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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

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...

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    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.

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.

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