Cheap Green Tech Allows Faster Path To Electrification For the Developing World (japantimes.co.jp) 36
Slashdot reader Mr. Dollar Ton summarizes this article from Bloomberg:
According to a new report from think tank "Ember", the availability of cheap green tech can have developing countries profit from earlier investment and skip steps in the transition from fossil to alternatives.
India is put forward as an example. While China's rapid electrification has been hailed as a miracle, by some measures, India is moving ahead faster than China did when it was at similar levels of economic development. It's an indication that clean electricity could be the most direct way to boost growth for other developing economies.
That's mainly because India has access to solar panels and electric cars at a much lower price than China did about a decade ago. Chinese investments lowered the costs of what experts call "modular technologies" — the production of each solar panel, battery cell and electric car enables engineers to learn how to make it more efficiently.
The think tank's team even argues "that countries such as India, which don't have significant domestic fossil-fuel reserves, will become 'electrostates' that meet most of their energy needs through electricity generated from clean sources," according to the article: No country is an electrostate yet, [says Ember strategist Kingsmill Bond], but countries are increasingly turning to green electricity to power their economies. Nations that are less developed than India will see even more advantages as the cost of electricity technologies, from solar panels and electric vehicles to battery components and minerals, continue to fall.
Neither India nor China is going electric purely to cut emissions or meet climate targets, says Bond. They're doing so because it makes economic sense, particularly for India, which imports more than 40% of its primary energy in the form of coal, oil and gas, according to the International Energy Agency. "To grow and have energy independence, India needs to reduce the terrible burden of fossil-fuel imports worth $150 billion each year," said Bond. "India needs to find other solutions...."
[I]f countries like India find ways to grow electrotech manufacturing without absolute dependence on Chinese equipment, electrification could speed up further. With the U.S. and Europe continuing to add exclusions for Chinese-linked electrotech, countries like India will have an incentive to invest in their own manufacturing capacity. "We are probably at a moment of peak Chinese dominance in the electrotech system, as the rest of the world starts to wake up and realize that this is the energy future," he said.
India is put forward as an example. While China's rapid electrification has been hailed as a miracle, by some measures, India is moving ahead faster than China did when it was at similar levels of economic development. It's an indication that clean electricity could be the most direct way to boost growth for other developing economies.
That's mainly because India has access to solar panels and electric cars at a much lower price than China did about a decade ago. Chinese investments lowered the costs of what experts call "modular technologies" — the production of each solar panel, battery cell and electric car enables engineers to learn how to make it more efficiently.
The think tank's team even argues "that countries such as India, which don't have significant domestic fossil-fuel reserves, will become 'electrostates' that meet most of their energy needs through electricity generated from clean sources," according to the article: No country is an electrostate yet, [says Ember strategist Kingsmill Bond], but countries are increasingly turning to green electricity to power their economies. Nations that are less developed than India will see even more advantages as the cost of electricity technologies, from solar panels and electric vehicles to battery components and minerals, continue to fall.
Neither India nor China is going electric purely to cut emissions or meet climate targets, says Bond. They're doing so because it makes economic sense, particularly for India, which imports more than 40% of its primary energy in the form of coal, oil and gas, according to the International Energy Agency. "To grow and have energy independence, India needs to reduce the terrible burden of fossil-fuel imports worth $150 billion each year," said Bond. "India needs to find other solutions...."
[I]f countries like India find ways to grow electrotech manufacturing without absolute dependence on Chinese equipment, electrification could speed up further. With the U.S. and Europe continuing to add exclusions for Chinese-linked electrotech, countries like India will have an incentive to invest in their own manufacturing capacity. "We are probably at a moment of peak Chinese dominance in the electrotech system, as the rest of the world starts to wake up and realize that this is the energy future," he said.
infrastructure (Score:5, Interesting)
Makes sense. Countries with less pre-existing electrical infrastructure don't have as much sunk costs for solar to compete against.
Solar can also be implemented at small scale, unlike an electrical grid, which optimizes toward large sizes.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Makes sense. Countries with less pre-existing electrical infrastructure don't have as much sunk costs for solar to compete against. Solar can also be implemented at small scale, unlike an electrical grid, which optimizes toward large sizes.
It's pretty much a repeat of the developing world skipping land lines and going straight to cellular phones. Less expensive equipment that is a better fit for local conditions.
sunk costs (Score:2)
For some reason some people throw the sunk cost phrase around as if it is garlic to a vampire. I was discussing whether it was worth spending another $12B to finish the Snowy 2 hydro project. Two nitwits claimed I had fallen for the sunk cost fallacy, which since I was ignoring the 12B spent to date merely demonstrated that they didn't know what SCF is.
Re: (Score:3)
hy does solar, or anything else, have to compete with sunk costs? Do you know what sunk costs are? Apparently not because existing electrical infrastructure is not a sunk cost by your own definition (you NEVER compete against a sunk cost because it's a sunk cost).
Well, in most areas with developed electrical grid, if you want to put solar on your house, local regulations, which require you to have electrical service, also mandate a transfer switch or other protection in your equipment. Tends to be quite expensive.
Aside from that, that mandatory electrical service you have to have charges you fees even if you use no electricity. Some portion of those fees tend to be disguised taxes used to pay for bailouts of failed power projects like nuclear reactors that are half
Re: (Score:2)
Homes have to be built to use electrical in case the next buyer wants to use it, but that doesn't mean YOU have to.
Which would satisfy the point of the argument anyway since it is about solar having to compete with sunk costs, such as the grid hookup. However, the fact is that most jurisdictions in the US do actually make it mandatory to have active electrical service. Many people who have looked into going off grid have found out that it is not actually legal in their area.
Try an experiment. Don't pay your electric bill for three months and the power company will pull your electric meter for non-payment. Problem solved. You can now power your home strictly from your solar and batteries without paying for the grid infrastructure cost.
Try that experiment long enough in most places in the US and the local government will eventually condemn the home or put a lien on it and eventuall
Re:infrastructure (Score:4, Interesting)
"...don't have as much sunk costs for solar to compete against."
Why does solar, or anything else, have to compete with sunk costs? Do you know what sunk costs are?
Sunk cost is a cost already incurred that is not subject to variation or revision and that is usually represented by a fixed asset purchased and in use. [merriam-webster.com] (The term is often used as part of tthe phrase "the sunk cost fallacy", where it represents cost already spent, but it is also applicable in other contexts.)
In this particular application, it means that in industrialized countries, the electrical grid is already paid for (or, in the language of the definition above, it is "a fixed asset already purchased and in use"), while solar and other new technologies are not yet paid for.
Is there any particular point in your post other than nitpicking? Or is it that you are actually not able to understand that a technology that has to be paid for is at a disavantage competing against a technology that is already paid?
Re: infrastructure (Score:2)
Is there any particular point in your post other than nitpicking
Oh, you must be new here... Welcome!
Re: infrastructure (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
This article is about solar and batteries, though.
Re: (Score:2)
The big difference between China and India is the ability of their governments to implement economic policy and large-scale projects. The Chinese have a dictatorship/autocracy which can implement policy forcefully and immediately without political challenges. And the Chinese have a money-printing machine with their export-driven economy. Meanwhile, although Modi and his party may dominate the national government, the Indian government system is unable to develop large-scale projects like power grids and
Longer term trend (Score:5, Interesting)
This trend has been going on for a while. It is not just in large countries like India and China but in many smaller or even poorer developing countries. Wind and solar work especially well if one doesn't have the infrastructure to make a single large grid. Since large-scale fossil fuel plants naturally need a large grid, small sets of solar panels work really well. There are some really neat charities helping with this, such as SELF, the Solar Electric Light Fund https://www.self.org/ways-to-give/ [self.org].
This is also getting to work better both in places like China and India and elsewhere because we're in the process of solving the primary problem of solar and wind power; their intermittent nature. Solar doesn't work when it is dark and wind doesn't work when the wind isn't blowing. But there's been massive improvement in battery tech, meaning that power can be stored for longer and more cheaply and so we can more easily store it for later. Lithium ion battery costs are are about a quarter of what they were a decade ago in terms of kilowatt-hours stored per a dollar and they've improved on a lot of other metrics also https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-price [ourworldindata.org] and these trends are likely to continue https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/decade-of-the-battery-334 [noahpinion.blog]. (Incidentally the rise of drones has been in part due to the major improvements in batteries which would have not had practical levels of power stored if an equivalent size battery were used 20 years ago.)
Unfortunately, batteries are still expensive enough that developing countries are highly limited in how much of them they can have. So while were starting to see major battery storage in California https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2025-11/californias-battery-storage-fleet-continues-record-growth-strengthening-grid [ca.gov] as well as China (which has about three times as much total on grid storage as all of North America right now https://asia.nikkei.com/business/energy/china-battery-storage-installations-triple-north-america-s-in-2025 [nikkei.com]), but less so in other countries. In the US in particular, given how much the Trump administration has is trying its hardest to stop absolutely any solar or wind development, the US is going to find itself falling behind even more on all of this.
To put things in perspective... (Score:4, Informative)
People buy some solar panels on the local market, strap them to their motorcycles and drive home in their village - instant electricity instead of long engineering. No one cares about baseload or similar nightmares haunting our debates. If it works, it's fine, and maybe next time, they will buy one or two battery packs to have electricity over night. Kenya and Ethiopia experience a boom in electric motorcycles - the ones you can charge in your village, and don't need to push to the next gas station miles away when you ran out of gas, and you don't know if they got gas recently, or if the tank truck is still in repair.
Re: (Score:2)
People buy some solar panels on the local market, strap them to their motorcycles and drive home in their village - instant electricity instead of long engineering.
What exactly are they taking home? Solar panels with a micro inverter they run an extension cord from the roof to a wall outlet to save money or a complete ESS?
No one cares about baseload or similar nightmares haunting our debates. If it works, it's fine, and maybe next time, they will buy one or two battery packs to have electricity over night.
Most of Kenya is connected to the grid. Batteries only make sense for the small minority without grid connections.
Kenya and Ethiopia experience a boom in electric motorcycles - the ones you can charge in your village, and don't need to push to the next gas station miles away when you ran out of gas, and you don't know if they got gas recently, or if the tank truck is still in repair.
Electric scooters and motorbikes are a no-brainer almost everywhere.
Re: (Score:3)
They're taking home batteries and a micro-inverter. But there are also community microgrids being set up that are larger and more sophisticated. 9000+ in Africa thus far.
Most of Kenya may be connected to the grid, but the grid is much less reliable than the grid in developed country. S Africa is the most notorious example of this, but it's true all across Africa (not just sub-Saharan, either). And in facdt, somewhere between a quarter and a third of all Kenyans lack a reliable grid connection. On top of tha
Re: (Score:2)
They're taking home batteries and a micro-inverter.
These are radically different things. People are buying panels to offset their energy costs. Micro-inverters are paperweights without the grid. They do not have DC chargers and can't run loads from either PV or batteries.
But there are also community microgrids being set up that are larger and more sophisticated. 9000+ in Africa thus far.
Microgrids are not randos taking home panels and plugging them in.
Most of Kenya may be connected to the grid, but the grid is much less reliable than the grid in developed country. S Africa is the most notorious example of this, but it's true all across Africa (not just sub-Saharan, either). And in facdt, somewhere between a quarter and a third of all Kenyans lack a reliable grid connection. On top of that, solar and batteries may be cheaper than using grid power, as well as being more reliable.
Plugging PV into a wall socket is cost effective. A full ESS is in no universe cheaper than the grid.
Re: (Score:2)
You've misunderstood how the typical African setup works. There's typically no attempt to back-feed into house wiring, much less a domestic grid. Instead, the solar panels feed a battery, the battery plugs into a microinverter to convert DC to AC, and the appliances plug into a socket directly on the inverter.
I am very aware that microgrids are not domestic consumers taking panels home and plugging them in. You can tell I'm very aware from my previous post, which used the phrase "BUT there are ALSO communit
Re: (Score:2)
What exactly are they taking home? Solar panels with a micro inverter they run an extension cord from the roof to a wall outlet to save money or a complete ESS?
You don't need to connect to the grid to operate a charger. You don't need to connect to the grid to operate the pump of a water well. You don't need to connect to the grid if you power your workshop if you open after sunrise and close before dawn - Africa close to the equator does not have long winter nights. You don't even need to connect to the grid to power a refrigerator, because if those are isolated enough they will not defrost over night. And if you have an older model, you have to pay the money for
Re: (Score:2)
You don't need to connect to the grid to operate a charger. You don't need to connect to the grid to operate the pump of a water well. You don't need to connect to the grid if you power your workshop if you open after sunrise and close before dawn - Africa close to the equator does not have long winter nights. You don't even need to connect to the grid to power a refrigerator, because if those are isolated enough they will not defrost over night. And if you have an older model, you have to pay the money for a battery before connecting the refrigerator to your solar panel - some later to invest in.
You said "people buy some solar panels on the local market, strap them to their motorcycles and drive home in their village - instant electricity instead of long engineering."
I asked "What exactly are they taking home? Solar panels with a micro inverter they run an extension cord from the roof to a wall outlet to save money or a complete ESS?"
You neglected to answer my question instead going on about what is not needed. I think from your commentary you assume DC from PV can be used directly to power loads
Re: (Score:3)
My sister and her husband, in a first world country with a pretty good electrical grid, are on pure solar electricity without a grid connection. About the only compromise they've had to make is that they don't have an oven. They have an electric stove, fridge, washing machine, lights, and all the other appliances you'd expect. It seems to work fine for them. Household solar has come a long way since the '90s where you were stuck with deep cycle lead acid batteries and 12V DC throughout the house, and yo
Re: To put things in perspective... (Score:2)
Is there any particular point in your post other than nitpicking
You must be new here, welcome!
Re: To put things in perspective... (Score:2)
Sorry, replied to wrong comment
Second order effects are fantastic (Score:3)
Aside from feeling grumpy that Slashdot editors rejected my submission on this exact topic some weeks ago as spam, here are a few other important aspects of all this.
The dramatic decline in the price of solar panels is driving a massive reshaping of developing world economies. In Pakistan, they've imported solar equivalent to 30% of the country's entire generating capacity in six months. In Namibia, rooftop solar is now 11% of total capacity; in Eswatini, it's 15% and in South Africa it's 9%. Solar offers cheaper running costs, no local air pollution, and security of supply, which is hugely valuable in parts of the world where grid operators frequently resort to load shedding. And large amounts of this growth is happening behind-the-meter, too. This will change the economies of the developing world permanently, as well as improving health and life expectancy, as diesel generators get used less and less in years to come.
It's the second order impacts that are the most exciting. Shopping bills go down because food can be refrigerated, so there's less waste. Education standards rise because kids can read at night. Respiratory infections drop because kerosene isn't being used in lamps. Sexual assaults fall because women and girls can use a cargo e-bike to fetch water instead of having to walk. This is happening right across the middle lattitudes, but above all Africa, because more than 85% of the African continent's landscape receives global horizontal irradiation of at least 2,000 kWh/(m year), making it the most sun-rich continent in the world.
We need electric everywhere (Score:2)
Deep questions must be asked why so called "governme
Re: We need electric everywhere (Score:2)
Deep questions must be asked why so called "governments", "corporations" and "charities" have allowed the situation to persist for so long.
We raced down this rabbit hole years ago with the debates about the OLPC project, that promised to bring the internet/computing to villages that lack basic sanitation, fresh water or electricity... I think the conclusion was with internet access third-worlds could simply order whatever they lacked from Amazon or something if they had internet access.
Well it can be done localy (Score:2)
I mean solar and storage not only are currently among the cheapest way to get power (along with wind), but it can be done ultra-locally. There is no huge up-front investment you need to take. Solar panels start at about 60 Euros a piece, and that gives you plenty for charging up a battery so you'll have light all night long, operate a radio or even a TV. There is no government you need to ask, which may or may not be corrupt.
It just makes sense for everybody who has the space for it.
Re: Well it can be done localy (Score:2)
It so cheap, wind and solar, that as soon as government money is pulled from a project, the project is cancelled.
Why are these projects only pursued when there is free gov't money offsetting the cost/reducing the risk?
Re: Well it can be done localy (Score:2)
How big is a 60 euro solar panel?
Re: (Score:2)
It's in the 400-500 Watt peak range.
Here's just one example:
https://preisvergleich.heise.d... [heise.de]
Re: Well it can be done localy (Score:2)
Thank you. That is surprisingly cheap/powerful. It is a few years since I looked at solar.
Let's revisit Supply vs Demand's effect on prices (Score:2)
With the U.S. and Europe continuing to add exclusions for Chinese-linked electrotech, countries like India will have an incentive to invest in their own manufacturing capacity.
China is pumping out record amounts of "electrotech" (AKA solar panels, wind turbines, etc), and the market they are selling into is shrinking (US and European exclusions are growing), will result in over-production, which leads to lower prices.
I don't understand why lower prices on Chinese "electrotech" will drive India to greatly increase domestic (Indian) production of "electrotech"...
Cheap Chinese solar panels didn't cause the U.S. to increase domestic (American) solar panel production...