Make no mistake, this is happening all over the globe with enormous success.
Australians now get free power for three hours a day.
India, Pakistan and many other developing countries are deploying solar and batteries insanely fast because it’s so cheap direct from China.
China themselves add more solar capacity in a few months than the entire US grid.
There really is only one country with prohibitively expensive solar and batteries thanks to tariffs. Fingers crossed that will change soon.
Solar is also unique in that it is both affordable and practical to deploy locally.
Part of the difficulty in estimating growth is that a significant chunk of installed supply is not a "power station" that is easily counted and measured.
Residential solar is a few kw here, a few there. But it adds up quickly to mw and gw.
And yes, this results in a larger variable demand on the grid. Which makes planning harder. But it's cheap enough for any established business with a roof to install. It's cheap enough for residential. And from decision to power flowing can be measured in months not years.
Running a 6 foot line from a existing transformer to a box took 2 years. Getting the solar permitted and feeding was another 12 months. Permit review for generator install was another 12 months.
Labor and permitting was > 50% of solar project cost and of generator install.
Permitting and “engineering” was > 90% of grid hookup price, but dwarfed by the cost of the delay (had to run gas generator for about a year as a workaround).
If it was compatible with getting a mortgage, we’d ge 100% off grid and probably $20-50K richer.
What do panels cost in the US? I can order a 500W panel from amazon.de for a little under 100€. It looks like amazon.com only has panels for $300+. Is Amazon just very expensive?
I bought 40 solar panels 2 years ago from Santan Solar that came out to about $130 including shipping and tax. These were 450 W panels. Looks like they now have 400 W panels for $145 + shipping/tax.
I know you didn't ask for it, but in case it's helpful to anyone, here's what I spent (this was all DIY installed):
- $4200 for solar panels (I only kept 33 of the panels and resold the other 7, so this is my net cost).
Yes. Someday I plan on setting up a blog and going through the entire process and sharing my site plans and everything. I tracked every little item I purchased and made tons of notes.
It’s more like $200 if you buy them from a local distributor. It’s definitely expensive for Amazon to ship them if it’s just one or two. Usually a local business buys pallets worth of them and people pick them up.
In the US, it’s to make sure shortsighted investments in fossil fuels pay off (they cap rooftop solar below what makes financial sense for individuals so that rates stay high) or to shelter investors from criminal negligence. (e.g., when PG&E embezzles maintenance funds then burns towns down or blows up city blocks, its customers pay for damages. Lots of people die, but no one goes to jail.)
I think the prices would always skyrocket in Sweden in the winter - y'all use about 1.7x as much electricity in the winter as you do in the summer, and that's gonna cost you.
Sweden's most expensive SE4 Nordpool zone now has almost as expensive electricity as most of northwestern Europe in winter.
EU energy consumption was (_still_ is!) very dependent on cheap Russian natural gas. Moscow leadership abused that geopolitical leverage to the max.
Heavy industry is in tatters in traditional European core industrial areas. EU regions with less expensive energy like northern Sweden pull in some heavy industry investment. It remains to be seen how durable that is. Cluster effects are a thing, and those haven't materialised yet.
At the consumer level, some short to medium term relief will come from HVDC interconnects, more solar, wind and intraday battery storage.
Putin kicking the bucket might not be Europe's get-out-of-trouble card, but chances are it will help.
Answering this question would take too much of a leap of faith. I want to assume you are human and asking this question in good faith, but I can't. Sorry.
Even back then gas was the most expensive (except for a little bit of oil). Europe is in trouble because it chose gas as transition fuel. As China and India show, this was completely avoidable. Especially for someone like Germany who had a lot of options.
There are parallels here to the way much of Africa fixed land-lines phones and went straight to mobile. Which has also been powered by Chinese hardware.
People need to realize this is going to make a massive difference for developing countries to not have to rely on expensive alternatives like LNG. There is a tremendous cost when you have to build very labor + resource intensive infrastructure versus just buying solar panels + batteries.
Will follow a similar path of preferring cellular networks to fiber lines.
An interesting podcast series that goes over just this from earlier this year:
The current geopolitical climate is becoming a blessing for Africa, and much of the developing world. With China's ties with the US all but severed, it is incentivized to redirect most of its resources into building Africa. That in turn will reinvigorate the Chinese economy.
If Africa has abundance of electricity, they can become consumers of Chinese EVs, and more.
And huge mineral wealth and quite a few countries with poor governance. Also far away enough from China that they don’t have any long standing disputes.
Africa being China's China is not a new talking point at all. You're well over a decade late to the party.
You also severely underestimate the amount of work it would take to have better cooperation across the African continent, let alone turn it into a consumer-driven market like the USA.
Africa is a complicated part of the world and it's massive. I really do mean massive.
>That in turn will reinvigorate the Chinese economy.
Not if margins are well below expectations. Factories built to produce goods for developed markets might barely (or not at all) earn a return on capital invested if they’re selling to developing nations instead. It’s a great windfall for developing nations though, that’s for sure
Return on capital is a capitalist problem, not a capacity and capabilities problem.
Consider how much developed world capital sits on return on investment of energy generation that will eventually be crammed down once there is enough solar and battery storage to cut out the capital middleman. What happens in a world where capital cannot take a cut of global energy production, orchestration, and use? Might find better uses for that capital, but maybe not.
There is no guarantee of return on capital, broadly speaking.
Decentralised power generation is the future for Africa, many of whose countries cannot rely on central government to efficiently operate a national grid. I am thinking primarily of South Africa, where many businesses and (rich enough) home owners have back up diesel generators to fill in in moments of load shedding. Solar of course is the most decentralised form of power of all. Positive stuff for Africa. This is where China overcapacity really does lead to more equitable power (literally) distribution, so congrats to them also
Both, in the sense that it was absolutely inevitable (and predicted 20 years past in various looking forward forums), and that China made an informed high level plan to be first on the ground to make things happen in their favour.
Is it smart or stupid business to lose money upfront (subsidise) to establish and secure a market for years to follow?
Closely followed by, is China deeply sinister and evil for having long term plans and seeing them through, or are some simply upset to see China getting there first and doing it better?
> Is it smart or stupid business to lose money upfront (subsidise) to establish and secure a market for years to follow?
Well like most business decisions its a risk. If it works out it looks genius; if it fails it is a cautionary tale.
I think one part people sometimes miss, is that they assume the plan is subsidize, and then hike prices once you have driven everyone out of business. Which is of course one way to do it, and may very well be part of China's plan. But the other way to do it is subsidize until economies of scale and R&D kick in and you are legitimately cheaper than the competition.
The second way is my default thinking, I grew up in a remote part of the world where the economics made it prohibitive for small business to start anything big, so the government (ie. the people we all elected to make decisions about common resources and challenges) started state power, state rail and state telecoms companies and ran them until they could be privatised after all "the hard stuff" had been put in place.
> Is it smart or stupid business to lose money upfront (subsidise) to establish and secure a market for years to follow?
If we see it purely as a business decision. But it was also driven by energy sovereignty, pollution. So I think it was smart even if they are never able to recover initial cost.
It's inevitable, but China accelerated it (as did a few others). And solar isn't alone. Any professor in physics will say that EVs, heat pumps and LEDs are all inevitable.
its not that China subsidized it, it is that USA had made it the only choice that makes sense. Kudos to USA for destroying the petrodollar and boosting the green technology, backed by the BRI
* Africans initiating contracts to purchase phones, EVs, solar panels, etc for themselves, and
* performative influencers raising funds to drop in wells all over the place while filming themselves being congratulated for it by other non Africans.
Kind of hard to pin that one down really, bit like nailing jelly to a wall.
Still, to address the claim that wells don't survive .. what are the actual numbers on this?
eg: https://waterwellsforafrica.org/ has put in 600 wells since 1996 ( average 20 wells a year for 30 years ) - how many of these wells have failed and are no longer used? How many "failed wells" provided water for a decade and then had to be moved?
None of those places publish any information at all related to failures or success. I'll leave the reason for that as a thought exercise you can choose to explore yourself.
It's okay, don't beat yourself up, researching facts on the ground across the planet is hard thing to do.
Seeing as you've struggled to get anything concrete on reasonable ball park estimates, let's try another approach - are those three charities representative of the broader matter of putting wells in Africa, do they fall into the performative aspect I referenced above?
Returning to your top of chain comment here - do charities flogging the idea of wells to westerners fall into the same bucket as China doing business in Africa supplying green technology?
HN, by the guidelines at least, is for curious and thoughtful comments, you do seem to have just launched in with what appears, to my eyes at least, straight passive aggressive negging unbacked by any broad hard data.
We moved to a new house earlier this year in Kenya and it has solar. Very convenient, as there are electricity outages every few weeks for various reasons (usually trees falling on power lines), not to mention the cost savings. We are basically on the equator so we have sun for 12 hours in theory.
Africa is enormous. Some of the arid regions don't have much infrastructure or population. One of my projects would benefit from owning some "sovereign" land, do you think it would be possible to buy approximately a square mile (2.56 square kilometers), 258 hectares/640 acres, about five times the size of the vatican, from one of the countries, like in the middle of the dessert with nothing there, and allow it to be used like an enormous embassy/sovereign territory? Which country would be best for that? Should be sunny, arid, have some cheap dessert land with pretty much nothing there. I'd just order a starlink and some solar panels and have a sovereign data center there.
The project is registered with the United Nations, but some of the requirements for full sovereignty are internationally recognized land. Do you think it's possible? (Like an embassy.)
Your comment made me think of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bir_Tawil. I know it's not precisely what you're talking about, but interesting nonetheless :)
There's currently a large civil war in Sudan, so I'd guess it's not the safest place to have a data center even if both governments agreed to it.
According to this[1], an American farmer went there about 12 years ago and declared the formation of a kingdom there. There was a documentary about it called The King of North Sudan that premiered in 2021, about 7 years later. If he's still king there I guess he's the guy to talk to about giving up some of that territory.
There are a lot of micronations with similar histories. The only thing that sets us apart is our 300,000 users.
71 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 38.9 ms ] threadAustralians now get free power for three hours a day. India, Pakistan and many other developing countries are deploying solar and batteries insanely fast because it’s so cheap direct from China.
China themselves add more solar capacity in a few months than the entire US grid.
There really is only one country with prohibitively expensive solar and batteries thanks to tariffs. Fingers crossed that will change soon.
Part of the difficulty in estimating growth is that a significant chunk of installed supply is not a "power station" that is easily counted and measured.
Residential solar is a few kw here, a few there. But it adds up quickly to mw and gw.
And yes, this results in a larger variable demand on the grid. Which makes planning harder. But it's cheap enough for any established business with a roof to install. It's cheap enough for residential. And from decision to power flowing can be measured in months not years.
BC, Canada.
Labor and permitting was > 50% of solar project cost and of generator install.
Permitting and “engineering” was > 90% of grid hookup price, but dwarfed by the cost of the delay (had to run gas generator for about a year as a workaround).
If it was compatible with getting a mortgage, we’d ge 100% off grid and probably $20-50K richer.
SF Bay Area.
What a shame it’s super simple and quick in Canada with less solar potential, and dysfunctional and slow in California with abundant solar potential.
Amazing this hasn’t been fixed.
I know you didn't ask for it, but in case it's helpful to anyone, here's what I spent (this was all DIY installed):
- $4200 for solar panels (I only kept 33 of the panels and resold the other 7, so this is my net cost).
- $4850 for EG4 18KPV inverter.
- $6800 for 2x EG4 14.3 kWh indoor batteries + conduit boxes.
- $1900 for EG4 GridBOSS.
- $1700 for Tigo optimizers (TS4-A-O + CCA + TAP).
- $825 for permitting.
- $2575 to redo some siding on my house because I hard to replace my meter box and main panel.
- $4000 for wire, conduit, junction boxes, PV DC disconnect, AC disconnect, meter box, main service panel, etc.
- $3200 for racking and roof stuff.
- $2000 for misc things, tools, etc.
Net (including 30% tax credit and 2% credit card cash back), I spent $21,228.47 for everything.
So you either need surplus in some way, to over cover the peak, or storage.
Both are still more expensive than fast gas turbines.
EU energy consumption was (_still_ is!) very dependent on cheap Russian natural gas. Moscow leadership abused that geopolitical leverage to the max.
Heavy industry is in tatters in traditional European core industrial areas. EU regions with less expensive energy like northern Sweden pull in some heavy industry investment. It remains to be seen how durable that is. Cluster effects are a thing, and those haven't materialised yet.
At the consumer level, some short to medium term relief will come from HVDC interconnects, more solar, wind and intraday battery storage.
Putin kicking the bucket might not be Europe's get-out-of-trouble card, but chances are it will help.
Please be specific
https://www.ffe.de/en/publications/merit-order-shifts-and-th...
Even back then gas was the most expensive (except for a little bit of oil). Europe is in trouble because it chose gas as transition fuel. As China and India show, this was completely avoidable. Especially for someone like Germany who had a lot of options.
Will follow a similar path of preferring cellular networks to fiber lines.
An interesting podcast series that goes over just this from earlier this year:
https://thepolycrisis.org/electric-world-order-ep-1-the-quie...
If Africa has abundance of electricity, they can become consumers of Chinese EVs, and more.
Couldn’t be much better for the Chinese.
You also severely underestimate the amount of work it would take to have better cooperation across the African continent, let alone turn it into a consumer-driven market like the USA.
Africa is a complicated part of the world and it's massive. I really do mean massive.
Not if margins are well below expectations. Factories built to produce goods for developed markets might barely (or not at all) earn a return on capital invested if they’re selling to developing nations instead. It’s a great windfall for developing nations though, that’s for sure
Consider how much developed world capital sits on return on investment of energy generation that will eventually be crammed down once there is enough solar and battery storage to cut out the capital middleman. What happens in a world where capital cannot take a cut of global energy production, orchestration, and use? Might find better uses for that capital, but maybe not.
There is no guarantee of return on capital, broadly speaking.
Is it smart or stupid business to lose money upfront (subsidise) to establish and secure a market for years to follow?
Closely followed by, is China deeply sinister and evil for having long term plans and seeing them through, or are some simply upset to see China getting there first and doing it better?
Well like most business decisions its a risk. If it works out it looks genius; if it fails it is a cautionary tale.
I think one part people sometimes miss, is that they assume the plan is subsidize, and then hike prices once you have driven everyone out of business. Which is of course one way to do it, and may very well be part of China's plan. But the other way to do it is subsidize until economies of scale and R&D kick in and you are legitimately cheaper than the competition.
If we see it purely as a business decision. But it was also driven by energy sovereignty, pollution. So I think it was smart even if they are never able to recover initial cost.
https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/oils-monopoly-kaput-china-to-b...
It’s amazing :)
Great for everyone and will change everything if allowed to continue
* Africans initiating contracts to purchase phones, EVs, solar panels, etc for themselves, and
* performative influencers raising funds to drop in wells all over the place while filming themselves being congratulated for it by other non Africans.
Kind of hard to pin that one down really, bit like nailing jelly to a wall.
Still, to address the claim that wells don't survive .. what are the actual numbers on this?
eg: https://waterwellsforafrica.org/ has put in 600 wells since 1996 ( average 20 wells a year for 30 years ) - how many of these wells have failed and are no longer used? How many "failed wells" provided water for a decade and then had to be moved?
Ditto for https://waterforafrica.com.au/ and for https://thewaterproject.org/ ?
Seeing as you've struggled to get anything concrete on reasonable ball park estimates, let's try another approach - are those three charities representative of the broader matter of putting wells in Africa, do they fall into the performative aspect I referenced above?
Returning to your top of chain comment here - do charities flogging the idea of wells to westerners fall into the same bucket as China doing business in Africa supplying green technology?
HN, by the guidelines at least, is for curious and thoughtful comments, you do seem to have just launched in with what appears, to my eyes at least, straight passive aggressive negging unbacked by any broad hard data.
This would never ever could have happened in Africa, had the West held exclusive control over green tech
"enormous embassy/sovereign territory" or not, when the politics or the institutions change your legal right to ownership may not exist.
There's currently a large civil war in Sudan, so I'd guess it's not the safest place to have a data center even if both governments agreed to it.
According to this[1], an American farmer went there about 12 years ago and declared the formation of a kingdom there. There was a documentary about it called The King of North Sudan that premiered in 2021, about 7 years later. If he's still king there I guess he's the guy to talk to about giving up some of that territory.
There are a lot of micronations with similar histories. The only thing that sets us apart is our 300,000 users.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempts_to_claim_Bir_Tawil_as...
Too little, too late and too expensive!