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Comment by 1024core | Hacker News Reader

> Even in the US, only 15% of households have any backup at all

That's because people in the US rarely, if ever, lose power, so there's no need for backups.

So you would suggest countries with more power outages should have higher adoption of power backups? Yet, about 25% of population in Pakistan does not even have access to electricity. [1] Meanwhile the rest of the country frequently is plunged into darkness with millions without electricity. [2] Yet, solar adoption in the country is very low and most of the population does not have any backup power.

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EG.ELC.ACCS.ZS?location...

[2] https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/01/22/asia/pakistan-power-outag...

I know families in Tonga and Vietnam that have generators due to the instability of local power.

I think some countries do have more backups as they have more outages. They just have to be in the range where some can afford the backups.

    solar adoption in the country is very low

More than anything, this is due to financing, not will. The reason why most developing nations don't have enough power, is they don't have enough financing (money) to build the power plants / windmills / solar panels.

North India has so many power outages that it is normal to have very large batteries in your house to ride them out.

That was the point I was trying to make: countries where such things happen, also often have populations that cannot and do not have solar or energy backups.

I used to live in New Delhi, India. In past there were frequent power outages and as a result almost everyone who could afford got either a generator or a battery based power backup solution. Not everyone can afford these, but whoever can would get the backup setup in place.

There exists a similar situation with water supply. What started out as 24 hours running water back in 1970s has ended up as supply at low pressure for < 1 hour once or twice a day. As a result everyone has built additional storage water tanks and added in line pumps to suck water when the supply is present. The in line pumps are illegal, but everyone has one.

getting back to topic, India also has the government frequently shut down mobile and broadband internet to control communal riots and anti-government protests.

That's because people in the US rarely, if ever, lose power, so there's no need for backups

This just isn't true. I had regular power outages when I lived in the US. Usually they'd only last some hours and usually they were caused by weather (the midwest has storms) or animals. This could have been solved by burying the cables, but that probably wouldn't happen any tine soon. In more than one location, it would have been helpful since the no power meant no water from the well.

Weather causes a lot of power outages - thunderstorms, tornadoes, hurricanes, heat, and icestorms cause this. In other areas, the electrical grid is barely holding up and just can't always take the demand well. (Example: Hot areas during the summer)

Losing power happens regularly.

Most people can't afford to have a backup system, and a good chunk of the folks that can have a backup simply can't install such a thing in their rental or the apartment they own.

> This just isn't true. I had regular power outages when I lived in the US

And I have never had an outage in the 20+ years I've lived in SF (except for the one time they were doing maintenance and had announced the outage days in advance).

See? Anecdotes prove nothing. Remember: I wrote "rarely". I would say 99.9999% availability (for me) is pretty good.

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