At Bestway Cement's plant in Chakwal, Pakistan, solar already supplies more than a quarter of the electricity used to make cement. The company has 26MW installed and...
  • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
    2·
    17 days ago

    I was recently amazed to discover that you can now buy 10W portable solar chargers that are ACTUALLY portable, and cost like 9 euro
    Feels like yesterday that they were 10x the cost and it took 3 bulky panels to get enough juice that you could maybe theoretically charge your phone if there are no clouds in the sky!

  • deHaga@feddit.uk
    1·
    22 days ago

    I bought 3.5kw and a 10kwh battery in June and it’s amazing. Bills are 90% cheaper and it’ll pay for itself in 5 years with underwritten warranties for 25 years on the panels and 15 on the battery

    • seang96@spgrn.com
      1·
      21 days ago

      How much did you pay for it all and did you use an electrician, solar company, or DIY?

      I been saving up to by outright at 30-40k though with energy rises not sure if it’s better of to start earlier maybe even do less capacity with room to upgrade later.

        • seang96@spgrn.com
          0·
          21 days ago

          living in capitalistic country with a super idiotic “leader” isn’t helping me here lol. I hope one day to have the clean energy like you and a battery backup. We have had storms that caused a 6 day outage in the past…

          • deHaga@feddit.uk
            1·
            21 days ago

            It’s great. I have an EV and fill it up when the price goes negative when there is loads of wind and solar.

  • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    22 days ago

    For reference, 100W panels were running 66 cents/W when I did my build in 2023. Larger panels have always been cheaper per watt, but it means prices have dropped by up to 80% in just three years.

  • moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.comEnglish
    1·
    21 days ago

    At Bestway Cement’s plant in Chakwal, Pakistan, solar already supplies more than a quarter of the electricity used to make cement. The company has 26MW installed and expects to add another 6.34MW by the end of the year.

    That’s pretty amazing. Building construction make up a huge part of our carbon footprint.

    If we could get 100% green cement (and steel), it would significantly decrease our emissions.

    • davetortoise@reddthat.com
      0·
      21 days ago

      Steel is a lot more tricky as generally fossil fuels are burnt directly inside the blast furnace. There are a few alternative “green steel” processing routes that avoid this but iirc none of them are hugely competitive at the moment.

    • TwiddleTwaddle@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      1·
      22 days ago

      Skimming the article I couldn’t find any definition of terms, but I assume this is production cost, not cost to the end user after markups from the manufacturer, distributor, and retailer.

      • octobob@lemmy.ml
        1·
        21 days ago

        My roommate is rebuilding his Volkswagen 2012 Golf R’s engine right now. We were watching on YouTube, you can get a whole engine on Alibaba for like $500. Seems like it’s 50/50 of it working and being like a brand new car, or just a huge clusterfuck that won’t run and turns into a shitshow disaster

        • moldy_rice@piefed.keyboardvagabond.comEnglish
          1·
          21 days ago

          Sourcing parts from China requires skill. Look for reviews, get samples, and don’t go cheap. You can get great quality stuff there. They will build to spec. So if you know the exact geometry and thickness and grade of material, you can be very specific and get something great.

          But if you just buy something cheap without discussing it with their engineers and confirming specs and tolerances, you’ll get something cheap.