Surprise solar boom in Pakistan helps millions, but harms grid and power cos

business-standard.com

2 points·calrain··6 comments

> For Murtaza, the decision to switch to solar on his farm near Lahore was an easy one. It will take him less than a year to recover the cost of installing the panels, and his electricity bill has plunged by 80 per cent, he said.

That's amazing. I sure hope we continue this path to become a solarpunk world.

Problem is that this way, grid electricity will be out soon because people will only be consuming it when there is no sun - and that's not enough for utilities to break even, so they are going to go bankrupt.

This is a solvable issue, when you look at how fast battery storage prices are falling.

Society without an electric grid, is a Mad Max society. If the grid was able to integrate renewable sources and storage to use less fossils and still provide reliable service to people that would be one thing. But in Pakistan as it seems, the grid operator is unable to put it's shit together even without volatile renewables, it's totally dysfunctional and corrupt. So you are heading into the wild west of energy.

Maybe this is an advantage when everybody is independent from a bad energy supplier with solar panels and batteries

It shows what happens when grid prices rise too high.

There is a lot of good cheap tech to help provide baseline home power, especially when neighborhoods set up micro grids.

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