- cross-posted to:
- solarpunk@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- solarpunk@slrpnk.net
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I wonder if they use batteries and what kind.
Also whether the local electricians have jury rigged some kind of bottom up grid of their own.
Does anyone have information?
This video goes into Syria’s electric grid, and how people have setup their solar installs. It shows batteries are used quite thoroughly, and doesn’t appear to be grid-tied or formed into a micro-grid, AFAICT.
Makes a lot more sense than alternatives!
Unfortunately, this is more likely pushed by acute necessity than anything else.
Hopefully, we all won’t require a massive war to figure out solar should be invested into.
Hopefully, we all won’t require a massive war to figure out solar should be invested into.
The Iran war is kinda doing just that, though renewable was going up pretty steadily even before it.
Oh hey, something not completely depressing!
It just needs some trees to make it not depressing. Still, it’s far better than oil and gas.
I meant a thing, not the picture generally. Id add some variety to the architecture as well.
Yup. A lot of architecture or city design in West Asia is created with ivory color due to its reflecting more heat than any other color. This lack of variety of color and repeating building design is contributing to the “depressiveness”.
There are quite a few trees lining the streets and down the middle of the road.
Look at all these teeny tiny humans with their teeny tiny solar panels. All that just to catch the occasional stray photon. What are they compared to the sun almighty?
I kinda want to downvote because why is this unusual? Syria is a war torn country with a shitty grid and many developing and developped countries have plenty of roof top solar?
And also a huge need for AC, when solar is typically at the peak.
I wondered when I visited Malaysia why there was not more solar panels around, and a local explained to me that it was mostly lobbying and corruption, with local electricity providers making it illegal.
I don’t wish on anyone what Syria went through, but I am also hopeful that when systems breaks, workarounds exist and may in the long term improve the overall situation.
Eventually we’ll so be doing this out of necessity. Just not any time soon, not until something big breaks.
Big things are breaking regularly. Monsters are making choices to keep them less visible to regular people.
The Strait of Hormuz is something big.
Unfortunately it’s not very wide
Well things are all going great. Can’t imagine anything breaking. Can’t imagine electrical grids getting overwhelmed from infrastructure neglect and a surge in demand or fossil fuels becoming scarce or their flows being interrupted. When was the last time any of that stuff happened?
maybe the data-center upgrades will payoff when the ai bubble pops and everyone drives ev because of gas prices. infrastructure pre-built. ev charging cheaper at night so off peak already best on existing grid.
Those things are going to get scrapped so fast when America falls. Ya know how eventually locals used the stones from the pyramids, the lighthouse of Alexandria, and the Roman colosseum? Well, that but scrapping chips and copper from abandoned data centers.
I love your optimism. Let us pray
And STILL I hear dumb shits in the US say “solar isn’t feasible”
Motherfuckers then why does literally every other country have tons of solar plants, rooftop installations, balcony installations and some packed away they can pull out when the power cuts out? Why do major companies put massive solar farms next to their new factories? Why are people interested in fossil fuels spending so much goddamn money telling people solar sucks? If it sucked, people wouldn’t use it.
People against rooftop are the craziest to me. Not only does it give you essentially free energy, it also shades the roof, cooling the building just by existing. Every factory on earth should cover their roofs with solar panels. It just makes too much sense not to. Even from a capitalist perspective, it’s stupid not to. And lost hours due to heat stress are common in manufacturing, throw up some solar panels and lower your indoor temps while shoving money in your pockets from energy savings. Heat stress injuries go down, OSHA rating goes up, insurance goes down. It just doesn’t make sense to fight solar.
Because oil people don’t make money from solar.
They do make money from solar. Just not enough to their liking.
Returns on investments in fossil fuels typically range between 10-20 percent, while for a renewables project, 5-8 percent is the norm, Reuters reported in June 2023. “It’s also about the volatility of profitability,” Christophers says. Meanwhile, if the price of the feedstock falls, that usually means fossil fuels are cheaper – and thus the level of profitability can still be maintained. Renewable energy projects in contrast must contend with costs which are largely upfront and have to be met regardless of fluctuations in electricity prices. That makes investment riskier – and therefore costlier, cutting profitability. (source)
I just let them spout off for as long as they want. Then I calmly tell them I haven’t paid an electric bill for over five years. Whatever their argument was is moot.
2 years ago I installed 30 500watt panels on my roof. It’s been amazing!
I’m in Canada, so I can’t be off grid at all, but during the summer I generate way more than I use and in the winter I take essentially what I over produced in the summer, so I’m net zero usage from the grid in a year.
All my heat is electric and I drive an electric car.
My break even is 18 years, so it’s definitely not for everyone, but I can see a future where electricity is almost free and we burn zero fossil fuels. I doubt I’ll be alive for this, but if we all don’t do this, no one else will be alive either
I see solar panels pretty often in the US rural county I live in
I live in rural Ohio and actually live fairly close to a decent sized solar farm.
Over the last 2-3 years I’ve seen more household solar setups, and one person I’m super jealous of has a really nice wind turbine/solar hybrid system with a garage battery wall visible when they leave their garage door open.
We’re very slowly getting there, but it’s like running a race with a weight around your ankle and people swinging at you with bats.
When your nation falls apart and your city becomes an extensive warzone for years, the main power grid probably isn’t top notch. But the sun works just fine!
If it wasn’t for oil making the middle east insanely rich, imagine what they could do with solar
If god would like us all to have unlimited free energy, wouldn’t he put a giant nuclear reactor in sky
They can still go all out on solar, it’s not like they’re pumping all that oil for themselves only
there is the idea of exporting solar from Morocco to UK.
There’s others where it’s proposed to build a a high voltage line from Morocco to Spain, France, Germany. Eventually, they’ll upgrade the grid to be able to move power from one region to another.
Same thing in the states, southern states generate for the north in the winter and in the summer the north to the south to help with high demand from AC.
Before the Arab Spring there was even a more ambitious plan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertec#/media/File:DESERTEC-Map_large.jpg
Long distance power transmission also effectively makes the day length longer, lessening the need for storage.
The western countries are just needlessly delaying energy independence. They are hostile to life itself.
We elect conservatives, they are afraid of change. It is as simple as that.
It’s more like elite psychology. Positions of power self-select for a very specific kind of bad person, who would rather die, than have peasants become any more free.
This effect exists, as well amongst left wing leaders, yet we do observe more diminishing inequalities in countries ruled by left-wing coalitions.
I do think that power-seeking individuals will tend to be anti-equality, yet to some extent, democracy works as the left-wing variety of these individuals have to conquer power by increasing redistribution.
In Google maps you can use satellite mode to look at their roofs. There are some panels but nothing like this.
edit: satellite mode is out of date, see further conversation below.
So they could have done it ANYTIME but didn’t.
No. Don’t underestimate the impact of sanctions.
Google Earth has data up through June 27, 2024. Check around the Salloum Hospital and Syrian Arab Red Cross Hospital. That area around the hospitals and to the NNE looks like nearly every roof has panels. Could also be a more recent picture and more panels may have been installed in the past year or two.
My Google Maps says 2026 on the bottom of it.
I’ve highlighted the solar panels I could see, around Salloum Hospital:
It’s great to see so many but it’s way more scattered and patchy than in the OP photo.
Hmm my Google Maps shows the same 2026 date but when I compare to the Google Earth June 27, 2024 images I’m seeing the same cars in the same exact spots, like the white car right outside of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Hospital
Ahh, so maybe on Google Maps that’s just a copyright statement rather than really when the imagery was taken. So I’m looking at quite old information.
That may be correct, I always thought that was the date the imagery was taken, but I typically go to Earth first because you can easily scrub back and forth along the timeline. Interestingly, if you go back to the 2023 images you can see that 2024 was a big year for solar already. That pace continuing into 2025 and 2026 could definitely result in the area looking like the image in the OP. Wish we had location data from the original so we could see when and where it was taken as I’m super curious now. And its a slow day at work so I have time to dig around lol
There’s this photo from the same location in a Aljazeera article on the area. Apparently they are the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods.
Oh thank you, and that’s from Jan this year. Haven’t found the exact location yet but those neighborhoods are very close to where I was looking
You guys this makes Coalie cry 😩 🪨
Looks cool as hell
Plant some more trees and rooftop gardens and you’ve got an official Solarpunk setting
Quite frankly, trees inside cities are decorative. If you truly care about ecology and the ecosystem, you look at the forestry on a national or regional level. Theoretically, having the densest and hence the smallest cities possibles would be the best for the overall ecosystem. When I see a park in a city I am thinking “they force the city to grow its radius by that much”.
I’d rather have a very dense urban seed surrounded by natural reserves than a chill cityscape with a few scattered parks that are not big enough to sustain a full ecosystem.
First of all, “merely decorative” has a big impact on our physiological and psychological well-being; urban greening appears to be able to improve things from respiratory difficulties to stress, anxiety and depression .
Second, “merely decorative” isn’t even true. Trees lower both surface and air temperature in cities in a meaningful way (on the order of a couple of degrees on a well-treed street – that can be the difference between “ah, it’s a nice day for a walk” and “holy crap it’s hot out”.
Yes, I was a but cynical also for the sake of conciseness, but there is indeed and interesting point in green cities, that’s one question on which ecologism and environmentalism differ. The question is whether you are trying to preserve the whole ecosystem or an environment in which humans feel good.
To be honest, I don’t want to live in a concrete jungle. I think inhumane to live in a super dense city totally disconnected to nature. But I also would like that we collectively accept that this is a preference that is harmful to the ecosystem and that it is sometimes okay to have such preferences, if we manage to make them sustainable.
20 years ago a urbanist I was working with, when we were doing city simulations to help offset CO2 footprint told me “you know, the ugly truth is that if we want to lower our CO2 emissions to the max, we should all live in skyscrapers on top of a school, supermarket and incinerator.”
Thing is, we need to recognize the tension between an enjoyable environment, wildlife preservation, human health, the ecosystem’s health… And we need to see further than the current, petty, political compartimentalization of these questions. I wish one day we start consider these questions a bit more seriously
oh cool, maybe they did this cause a long time ago during the civil war there was frequent power cuts?
There still are frequent power cuts in Syria.
In Damascus, the power is on for like 8 hours per day.
oh, i thought it ended.
Well there is still a province that is under Druze grasp so I wouldn’t say the civil war ended.
Well, Assad is gone at least but it is still pretty unstable there.
And the people are not educated enough to call for real democracy, they are happy with the majority Sunni in power.
alr tanks for the info.
Impressive, thank for sharing this amazing picture 😳👍
It’s probably driven by an unreliable power grid, but still great. A lot of solar should help getting a proper grid online anyways
as unreliable as ERCOT?
