https://archive.ph/bpUr1
This makes a lot of sense these days but I’m sure that when they built the grids it wasn’t on the agenda.
Saw this this morning in the New York times … interesting …
Electrifying Africa
The leaders of more than half of Africa’s nations this week are committing to the biggest burst of spending on electric-power generation in African history — at least $35 billion to expand electricity across a continent where more than a half-billion people still don’t have it.
“Without electricity, we can’t get jobs, health care, skills,” said Ajay Banga, the president of the World Bank. The success of electrification, he added, is “foundational to everything.”
But despite the political will behind the effort, many in Africa’s power sector are deeply skeptical. Recently, a major U.S. maker of solar minigrids tried to go into business in Tanzania. When it closed up shop, thousands were left powerless and frustrated.
Somehow electricity doesn’t fit the bill as far as ‘goods’ as far as Africans are concerned. Cellphone contracts are the same but have more value so a plan will be made to secure that service first.
This beings me back to the DC supply argument. If electricity can be so simple and cheap to power your house (no complicated AC inverters) then that would be a start.
For someone who has nothing, a small DC system where he can charge his phone, and/or provides Wifi internet to his village, is a huge step up.
In my opinion, based on my ample experience with solar systems in Namibia in the 1980s (by which I mean… one data point ), DC is fine up to the point that you want a refrigerator. AC induction motors are soooo much more reliable. Maybe this will change as inverter-type compressors become more common (and those are essentially VFD driven from DC), but at that point you essentially have an inverter already: In your fridge.
Also, if we are talking minigrids, where you have to send energy over distances of 1km or more, you want AC so that you can use transformers.
Indeed! For transmission AC is the way to go!
But watch how DC is creeping in all over: I read that wind turbines used to generate AC and were locked into the grid frequency. However they are now generating power that isn’t in lockstep with the grid. The reason is for efficiency I believe. So this means they have converters to get the AC back to grid frequency…
The voters, or at least those I either know or get to see on social media, don’t care about this stuff. This is Trump’s appeal, he’s going to make AMERICA great again, and the rest of the world should do as they see fit.
Saying you’ll keep the lights on is a vote winner in some countries. Saying you’ll lessen the price to the end user of keeping the lights on is a vote winner everywhere. Saying you’ll erect cables and interchange points so that you can export power and most folks will say nothing and then complain on whatsapp that he (whoever it is who said it) wants to sell our power to foreigners.
Besides which, Putin already has a spy ship out figuring where the telecomms cables are. There are cables between France and the UK that transfer power to the UK. They got damaged a couple of years ago. International grid connections are just one more thing to go wrong, to be attacked, or to be used as leverage.
Even with gas you can fill a ship full of it. Electricity you can’t. OK… you could have a ship full of super capacitors, but then when it docks? And how long would delivery take?