Solar power isn’t the answer, yet

Solar panel: File picture: Twitter/@CECHR_UoD

Solar panel: File picture: Twitter/@CECHR_UoD

Published Apr 28, 2016

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When humans began to use fire, they took the first step to civilisation. Without fire we would never have left caves and forests. If we had not evolved from using wood to using coal and later to petroleum as our sources of energy, there would scarcely be a tree left standing. Of course this energy progression changed with electricity – most of it generated by burning coal and gas, and in the last 70 years, by nuclear methods.

Energy use is a simple way of defining poverty. The poor use wood for heating and cooking. The not-so-poor use coal and petroleum gas. The rich use electricity, and most don’t care how it is generated – by power stations or, if they are rich enough, by photovoltaic (PV) panels, batteries and power inverters.

So the question is this: Do wind and PV power represent an advance for the billions of people living on less than $1 (about R14) a day? Is it a viable, sustainable substitute for paraffin and gas for heating and cooking? The evidence of well-meaning NGOs working in India and Africa is not encouraging. As common sense should make plain, the poor want an energy source that is simple, cheap and portable, needs little or no maintenance and doesn’t break down.

The poor definitely do want electricity. They want it for all the reasons we all want it. It is convenient, reliable, goes on or off at the flick of a switch, and runs everything from television sets to fridges, stoves and all the other electrical goods that make modern life – modern. Green issues like carbon dioxide emissions are not their concern.

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Can PV panels and wind generators compete with paraffin and gas among the poor, or are they a sideshow, a wishful thought years from materialising?

Imagine removing petroleum products as a source of energy for the world’s poor. Replace wood, coal and dried cow dung with PV panels and wind generators. Then ask yourself if they can do the same job for cooking and heating as paraffin or liquefied petroleum gas. Leave aside for the moment the expense of PV panels and wind generators, and assume they are as cheap as paraffin. Pretend batteries and power inverters cost nothing as well.

Then think of the maintenance. Consider rust, dust, wind and lightning storms. Think of the effect of harsh sunlight on most plastics (which are petroleum based). Then think of the insulation of electricity conducting wires. In African conditions, think of white ants. Game, set and match to petroleum products, one would have thought – if not forever, certainly now.

It is no good (not sustainable) calling for state subsidies in an excess of zeal for “clean energy”. Subsidies are a sure fire way of attracting predatory “businessmen”. They only come second to bureaucrats when it comes to spending taxpayers’ money. So, for the poor millions in the world, the promise of PV panels and wind generators is a faint one. It is not simply the cost. A recent study concluded that solar-powered micro-grids face major problems (the polite word used was “challenges”).

At first, the wonder of a single light bulb that could be switched on and off was dramatic, but then PV panels, batteries and inverters were new. Later, the panels were dislodged by high winds or rust, or the batteries died, or the light bulbs fizzled. At this point the recipients of this “free electricity” stood back and waited for the system to be fixed by the NGO that put it there in the first place. Not exactly a sustainable situation.

Regular stuff

What 300 million Indian and African villagers clearly want is not an electricity system that needs maintenance and only runs a minimum of modern appliances. They want the regular stuff that developed economies have and which they see on TV screens in the local community hall.

They are no different from the rest of us. Everyone in the world wants electricity. It now ranks with clean water and safe sanitation as a human right (it is a UN Sustainable Development Goal), but how to supply it is the question that solar and wind power has yet to answer. Large scale coal-fired power stations could do it. Nuclear ones could do it more cleanly. Gas-fired ones could, more cheaply, and more quickly too, but all these proven methods of generating electricity are – thanks to the green lobby – anathema.

So now micro-grids are the NGO answer, ironically, just as it was in dozens of small towns in the old days in South Africa when towns had their own power stations and farmers their own generators.

Curiously to some, irritating to others, and no surprise to historians and those who recognise common sense and precedent, private sector entrepreneurs are finally being recognised as an essential part of any sustainable change – notably, not Green NGOs, not socialists, not governments and bureaucrats.

It is private entrepreneurs who are exploring unsubsidised ways of solving the problems of selling and getting paid for providing electricity in poor and isolated villages. One way they have come up with is using cellphones to buy power credits, and smart meters that cut off when credit runs out.

Suddenly installing PV-powered micro-grids is an investment opportunity, as well as sustainable – but only until the grid arrives and provides regular electric power.

Keith Bryer is a retired communications consultant.

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