Re: Remember "Bit-Slice" Chips ?

On 07/12/2024 17:35, D wrote:

Jesus christ... don't get me started! In the mainstream press people _still_ write and say that 100% solar or 100% wind is the only viable way. I cannot bear to read it! And when I ask how much a battery storage system would cost that could store all the power for a country, for x days, there is never an answer.
 Maybe, just maybe, it might be possible to have 100% solar in africa somewhere, but it would still need storage capacity for the night.

In Africa, the greatest need is for light at night.
Followed by refrigerators, and clean water.
Then comes music sound systems and the TV and mobile phones :-)
Back in the day the Cuban Marxists told the township boys 'come the revolution, you will all have swimming pools and a Mercedes.
A Zulu friend from Soweto  asked me to comment.
I got in touch with someone in the then apartheid government who said 'at the rate we are going there won't be enough water for every home to even have a flush toilet'
30 years later, that is the reality of South Africa. And it's 30 years of communist government.
There is barely enough clean water to drink.
The only reliable power is one nuclear power station and a lot of coal ones. And the educated white 'Liberals' are wanting 'renewable energy'
Sure by putting thousands of Rands of batteries in your house and solar panels on the roof you can survive a hot African night without power, and you need to because the grid load sheds every day in winter.
But who will pay for it? The townships are effectively powered for free by people attaching crocodile clips to the overheads.  And it is too politically sensitive to actually stop them...
As usual after popular revolutions  the next thing is those who grab power fucking everything up completely in a blaze of greed, nepotism and paranoia.
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"A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding".
Marshall McLuhan