Solar Energy Converted Into Bitcoin Expanding in Southern Africa
If you ask any South African what one of the top 5 issues with the country is, then it would probably be the lack of access to energy. We have aging infrastructure that is costing the country billions each month in losses because there simply isn't enough energy for the demand.
It seriously holds the country back but this is what happens when you centralize a service around the government, without proper price signals you remain reactive instead of being proactive, and eventually, that comes to bite you in the arse.
Now South Africa is not a place with a lack of energy independence potential, we have coal deposits, uranium, and thorium deposits if we want to go coal or nuclear.
We have options in hydro, with the orange river, we have a large coastline for wind energy and we have a lot of sunlight year-round if you're keen on going solar. This puts the country and neighboring countries in a position to have a robust energy mix, but sadly politics will always hinder progress.
Do it for yourself
Waiting on these central powers is not a feasible strategy and while some try to reduce their dependence on solar, it's still an expensive operation for the individual. Businesses are able to do it in some regard and one of them is the crowdfunding platform the sun exchange.
It allows retail investors to fund solar projects locally for projects, which are mainly in schools, farms, supermarkets, and retirement homes, many of them in South Africa. The electricity generated from the solar operation helps decentralise energy production and instead of paying the national provider you pay the investors who fronted the cost to set it up.
I've been a user of the sun exchange for some time now, I felt it was a project worth supporting and I do enjoy earning a few more sats, even if it's not the most profitable way to earn them.
The company has funded over 30 projects locally and now plans to expand into neighboring countries that pretty much offer the same conditions as South Africa, so it makes sense. Zimbabwe is their first cross-border target since it has a larger population compared to the other 2 neighbors Nambia and Botswana.
I think that harnessing the sun to provide a needed service is great, but using that demand for the sun to put buying pressure on bitcoin is absolute genius. For every project they set up you now have a business that pays for electricity and the funds are converted into bitcoin and paid to investors. So you're creating new demand with every project you set up.
These are obviously KYC sats, but sats nonetheless.
Energy mixes are going to be the future
I like what these guys are doing contributing to the energy mix, we cannot see it as a saving grace. Solar in its current format is not able to scale to any meaningful amount. It can offset demand on other sources, but it is far from reliable.
We will still need to have operations like hydro, coal, and nuclear, but who is to say these large-scale operations cannot leverage bitcoin to ensure profitability over time.
Source:
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As bad as supply of power is I would wait for NERSA outcome DA we have sunshine more than enough, wind, water, if Politicians/ESKOM can skin the cat they will!
Fixing problems chasing rainbow dreams this is as crazy as most things get. Only way I see forward is to build from scratch totally off-grid, but where?
I did enjoy reading articles.
Coindesk, it makes sense for business, not so sure about home dwellings, _again back to NERSA....
MyBroadBand refers to Zimbabwe where nothing much works except trickle feed into cities, Karoo farmers would only stand to gain, Karoo has sun 99% of the year, also not to sure how much electricity is sent down into this region.
A friend who inherited a farm in the Karoo recently sold after making sure the wind pump for water still worked efficiently, installed solar power to run some lights, fridge and TV at night. Satellite installation for communications, added in a gas stove to back up the old wooden stove which could still be used for heating in cold months.
Let us hope we do move forward without delay, using Bitcoin to back developments a good way to put into investing in our future.
If we have the right to tap into our own water with tanks and bore holes and the right to our private internet connection with satellite-like you mentioned, I don't see why electricity generation should be any different, if im off grid los my uit. I'm doing you a favour by not putting additional demand on your crappy service that you pay millions to run ads to tell us to use less off, its madness
I don't have the answer for where honestly, I do think that if let's say the northern cape taps into orange river hydro and their massive uranium deposits and cost line because they small in the population become energy independent it gives them too much autonomy from the power centers. More of the country's money would flow there because they give us cheap energy and start to distribute political power too.
Whenever I see things that don't make sense to me its usually a money or power angle. it really is a shame though as all that energy would give us so much value and increase everyone's standard of living.
I don't think individual energy independence is workable, maybe in certain towns, but hey we gotta do what we can, no ones coming to save us thats for sure
Well said, exceptionally lucky if you hit borehole water that is the jackpot, everything else you would be able to source, it is finding a place outside of towns/cities where you would be able to "feel safe"!?
If government stood back for a minute without greedy palms being greased, people may take the initiative to build something amazing in this land.
I think this is a brilliant idea to reduce the criticism on bitcoin and ultimately we all can have a great future on #hive-engine.
Lets hope so, the energy hate arguments on bitcoin aren't going to go away anytime soon, but stories like these do help make a case
I think thermal energy could also be a good source of energy in the future. If we can leverage the heat generated from machines or volcanoes properly, I think it could also go a long way.
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It's important to the mix but I mean very few places where an active volcano is on land in a place where it makes sense to set up energy production that can be transported to places or used on site to get value out of it. I'm not sure what other heat generation is, can you point me in the right direction?
I don't think there are many articles on it by @taskmaster4450le about using the heat generated by server racks or other computers back into fueling the energy usage. Besides that, I don't remember which articles they were as they were a long while back.
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Sun is a great source of energy and going to last until human race is going to live on earth. No pollution and almost all year availability in most of the countries. This is perfect source and when combined with some crypto it’s even better.
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Not gonna lie, I hadn't thought about the idea of using crypto as an "investment" into the uplifting of underdeveloped communities around the world. Because crypto isn't directly tied to fiat, rewarding investors with crypto can be less costly to the company providing the service while still ensuring a need is being met that rewards those backing its costs.
This is a pretty slick concept, and I'm going to start tracking more of these for investment options down the road. Thanks for sharing!
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I think this is the example of what future business is going to be like, theres too much focus on these accounting systems and too little focus on how it benefits what we do today and what we need as a society, creating buying pressure for bitcoin with real-world activity is going to catch on I am sure of it
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Energy is a form of currency the more I think about it.
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Indeed, but there are different forms of energy, like our labour and they all count as currency, we simply using a the best accounting method we have now
With all of the sunshine in not just the country of South Africa, but the entire continent would just be converting those photons into electrons and selling the excess electricity.
Even with our sunlight, there's only a limited amount of land in Africa that can leverage solar at any sort of scale, so there are limitations. In addition, we don't have a robust interconnected grid so even if we had large-scale solar, transporting that electricity would be highly inefficient and costly.
The initiative above is just to get certain institutions like schools and stores to be less dependant which I can appreciate since we regularly have rolling black outs