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The challenges of solar power

In an ideal world, it would be an affordable and practical solution for new electrical generation installations in developing nations to be fueled by low-carbon sources, such as solar, wind, and hydropower.  Solar seems perfect for nations with lots of sun exposure, and no efficient way of bringing the traditional electric grid to remote locations. However, there are many unexpected challenges with solar electrification that entrepreneurs are learning about while doing business in these developing nations, including installation and maintenance, infrastructure, and financing. Installation and maintenance, in particular, is often underemphasized, but it is just as important as the other challenges that make solar-powered electrification a tricky prospect.

One major hurdle for installing solar panels is the lack of skilled workers to do the job. Customers for solar panel installations could range from hospitals requiring over 20 kilowatts of power to small villages needing less than 500 watts to power the entire village. Some training is necessary to understand the complexities of these systems. This problem is being approached in a few different ways. Some companies are hiring and training dedicated installation crews to travel around vast areas doing the work. The problem with this arrangement, though, is that traveling between job sites is inefficient, and any downtime becomes very costly for companies trying to keep dedicated crews on payroll. On the other hand, if these companies hire independent installation crews then ensuring quality standards is harder to do. Also, companies are at the whim of the rates that the independent crews set. Not to mention, in some areas there are no independent installation crews for hire. However, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) is stepping in to help. Recently, in Mali, the UNDP paid for the training of female solar technicians to perform installation, maintenance, and service for their entire village. Not only does this solve one of the difficult problems with solar installations, but the training also provides an economic boost for the entire village. Women are now able to earn a living wage to help further support their families.

Another challenge has to do with how transactions to purchase solar panels are structured. Most solar panel installations are a one-time transaction where a customer pays for the panels, equipment and the installation. The company delivers these products, then either installs the panels themselves or hires independent installers. In these deals, it is often unclear who will pay for maintenance when the solar panels break down. Many companies have little financial capacity to bring repair technicians out to remote locations years later to service panels (aside from reputation and customer satisfaction, which some corporations are not necessarily interested in), since most are struggling to make money as it is. Customers are often not in a position to pay much extra for maintenance either since they already paid a large up-front premium for the installation. Hospitals, schools, and businesses cannot afford to continue pouring money into solar systems that unexpectedly break down after two years, when they were supposed to work for twenty years.  But if no one is able or willing to pay for maintenance, the panels go unused and wasted.

Also wasted are the high hopes and expectations of the people who purchased the products. Because solar panels can be a novel technology in remote areas, if one person in a small village has a negative experience with solar, it is likely that others in the village will dismiss it. Entrepreneurs should not rush into high-minded plans of remote rural electrification unless they can ensure a very pleasurable and positive experience, because they might spoil the market for future years. If people are skeptical of solar, then they will continue to fall back on outdated diesel generators, which need just as much maintenance and costly fuel. Not to mention, these generators perpetuate adverse climate effects by pouring CO2 into the atmosphere. For these reasons it is especially important for like-minded entrepreneurs to share successful strategies and business models to tackle the problem of remote rural electrification and maintenance.

Currently there are some success stories in the field such as Devergy, and Bboxx that have done a commendable job addressing installation and maintenance issues. Devergy operates by training dedicated workers to service a village-wide micro-grid consisting of a few solar panels. Most entire village installations are not more than one kilowatt. Devergy installs smart meters and the villagers pay for their usage via mobile money. They essentially operate like a modern utility company.

Another wonderful company, Bboxx, uses extensive tracking and monitoring on all of their products to ensure safe delivery and operation for years. These companies show that despite the financial and logistical challenges, it is possible to build installation and maintenance into a successful business model. Bboxx, like other successful companies, provide ample training to locals so that the community can be involved. With better means of sharing best practices and effective models, hopefully future solar companies operating in the developing world can avoid prior mistakes and more efficiently extend access to power to the people they are serving.

This article is published in collaboration with The Energy Collective. Publication does not imply endorsement of views by the World Economic Forum. 

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Author: Adam Hashian is the CEO of LucisLumen Corporation and it’s subsidiary Vibratricity LLC.

Westar Energy in Kansas last week joined a long list of US utility companies that foolishly believe they can stand in front of tidal waves with their hands up like traffic cops to stop the rising threat rooftop solar poses to their business models.

As US utilities tack on fees and try to charge customers with rooftop solar installations more than those without them to stem the tide, the rest of the world has already realized those punitive efforts are futile and will do little more than distract utilities and delay their inevitable demise.

Accenture Strategy in Australia recently released a report on the fate of that country’s utility companies in this fast-evolving energy environment. The report revealed, not surprisingly, that innovation is the only way forward for utility companies.

“To manage the threat of the extinction, the industry needs to act now and take a leap of faith through reinvention, convergence and innovation rather than relying on the traditional mindset of defending the status quo,” according to the Accenture report. “This approach will favor the brave, and demands exceptional leadership.”

In South Australia, grid demand for huge parts of the day are expected to drop to 0 by 2023, according to a report released last week by the Australian Energy Market Operator. Because of dramatic growth in the rooftop solar industry, the AEMO estimates there will be no demand for grid power between 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. in South Australia within the next eight years.

In this scenario, rooftop solar will account for a quarter of all electricity generation in the state. One in four home and business owners in the state already have installed at least some rooftop solar, and electricity demand in Australia has dropped more than 7 percent since 2009.

Power provider Alinta announced last week that it would shutter two of its base load coal-fired generators.

“The ‘death spiral’ is in its early stages with consumption declining and mass uptake of rooftop solar allowing customer less reliance on the grid,” according to the report. “Ironically, the industry invested in infrastructure expecting demand to rise. Instead, it has steadily fallen but the investment is still needed to be recouped through increases in electricity prices. In response to this irony, savvy consumers have harnessed solar and utilized smart meter data to take control, proactively manage their electricity use and reduce their reliance on the grid.”

“The ‘death spiral’ will kick into overdrive” once energy storage become more cost-effective and viable, enabling mass grid defection, according to the report.

With that bleak outlook, it’s no wonder utilities are trying in desperation to find a way to beat back the solar revolution. However, Australia is committed to clean energy and if utilities want to make it through, they have to innovate. That’s what the good ones are doing.

Innovative utility companies are shifting from a monopoly commodities model to a customer service and interconnection agent.

“Powershop, for example, which is owned by New Zealand’s Meridian Energy, describes itself as an online power company and provides applications to allow consumers to monitor their energy use and bills and does not lock them into contracts,” according to the Accenture report. “The company has a light footprint compared with many traditional electricity retailers, employing only 70 people. It’s an approach that has secured it around 15,000 customers to date with ambitious plans to expand.”

The report highlights that utility companies will have to quit thinking like monopolies and start thinking like businesses. They will need to brand themselves, market themselves and invest in research and development. Accenture noted that water providers in Europe had to improve their tap water product and market it to avoid losing its customer base to boutique bottled water companies.

Product research and marketing are both uncommon requirements for monopoly utilities.

But utility companies are not monopolies anymore. They have competition from rooftop solar, and that competition is coming ashore white glove raised or not.

Sex Might Actually Make You Smarter

Forget mindfulness meditation, computerized working-memory training, and learning a musical instrument; all methods recently shown by scientists to increase intelligence. There could be an easier answer. It turns out that sex might actually make you smarter.

Researchers in Maryland and South Korea recently found that sexual activity in mice and rats improves mental performance and increases neurogenesis (the production of new neurons) in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are formed.

In April, a team from the University of Maryland reported that middle-aged rats permitted to engage in sex showed signs of improved cognitive function and hippocampal function. In November, a group from Konkuk University in Seoul concluded that sexual activity counteracts the memory-robbing effects of chronic stress in mice. “Sexual interaction could be helpful,” they wrote, “for buffering adult hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the suppressive actions of chronic stress.”

So growing brain cells through sex does appear to have some basis in scientific fact. But there’s some debate over whether fake sex — pornography — could be harmful. Neuroscientists from the University of Texas recently argued that excessive porn viewing, like other addictions, can result in permanent “anatomical and pathological” changes to the brain. That view, however, was quickly challenged in a rebuttal from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who said that the Texans "offered little, if any, convincing evidence to support their perspectives. Instead, excessive liberties and misleading interpretations of neuroscience research are used to assert that excessive pornography consumption causes brain damage."

Whether or not porn "addiction" literally damages the brain, even brief viewing of pornographic images does interfere with people’s “working memory” — the ability to mentally juggle and pay attention to multiple items. A study published last October in the Journal of Sex Research tested the working memory of 28 healthy individuals when they were asked to keep track of neutral, negative, positive, or pornographic stimuli. “Results revealed worse working memory performance in the pornographic picture condition,” concluded Matthias Brand, head of the cognitive psychology department at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany.

One myth about sex — or perhaps it’s just a joke? — is that “testosterone poisoning” makes young men stupid. Actually, a 2007 study in the journal Neuropsychologia measured the level of testosterone in the saliva of prepubertal boys, including some who were intellectually gifted, with an IQ above 130, some who were average, and some who were mentally challenged, with an IQ less than 70. They concluded that “boys of average intelligence had significantly higher testosterone levels than both mentally challenged and intellectually gifted boys, with the latter two groups showing no significant difference between each other.”

But if having sex can make people smarter, the converse is not true: being smarter does not mean you’ll have more sex. Smarter teens, in fact, tend to delay their initiation of coital activities. A 2012 study by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that high working memory decreases the likelihood of early adolescent sexual debut. Some researchershave attributed the delay to greater overall “competence” among smarter teens. But a 2010 study found that adolescents at both the upper and lower ends of the intelligence distribution were less likely to have sex. Most recently, a study of 536 same-sex twin pairs concluded that intelligence may be a red herring: the association is really between school achievement, not IQ per se, and age at first sexual experience.

In old age, too, cognitive abilities affect one’s chances of getting lucky. A study published just last month found that older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), often a forerunner of Alzheimer’s disease, were only about half as likely to have engaged recently in sexual activity as were their cognitively healthy peers. Of those with MCI, just 32.5 percent had recently engaged in sex, compared to 62.3 percent of those without MCI.

Perhaps, however, the dream of getting smarter through sex is just an alluring fantasy. Tracey J. Shors, a psychologist at the Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University, has reported that while many activities can increase the rate at which new brain cells are born, only effortful, successful learning increases their survival. As she said at a meeting on “Cognitive Enhancers” at the Society for Neuroscience in 2012: “You can make new cells with exercise, Prozac and sex. If you do mental training, you’ll keep alive more cells that you produced. And if you do both, now you have the best of both worlds — you’re making more cells and keeping more alive.”

Read the original article on The Atlantic. 

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/01/how-sex-affects-intelligence-and-vice-versa/282889/#ixzz3e8QybaOj