Solar power is changing life deep in the Amazon | Hacker News Reader

Solar power is changing life deep in the Amazon

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108 pointstaylorbuley45 comments

Here in the US, solar panels are cheapear per sqft than many building materials, in particular fences. In bulk, a 2.4m x 1.3m (roughly 8ft x 4pt) panel is < $100, or $3/sqft. If you make it operational with wiring and an inverter, I've heard it's $5/sqft, and then you get electricity too. That's before any tax credits or subsidies. (Comparing right now to Home Depot pre-fab panels, metal is ~$20/sqft, composite materials are ~$10/sqft, and vinyl is $2-$4/sqft.)

Combine that with LFP lithium batteries getting to consumers at roughly $200/kWh in many places, and the idea of running big transmission wires for many developing areas just simply won't make financial sense when compared to microgrids backed with batteries.

I don't really understand the idea of micro-grids, how do you account for redundancy, or long term storage if inclement weather goes on for a few days? Do you just keep big fossil gas generators as backup? Moreover residential is one thing, but industrial is another.

I think it should make sense if you compare it to the alternative: nothing at all.

With microgrids, you have multiple days of storage. Maybe you have emergency backup generators, but that's unlikely. There's a cost tradeoff between extra solar capacity (on cloudy days you still get energy, after all) versus the cost of storage. It's all solvable, just takes money. As transmission would. And often, 3+ days of battery storage is going to be a looooot cheaper, particularly at the load levels that a lot of microgrids will see.

Though I don't think developing areas will necessarily have large industrial needs, it turns out that industrial can be easier than residential if most of the industrial need is process heat. Because we have super super cheap tech for storing high amounts of heat for many many days. Lots of storage startups are exploring this space now.

Having multiple days of battery storage is 5-15x more expensive than thermal storage at the moment, IIRC.

Storage may not even be needed. Or be very small compared to what's used elsewhere.

Eg. the boats mentioned in article: if their 'solar roof' is big enough, and they're only used during daylight hours, they might be run without any batteries. Simply PV panels -> converter -> motor.

Likewise, some activities that use more power could be limited to those hours where solar power is plenty.

On a large AC grid it's difficult to control the consumption side. But on a small/local grid (or single-building setups), much easier: short lines between producers & consumers - literally.

You just fall back to whatever use used to generate power before solar. From the article, it's gas generators. If you have money, battery storage.

There are a bunch of existing spreadsheets that allow you to estimate sizing of the panels and batteries.

You couple that with maps that show 'full hour equivalency' figures for your area, and add in how much extra reserve you want, using calculations based off "I want the system to handle X days of no solar" and "I want the system to be able to charge back to full, given typical household load, within Y days."

A number of folks with off-grid systems have backup generators for the odd "two weeks of rain" situation or a failure of part of the system.

It ends up being fairly efficient because you can size the charger to almost fully load the generator. A fridge uses about 1kWhr/day, which is about 15 minutes of a 3kW generator running...

I just want some big fridge/freezer manufacturer to build a "green fridge" with a 24-48VDC port and include a ~100W panel that anyone could wire up. Auto-switch to 120VAC as needed. Newer fridges run a variable drive motor, so the circuitry required has gone down.

The heat pump version of this exists, but I'm not aware of a fridge. https://signaturesolar.com/eg4-hybrid-ac-dc-solar-air-condit...

These exist as camping fridges (ex: https://www.amazon.com/DOMETIC-75-Liter-Portable-Refrigerato... there are also a few different full-size deals floating around. From what I've seen, these are a terrible idea for normal home use: they're eye-wateringly expensive, and for the sake of efficiency you give up a lot of nice features like air circulation and humidity control that are commonplace in far cheaper ordinary 120v AC fridges. Great for short-term use, but if you plan on keeping food fresh for weeks instead of a few days, you're gonna be annoyed.

You have to balance the cost of providing continuous, reliable power against the cost of losing power once in a while. The more flexible you are in your needs, the easier you can work around losing power and the cheaper you can make your power/storage system.

As building material, how are you going to waterproof or even join solar panels together to actually be useful as a roof or wall covering?

Also FYI - The cheapest siding you can get at your box hardware store is ~$1.30/sf (LP Smartside)

I forgot to put in my comment originally that I was thinknig of fences (I just added a fence which prompted me to make the comparison)

Siding would require a different style of mounting, but it's certainly not impossible. Nobody is really looking to do this at the moment, but give it 5-10 years and we may see more. Solar roofs have been mostly a boondoggle so far, but nobody has seriously tried them. Tesla/Musk don't count for "serious" on that axis of development.

Just saw this article about solar balcony railings becoming popular in Germany [0].

Similarly, I saw one a few weeks ago about solar fences becoming very popular in Germany and England because of how cheap solar panels are getting. It's valid to hang them vertically even though it is suboptimal for power generation because the panels are so cheap.

https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/solar-balconies-are-booming-...

Bifacial solar panels for the fence? Hmm... My state requires HOA's to approve solar projects. Hmm...

I'd much prefer a fence to rooftop solar.

If you have an outdoor are that you'd like to have shade, I've seen some great pictures of bifacial pergolas. They look very futuristic.

Solar fences: https://next2sun.com/en/solar-fence/

> Here in the US, solar panels are cheapear per sqft than many building materials, in particular fences. In bulk, a 2.4m x 1.3m (roughly 8ft x 4pt) panel is < $100, or $3/sqft.

You claim that solar panels are cheaper than fences per square foot.

https://www.homedepot.com/s/pine%20fence%20panel?NCNI-5

I see 6-foot-wide fence panels for slightly more than $1 per square foot.

I know how to mount fence panels. How do you mount the solar panels? What does that cost?

I claim "many" building materials, not "all". There is a world of difference between those two claims! In fact, if you read a little bit further than where you quoted, I even mention one building material that is cheaper than solar panels.

I'm ~50/50 divided on whether humanity will reach some post-scarcity, Star Trek like utopia. In harmony with nature, and the interests of society-at-large as #1 motivation for most people.

Or that greed & selfishness will prevail and we lay this planet to waste, possibly removing our species in the process.

Stories like this strengthen my belief in the former. More, plz!

In Star Trek, there's still scarcity of Galaxy Class Starships, as well as great scarcity of commisions for captains of Galaxy Class Starships.

Once one thing becomes abundant, other things start to feel more scarce.

Where I live in California, we have an abundance of food, wealth, and materials for building homes. What is scarce is permission to actually build. Which sends housing prices through the roof, which then causes labor prices to go through the roof, which makes building itself more expensive.

The politics will always be challenging, and I think most examples in the real world point to the politics of distribution to be more challenging than the act of production.

I would love to see a Star Trek doing more with the Maquis, just seems like such an interesting change from the regular "people on a ship"

The Lower Decks is really enjoyable too, funny to see the bureaucratic elements of Star Fleet joked about.

I thought Star Fleet actually wanted to limit the number of circulating Galaxy Class ships so as to not appear like they were maintaining a war fleet. They kept disassembled spares in case they needed to ramp up their forces.

It was made clear in Star Trek that even big picture stuff such as the entirety of Starfleet is more or less something humanity does to pass the time.

> The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force of our lives.

> We work to better ourselves and the rest of humanity.

In other words, they do it because they want to, not because they need to. No doubt they've got endless replicators on Earth. There is no economy, anything you want or need is just replicated into existence. There is an abundance of goods, virtually infinite supply, thus no need to economize. In Star Trek humanity is a galaxy spanning civilization so even land isn't scarce. Incredibly, they don't even seem to have artificial scarcity in the form of copyright since numerous episodes show characters freely copying works and data from their computers. Absolutely utopic.

Social standing remains scarce. Obviously some people will be captains of the Enterprise while the vast majority will not. That will probably always be true. It ultimately matters little though. A humanity that can just replicate goods into existence has absolutely evolved beyond silly things like capitalism and communism. This is a humanity that is fully liberated from toil, a humanity that is free to enjoy themselves and to pursue their dreams. In that utopic setting, we watch the exploits of the humans who just happened to choose to explore the galaxy, in the startship enterprise. They pursue their dream with inexhaustible curiosity and incorruptible integrity, precisely because they have no other concerns.

Sigh. That sounds wonderful.

DS9 did many things, including making Starfleet more believable as galactic power.

Instead of the "everything is awesome, everything always works, there's plenty of everything" bullshit of ST:TNG, we see a Starfleet that has plenty...for the stuff it cares about. And under the veneer, it's also got its fair share of incompetence, bureaucracy, and turf wars/pissing contests - as would be expected from a massive organization.

Starfleet doesn't care about some podunk space station in a former warzone above a planet full of religious zealots...even after it sports a wormhole.

> In harmony with nature,

What does that even mean?

I mean nature did do the transition from methane to oxygen which was pretty intense. And the K-T extinction was natural. And the glaciers and ice ages were natural. And humans are natural.

It means we stop destroying it as we continue our endless expansion in pursuit of greater wealth.

I guess you know what was meant. Keeping the complex ecological circles at least somewhat intact and alive. And unlike glaciers humans do have some options about what they do.

For anyone else who feels similarly the genre "solarpunk" and specifically one of my favorite authors, Becky Chambers are worth checking out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Psalm_for_the_Wild-Built

Good writer. I enjoyed The long way to a small angry planet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Way_to_a_Small,_Ang...

As basically every world religion has observed, human beings are plagued by pathological behaviors by our nature, as beautiful and enlightened as it can also be. Without a drastic shift in how we approach that problem, I would bet my life on that pathology continuing unabated, if not deepening.

Yeah, one only need look at the multi-billionaires focused on growing their wealth instead of solving the many easily solvable problems of humanity like clean water and starvation.

I think everyone struggles with sin. The wealthy are (mostly) just uniquely empowered and visible. But most people off the street would probably behave about the same if they had the same power.

That said, sociopaths probably are particularly well-equipped to become very wealthy.

I guess it's mostly a matter of what framework the society put in place. We incentivise economical achievements, optimisations, tech. The common theme is making wealth. As long as that's the case, you can't expect these problems to be solved. Humanity/societal frameworks have to start incentivising the right problems.

These so called billionaires have become billionaires because the society and economy are set up that way and they got good at this economical game.

I mean, do we really need to assume a preconfigured basis in order for wealth and power to be “incentivized”? They’re pretty self-incentivizing and built into human societies. On the other hand, I think you’d have to figure out some pretty radical rules and enforcement strategies to decouple the incentives from wealth and power. That presumably would require both wealth and power. Seems internally inconsistent.

Humanity has come so far and I'm sure it's possible to do it. I'm not saying wealth and power are bad. The ways of getting them are what's causing this. If you can become a billionaire by focussing on starvation, that could be a good one.

Today you are incentivised to get rich by making a technological innovation like Facebook. Facebook is a great money making business idea, however is it a life saver as much as solving clean water? I guess not. Unfortunately, we prioritised and incentivised the business models of Facebook and that's where we are.

FYI, I'm not picking on Facebook, it could be any big company today.

If your utopia requires changing the laws of physics or human nature, as Star Trek's society would, then it can't happen.

Maybe we can get a lot closer than we are now (I hope so) but the part where people evolve beyond their "base instincts and vices" and choose to work as though they lived in a capitalist society, just without caring about personal gain, is a fantasy.

I wish it weren't so but I think the chances are more like 20/80 (harmony/greed) :/

Humanity doesn't change. The feathers, semantics and raison d'être shifts.

The US is post scarcity when it comes to food already, Yet many people go hungry. Not because they have to, but because our society deems that they need to.

Someday maybe someone will decide that everyone needs to have [enough] but not more.

Eh someone already did. At the end it is always "Four legs good, two legs better"

> Or that greed & selfishness will prevail and we lay this planet to waste, possibly removing our species in the process.

I have an answer to that you will probably not like.

Great article. Can't imagine what it would be like for this village to get so much new tech (solar radios, solar boats, solar-enabled internet) is such a short amount of time. In my childhood, getting access to an early Wikipedia after having to rely on physical encyclopedias was hugely transformative to how I learned. Boggles my mind to think about what it would be like to go from no internet to an internet with LLMs like chatgpt.

https://archive.is/ftGO2

I wish Iquitos had solar powered mototaxis.

My brother lives in a village nearby and everyone has solar panels there now. They pay 35 soles/month for it, which is cheaper than the generators they had before which they loaded with 5 soles worth of gasoline every night.

The unanswered question is whether they'll be able to maintain and repair all this new high-tech infrastructure if/when it inevitably fails.

Also, I mentally autocompleted the title as "Solar power is changing life deep in the Amazon warehouse", and it made me cilck.

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