I was just listening an NPR piece promoting solar power.
They were talking about how Bangalore had lots of solar panels on people’s roofs, to make up for a lousy energy grid where people only get electricity for a few hours at night.
They interviewed a couple of schoolgirls who complained that they can’t study because they have no electricity at night, and their families were afraid to burn candles because they might burn the house down.
The narrator then came to the conclusion that the lack of nighttime electricity, might convince more people to use solar panels – to light up the darkness.
You can’t make up industrial grade stupid like that.
Seriously? You’re kidding, right?
No, I just heard it a few minutes ago.
I heard a very similar reports on the BBC World Service in the last couple of weeks.
Stupid news gets around.
You’d think they would use some of their nuclear capabilities to build a few power plants. I guess USAID talked them out of doing noble things like that.
Just let them take over the world–then the sunlit side can power the dark side. Verry interesting–but stupid.
Yes, whenever I am looking for solutions, I go straight to Bangalore.
For only a few thousand dollars, one can obtain a bank of batteries and a control system that will allow lighting at nighttime. That and considerable education and training in operating and maintaining such a system are surely within the means of those living in third world tin shacks.
And a country littered with dangerous worn-out batteries. Recycling industry would be required, but put it on a payment by results system only and see what happens.
I refuse to take direction from any country where one cannot find a decent cheeseburger, or a good pork chop. 😉
Evidently NPR is not the only one who is in the dark about electric lights.
http://askville.amazon.com/wwhat-difference-AC-DC-current/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=57753251
Gee Geezer117, if the people living in Third World Bangalore, India had a few thousand dollars laying around, they would be on a plane for New York City.
Time invest billions in lunar panels.
🙂
“Lunarticics for the masses!”
Bangalorious! (Sorry, couldn’t resist. A lot of that industrial grade stupid going around.)
Do you have a link to the story? i was looking for it this morning and couldn’t find it. I heard the last half of the story, but couldn’t find it on npr’s website.
Also, I don’t understand your comment or your problem with people in India using solar panels. For a place that doesn’t have reliable electricity at night, what do you care if they invest in solar panels? They are not a viable solution in the US for that reason because we have lots of coal and natural gas and no shortages of electricity at night.
I hope you are joking.
I think she thinks solar panels work at night.
They used to in Spain, apparently.. 😉
So let me get this straight. You think that these Indians, are stupid enough to spend money on solar panels which can only collect energy during the day, and then just sit in the dark at night because there is no electricity produced? And then wonder hmmmm these panels aren’t working so well…. I’m guessing they were smart enough to buy some batteries to go with their solar panels.
ROFLMAO. If they could afford the batteries, they could save conventional electricity during the day. You want poor people in Bangalore to buy batteries and solar panels – just to make you happy?
No, not to make me happy. To give them light. WHY would anyone buy solar panels if they couldn’t afford the batteries to store the power? The solar panels are much more expensive than the batteries.
The people of Bangalore want electricity at night. Perhaps a better question, is why does that make you unhappy if they want to use solar panels (and batteries) to get it?
The batteries are very expensive and would have to be often replaced.
The solar panels offer no benefit, and additional cost. If they had a storage technology, they could save conventional electricity.
Why do you want the poor people of Bangalore to waste their money on a technology which offers them no benefit?
Yes, the solar panels would offer no benefit at night without batteries. That is true. So why is your assumption that they are stupid (“You can’t make up industrial grade stupid like that.”) rather than they just bought some batteries to go along with the solar panels?
The power that is being shut off at night is from the city. It’s the individual people that would be storing electricity – not the city. Rolling blackouts are common in third world countries and they always happen at night, so as to not interfere with businesses.
NPR is stupid
“Houston . . . [you’ve] got a problem. Your lights aren’t on–just like Bangalore.
Hi Lou. Here is how solar panels work. When they are installed on a roof, they can either be connected directly to the city grid, which is cheaper, or to a battery backup. If connected to the grid, they supplement the power already coming into your home during the day when the sun is out – ie, reduce your bill. But if the grid is not functioning, then you have no back-up power. An alternate, is to purchase batteries along with the solar panels and to store your own power during the day when the sun is out. Then, when the grid (in Bangalore) is not producing any power, you produce electricity from the stored energy in the batteries. My question was, why would anyone living in a city like Bangalore which is not producing energy at night, buy solar panels without battery backup. It doesn’t make any sense.
It’s a bankrupt concept. Unfortunately too many people are too stupid to notice.
Same goes for all the money wasted by Obama on eco toys that don’t work and went bankrupt.
Here’s the latest act of waste: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2013/05/08/vpg-auto-fisker-solyndra-tesla-doe-loan/2143201/ Obama is a disaster and bankruptcy his middle name.
Now that the anti-science, superstition-based initiative presidency ends, we need several public works science Manhattan projects to make us great again and boost us out of this Grotesque Depression. First we must provide free advertising-based wireless internet to everyone to end land line monopolies. Then we must criscross the land with high speed rail. Because bovine flatulence is the major source of greenhouse gases, we must develop home growable microbes to provide all of our protein. Then we must create microbes which turn our sewage and waste into fuel right at home. This will end energy monopoly by putting fuel in our hands. We must address that most illness starts from behavior, especially from parents. Since paranoid schizophrenia is the cause of racism, bigotry, homelessness, terrorism, ignorance, exploitation and criminality, we must provide put the appropriate medications, like lithium, in the water supply and require dangerous wingnuts who refuse free mental health care to be implanted with drug release devices. CHurches should be licensed to reduce supersition and all clergy dealing with small children should be psychiatrically monitored to prevent molesting. Osama bin Laden and Timothy McVeigh were the ultimate superstition based initiatives. Widen navigation straits (Gibraltar, Suez, Malacca, Danube, Panama and Hellspont) with deep nukes to prevent war. In order to fund this we must nationalize the entire financial, electrical and transportation system and extinguish the silly feudal notion that each industry should be regulated by its peers. Technology mandates a transformation of tax subsidies from feudal forecloseable debt to risk sharing equity. Real estate and insurance, the engines of feudalism, must be brought under the Federal Reserve so we may replace all buildings with hazardous materials to provide public works. Insects, flooding and fire spread asbestos, lead and mold which prematurely disables the disadvantaged. Disposable manufactured housing assures children are not prematurely disabled and disadvantaged. Because feudalism is the threat to progress everywhere, we must abolish large land holdings by farmers, foresters or religions and instead make all such large landholding part of the forest service so our trees may diminish greenhouse gases. We must abolish executive pay and make sure all employees in a company are all paid equally. We must abolish this exploitative idea of trade and monopoly and make every manufactured disposable cottage self sufficient through the microbes we invent.