These mini grids will never lift any African country into modernity. The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power. If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.
> The cost of renewables is not falling, if you take into account the hours those renewables are not producing power.
This is false, like logic wise even if your assumptions were true. You might say that supposed cost right now is fake. If it's actually much higher (accounting for batteries or NatGas) the ridiculous drop in price from panels still means that the cost is falling.
> If a country cannot build a basic power grid, they will remain a village, most likely with widespread poverty.
They are probably not gonna be smelting with arc furnaces in bumbfuck-nowhere, Nigeria; but that's also not happening in some hamlet in the UK. African cities and resource extractions areas already have power grinds, the problem are rural areas.
> There is no reason why, in some places, (firm and reliable supply) cannot be achieved via a mix of intermittent renewables, provided that this mix is ‘firmed’ via batteries and other sources.
> “The hurdle here is not technical, it is, … the overall net economic cost of the combined solution. This is materially helped by the continuous downward trend of battery costs, but the incremental cost of the last percentages of firming can indeed prove expensive.”
(Also of relevance, Australia is actually replacing some long distance grid connections with mini solar grids as a cost reduction move, which suggests mini grids are the right option for remote communities)
I mean, it's not going to turn these countries into rich places, but the article points out several ways that having power - even intermittent power - at a very low cost has improved people's lives significantly. They no longer have to walk miles to get drinking water; they drilled a well and put in an electric pump. Water towers are pretty straightforward tech; run the pump during the day until the tower is full, and the villagers can walk a couple of blocks to the spigot to get water. Charge spare phone batteries during the day. Any task that doesn't actually have to run 24 hours a day can take advantage of the power when it's there.
