In the Developing World, Solar Is Cheaper than Fossil Fuels

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/39544/?p1=A2

[font face=Times, Serif][font size=5]In the Developing World, Solar Is Cheaper than Fossil Fuels[/font]
[font size=4]Advances are opening solar to the 1.3 billion people who don't have access to grid electricity.[/font]

Friday, January 27, 2012 | By Kevin Bullis

[font size=3]The falling cost of LED lighting, batteries, and solar panels, together with innovative business plans, are allowing millions of households in Africa and elsewhere to switch from crude kerosene lamps to cleaner and safer electric lighting. For many, this offers a means to charge their mobile phones, which are becoming ubiquitous in Africa, instead of having to rent a charger.

Technology advances are opening up a huge new market for solar power: the approximately 1.3 billion people around the world who don't have access to grid electricity. Even though they are typically very poor, these people have to pay far more for lighting than people in rich countries because they use inefficient kerosene lamps. While in most parts of the world solar power typically costs far more than electricity from conventional power plants—especially when including battery costs—for some people, solar power makes economic sense because it costs half as much as lighting with kerosene.

…

"This sector has exploded," says Richenda Van Leeuwen, senior director for the Energy and Climate team at the United Nations Foundation. "There's been a sea change in the last five years."

The sudden interest is fueled by the advent of relatively low-cost LEDs, she says. Not long ago, powering lightbulbs required a solar panel that could generate 20 to 30 watts, since only incandescent lightbulbs were affordable. LEDs are far more efficient. Now people can have bright lighting using a panel that only generates a couple of watts of power, Van Leeuwen says.

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[DCKit]

1. Storage is the issue now, and going forward. nt

[Gregorian]

3. I'm hearing talk of a world wide grid.

I think the problem with the idea that we have multiple sources of energy generation that will eliminate the need for storage is that we don't have tidal power and wind and solar yet. And with places that go dark for weeks on end, it's a problem.


But I want to see more research going into fusion. Fusion is the way we're going to solve the energy problem, I believe.

[DCKit]

4. WWG, for sure, but we either need storage, or overproduction, now.

"Their" excuses have been working, thus far.

If a postage stamp on AZ can supply the U.S. with 100% of our energy needs, our coasts should be able to produce 600%. Sorry to all the wind and solar deniers, but you can't stop the waves and tides.

[hunter]

2. The rechargeable batteries these systems use are a beastly problem.

The least expensive solar lighting systems and cell phone charging stations use NiCads or Lead Acid batteries. These batteries don't last long and become toxic waste if they are not properly recycled.

In many parts of the world lead acid batteries are "recycled" by cutting them open, dumping the acid on the ground, and "refining" the lead by hammering it or by melting it in open crucibles. The problem with NiCads are similar. They are simply thrown away to decompose in the environment, or worse they are recycled and end up in the cheap jewelry which sometimes makes it's way to places like Wal-Mart.

NiMH and Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries are less toxic, but they are more expensive and require more sophisticated charge controllers.

Solar is dirty when done cheap.

[DCKit]

5. Waves and tides don't end when the sun goes down.

That could be our baseline energy generation. Wind, hydro, geothermal and solar could make up the rest.

It's not as if the potential is not there.

[hunter]

6. There's a point where it's simply not worth building a network.

Without a network there is no baseline.

It happens in the USA all the time. Someone with a property they want to build on balks at the cost of installing power lines. Even in areas not particularly remote, people planning to build a house will choke when they see how much it will cost to install power lines, easily $10,000 or more and the sky's the limit if you want underground lines. So they'll opt for solar with a backup generator instead.

If potential power network customers living outside high density population centers will only be running a few LED house lights and charging their all-purpose-cellphone-internet-radio-television-devices, but no high power devices like electric cars, air conditioners, heaters, irrigation pumps, rice cookers, microwave ovens and such, then a power network will not be cost effective.

I always think of my very stingy great-grandparents. My great grandfather loved rural electrification because it meant he never had to buy batteries for his radio again. Radios used tubes then. The batteries were big and painfully expensive. But even when they got network power, he and my great grandma never used more than the radio and a couple of forty watt light bulbs for a few hours a day. The government agency funded power line to their homestead never did pay for itself.

Personally, I don't believe wave and tidal power is worth the environmental damage, nor is it sustainable. Even the most benign wave or tide setup will require dirty industrial capacity elsewhere to maintain it. The oceans eat human creations; all marine projects become what boat owners say about their boats, "a hole in the water you pour money into."

Nobody should be obligated to buy into that.

[hunter]

7. And then there is human power...

In 1997, in San Andrés Itzapa in Guatemala, Maya Pedal Association began recycling scraps of bicycles into Bicimáquinas.

Bicimáquinas are pedal-powered blenders, washing machines and threshing machines, eliminating the need for fuel and electricity. Pumps are also possible, and are capable of extracting 30 liters of water per minute from 30-meter deep wells (electronic pumps reach just to 12 meters).