Africa's solar revolution is vast and speedy (economist.com)
84 points by andsoitis an hour ago
sheepscreek 19 minutes ago
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.
Affric 3 minutes ago
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.
Couldn’t be much better for the Chinese.
hunglee2 17 minutes ago
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
msy 28 minutes ago
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.
riffic 16 minutes ago
it's a known phenomenon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leapfrogging#Examples
blackoil 16 minutes ago
Was this scale of solar revolution inevitable or did China willed (subsidized) it?
defrost 5 minutes ago
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?
throwaway473825 3 minutes ago
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.
numbsafari 7 minutes ago
Probably both. Sunlight is all around us. Once the tech became good enough, it just needed growth capital and strategic willpower.
nntwozz 40 minutes ago
Meanwhile in Sweden we have skyrocketing prices each winter since the war started, even though we rank 3rd in the world for nuclear power per capita.
guepe 28 minutes ago
Price of electricity is set by the last most expensive power generation. If peak power requires expensive gas… that’s normal.
stavros 20 minutes ago
But why can't we get away from needing the most expensive form of power generation, even at peak power?
blackoil 9 minutes ago
motionlessveloc 13 minutes ago
throwaway473825 14 minutes ago
shimman 26 minutes ago
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:
https://thepolycrisis.org/electric-world-order-ep-1-the-quie...
bawolff 30 minutes ago
Things change quickly when the economics make sense.
dan_grec an hour ago
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.
bruce511 28 minutes ago
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.
adrianN 20 minutes ago
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?