Non paywalled link https://archive.is/g7HNV

Just checked out the Google map satellite view and no kidding! The solar panels are crazy! Highly recommend exploring it yourselves. Mind blowing.

I wonder how they use balcony solar for blackouts. The systems I know shut themselves off if the grid goes down.

The title would be better if it mentioned Pakistan, cleptocracy, broken institutions,and war lords and how PV appears to be the pragmatic response. But my own experience, going off grid in Nova Scotia 15 years ago,is that at first people would ask how much it cost, and then often start a bitter diatribe against the power company, but now people are going ahead getting pannels and living as they see fit, the same institutions here now too busy and remote to enforce the regulations to (SAFTEY! SAFTEY!), disuade that. Solar PV is inreadably fault tollerant for basic DC current off grid battery charging, and people are jimmy jamming any and all old used batteries for storage.The sense of agency derived from having stuff power up from home built systems the first time is a powerfull motivator to keep going.

We had to do the same here in South Africa - 2 hourly blackouts and innovative financing packages and cheap panels and inverters from China - you pay a monthly rent to own fee and they cover the maintenance.

Nearly every third house has panels, but we don't feed back to the grid - the idiotic local authority lost the plot here and wanted to charge an enormous fee for a feedback meter.

See, Iran?

All you had to do was westernize your economy, hand your infrastructure to global capital, and open your markets

Do that, and just like Syria, you'll become "partners"

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