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Comment by jhallenworld | Hacker News Reader

You know what's amazing? Farmers in rural Pakistan choosing to prefer solar to irrigate their crops (panels + VFD/inverter + 10 HP 3-phase motor):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfNgF0WTeCM

Or grinding wheat:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_G2evJOiU9I

The comments in these video are all about how much does it cost, what is your contact number, etc. Clearly this is a sea-change.

Also amazing that they all have cell phones :-)

The old system included 80+ year old hand-started diesel engines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZuqT7dgM08

These are very cool, but solar requires less man-power.

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Definitely a sea change happening. I’ve noticed a proliferation of “village life” YouTube channels from Pakistan... it seems that cheap solar power, cellular internet, and cheap smartphones is bringing a whole new class of people online and enriching their lives both materially and culturally.

Unfortunately, it also sometimes results in lynch mobs: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-44856910

That article is about WhatsApp being used to coordinate a lynch mob in India (a villager suspected them of being kidnappers). Tragic, but not relevant

It is absolutely relevant to the claim that "cellular internet, and cheap smartphones is bringing a whole new class of people online and enriching their lives both materially and culturally".

Given that it's not at all a singular incident (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_WhatsApp_lynchings) it seems pretty clear that this "enriching" is a decidedly mixed blessing.

That reminds me of an article linked few months back about opium farming: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-53450688

A good cash crop unfortunately...

To complete the picture, here is how you can drill the well in the first place:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nn7twImE2ug

Thank you for the link. Satistying to watch tradition meet modernish equipment. Would you know how long does a tube well like this yield water? Do the farmers regularly deepen the drill or just find a new location?

I don't know, but one thing occurs to me: those ponds the opium growers make are essentially batteries.

I'll admit to not knowing anything about Pakistan, let alone rural Pakistan, but do they have a national power grid there? At least with solar, you own and control the power production yourself, and (in theory) there's no hidden costs.

Meanwhile, I live in a country where on the one side they're pushing for and subsidizing solar energy, but at the same side they're forcing people to change their meters so that the energy companies can pay you less for power you feed back to the grid; with a 'dumb' meter, it was an even exchange, meaning that you only paid for the power you did not produce yourself. With the new system, you (I think?) only get 25% of the amount you sell, compared to the amount you pay.

I think it's fair to assume the price of the energy you buy not only account for the price at generation, but also for all the services a grid provides: transport, reliability, variability of load etc.

When it's bought back from you, they only pay for the generation part which makes sense in my opinion. Now where that price point is, I don't know! (25%? 50%? no idea)

It seems the smart meter issue is almost unrelated though. Where I am (UK, potentially where you are too as it looks like a similar issue), the old feed-in tariff subsidised the energy _generated_ by a system, regardless of if you used the energy yourself or exported the energy. That's great to kick-start an economy but doesn't scale at a national level.

I understand they are trying to push to pay for what is exported by houses only. I'm a bit sad to see the old subvention gone as it made solar panel uneconomical in lots of situations, and there's a lot to say about timing, but in principle I think it's sound reasoning.

In Poland you can redeem 80% of what you contribute to grid, so if you have excess in summer you can use it in winter. I think it's quite good and demand is there from houseowners.

Please help me with maths in the first video. The motor is 10 HP which is approx 7.5 kW powered by 18 x 320 W = 5760 W solar panels. Inverter and cable loss are not even accounted. How its gonna run on a cloudy day?

You don't have to run it at full power, and you run it when the sun shines.

I really appreciate the practical engineering of that first video. Winding a stick to tighten the belt is the sort of elegant solution that I wouldn't have thought of

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