I read an interesting article(https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/03/for-climate-and-livelihoods-africa-bets-big-on-solar-mini-grids/) this morning on Nigeria moving to minigrid solar. They are putting in solar systems that produce up to 10 megawatts systems They include solar panels, batteries and transmission lines. In Africa more than half a billion people lack access to electricity.
The article talks about maintenance costs and how in many places that isn't planned for. If not, then we'll get the same old situation of bring new technology in and then when it breaks, they are back to old ways. I wonder if a better system might be to set up each home with its own solar and then create a community co-op building to do more community scale applications that include machinery. No matter the scale or technology, it needs to be ingrained in people to save for future maintenance.
Articles like this really inspires me to get solar for our home. We are definitely on an energy conservation track. We have scheduled the crawlspace work to be done on April 3rd. The sealing and insulating of the HVAC ducts should drop our electrical bill about 30%. It will be too late to offset any winter heating (our last PGE bill was nearly $300!), but we will capture benefits for summer cooling.
Our property is in a pretty good location, permaculture-wise. We are on a hill, mid-slope, to miss the colder temps at the top and bottom. Our lot gently slopes to the south allowing us to capture sun and also position water tanks on the uphill side of our property, being filled by the whole north slope of the house. I can definitely see having a large tank, maybe 7000 gallons, to provide all the garden watering for the property. I'll have to do some calculations on rainfall and roof area to correctly size the tank. The big unknown is what gardens we will have and with what water usage. With a large tank we will get more pressure, so we can gravity feed it all. With a little bit of electronics, we could have an automated system.
Comments? Email keith@nasman.us