E embezzles maintenance funds then burns towns down or blows up city blocks, its customers pay for damages. Lots of people die, but no one goes to jail.)
Sweden used to have twice as many nuclear reactors as it does today. There's also more export capacity, and for Germany anything from Sweden is considered cheap.
I think the prices would always skyrocket in Sweden in the winter - y'all use about 1.7x as much electricity in the winter as you do in the summer, and that's gonna cost you.
People need to realize this is going to make a massive difference for developing countries to not have to rely on expensive alternatives like LNG. There is a tremendous cost when you have to build very labor + resource intensive infrastructure versus just buying solar panels + batteries.
Will follow a similar path of preferring cellular networks to fiber lines.
An interesting podcast series that goes over just this from earlier this year:
Make no mistake, this is happening all over the globe with enormous success.
Australians now get free power for three hours a day.
India, Pakistan and many other developing countries are deploying solar and batteries insanely fast because it’s so cheap direct from China.
China themselves add more solar capacity in a few months than the entire US grid.
There really is only one country with prohibitively expensive solar and batteries thanks to tariffs. Fingers crossed that will change soon.
Solar is also unique in that it is both affordable and practical to deploy locally.
Part of the difficulty in estimating growth is that a significant chunk of installed supply is not a "power station" that is easily counted and measured.
Residential solar is a few kw here, a few there. But it adds up quickly to mw and gw.
And yes, this results in a larger variable demand on the grid. Which makes planning harder. But it's cheap enough for any established business with a roof to install. It's cheap enough for residential. And from decision to power flowing can be measured in months not years.
Running a 6 foot line from a existing transformer to a box took 3 years. Getting the solar permitted and feeding was another 12 months. Permit review for generator install was another 12 months.
Labor and permitting was > 50% of solar project cost and of generator install.
Permitting and “engineering” was > 90% of grid hookup price, but dwarfed by the cost of the delay (had to run gas generator for about a year as a workaround).
What do panels cost in the US? I can order a 500W panel from amazon.de for a little under 100€. It looks like amazon.com only has panels for $300+. Is Amazon just very expensive?
I bought 40 solar panels 2 years ago from Santan Solar that came out to about $130 including shipping and tax. These were 450 W panels. Looks like they now have 400 W panels for $145 + shipping/tax.
I know you didn't ask for it, but in case it's helpful to anyone, here's what I spent (this was all DIY installed):
- $4200 for solar panels (I only kept 33 of the panels and resold the other 7, so this is my net cost).
It’s more like $200 if you buy them from a local distributor. It’s definitely expensive for Amazon to ship them if it’s just one or two. Usually a local business buys pallets worth of them and people pick them up.
History doesn't always have to be linear. Africa can leverage modern technology to leapfrog many stages—much like how many elderly people in China never used a computer in their lives, yet became hooked on short videos powered by smartphones and AI. For Africa, solar energy and TikTok are profound transformations. Then there are cheap Chinese goods. The driving force behind all these changes is primarily China.
If Africa has abundance of electricity, they can become consumers of Chinese EVs, and more.
Couldn’t be much better for the Chinese.
You also severely underestimate the amount of work it would take to have better cooperation across the African continent, let alone turn it into a consumer-driven market like the USA.
Africa is a complicated part of the world and it's massive. I really do mean massive.
It’s amazing :)
Great for everyone and will change everything if allowed to continue
Is it smart or stupid business to lose money upfront (subsidise) to establish and secure a market for years to follow?
Closely followed by, is China deeply sinister and evil for having long term plans and seeing them through, or are some simply upset to see China getting there first and doing it better?
EU energy consumption was (_still_ is!) very dependent on cheap Russian natural gas. Moscow leadership abused that geopolitical leverage to the max.
Heavy industry is in tatters in traditional European core industrial areas. EU regions with less expensive energy like northern Sweden pull in some heavy industry investment. It remains to be seen how durable that is. Cluster effects are a thing, and those haven't materialised yet.
At the consumer level, some short to medium term relief will come from HVDC interconnects, more solar, wind and intraday battery storage.
Putin kicking the bucket might not be Europe's get-out-of-trouble card, but chances are it will help.
Solar is also a great match for countries that need A/C during the day (like Africa), and less so for those that need heating at night (like Sweden).
So you either need surplus in some way, to over cover the peak, or storage.
Both are still more expensive than fast gas turbines.
Will follow a similar path of preferring cellular networks to fiber lines.
An interesting podcast series that goes over just this from earlier this year:
https://thepolycrisis.org/electric-world-order-ep-1-the-quie...
Australians now get free power for three hours a day. India, Pakistan and many other developing countries are deploying solar and batteries insanely fast because it’s so cheap direct from China.
China themselves add more solar capacity in a few months than the entire US grid.
There really is only one country with prohibitively expensive solar and batteries thanks to tariffs. Fingers crossed that will change soon.
Part of the difficulty in estimating growth is that a significant chunk of installed supply is not a "power station" that is easily counted and measured.
Residential solar is a few kw here, a few there. But it adds up quickly to mw and gw.
And yes, this results in a larger variable demand on the grid. Which makes planning harder. But it's cheap enough for any established business with a roof to install. It's cheap enough for residential. And from decision to power flowing can be measured in months not years.
BC, Canada.
Labor and permitting was > 50% of solar project cost and of generator install.
Permitting and “engineering” was > 90% of grid hookup price, but dwarfed by the cost of the delay (had to run gas generator for about a year as a workaround).
SF Bay Area.
I know you didn't ask for it, but in case it's helpful to anyone, here's what I spent (this was all DIY installed):
- $4200 for solar panels (I only kept 33 of the panels and resold the other 7, so this is my net cost).
- $4850 for EG4 18KPV inverter.
- $6800 for 2x EG4 14.3 kWh indoor batteries + conduit boxes.
- $1900 for EG4 GridBOSS.
- $1700 for Tigo optimizers (TS4-A-O + CCA + TAP).
- $825 for permitting.
- $2575 to redo some siding on my house because I hard to replace my meter box and main panel.
- $4000 for wire, conduit, junction boxes, PV DC disconnect, AC disconnect, meter box, main service panel, etc.
- $3200 for racking and roof stuff.
- $2000 for misc things, tools, etc.
Net (including 30% tax credit and 2% credit card cash back), I spent $21,228.47 for everything.