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Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

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Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#51

Post by antr »

millettjon wrote: post #27
jfaucett wrote: post #19

Notice this is because 80% of the energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable - unlike wind and solar which in this case provided 7% and 0.01% respectively and are not reliable. It frustrates me that so many environmentalists are still against hydro because it alters ecosystems when nature itself is inherently violent, dangerous and in a constant state of flux.…

Unreliability of wind power generate can be largely mitigated by interconnecting disparate wind farms spread over a large area.

Energy investor here with a pretty large wind portfolio (1GW) under management. This geographically dispersed portfolio idea doesn't really work. Due to different wind patterns, and wind types, a wind portfolio cannot be relied on for stable power generation... this is ignoring power curves, availability, transmission losses, network balancing, node bottlenecks, etc.

Take as an example the entire wind capacity in Ireland, and the curtailment issues this generates.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#53

Post by leojg »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #31
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No mention whatsoever of nuclear, which is by far the more practical solution. And far less ecologically damaging. I vaguely follow developments in this area, and this seems to either outdated or simply untrue information. The people building traditional nuclear don't seem to be able to do so economically, even when they punt on insurance and eventual disposal. The people building the new nuclear which is going to…

The ecological damage is not outdated info. Solar farms are essentially clear-cutting the land. No sun - no life. The ecosystem under the panels is completely disrupted. Not unlike strip-mining.

What do you propose then?

Its obvious that any kind of human activity will produce some kind of alteration to the surrounding environment.

Kill the whole planet with greenhouse gases or kill a small and already almost sterile area?

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#54

Post by thorin »

crdoconnor wrote: post #44
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #17

" its per capita electricity consumption is about one-quarter of, say, France or Belgium." Its in the bottom quartile worldwide I believe. Also the recommendations for the USA are way off. The "only way" to reach this goal is apparently to build lots of wind and solar. No mention whatsoever of nuclear, which is by far the more practical solution. And far less ecologically damaging.

>No mention whatsoever of nuclear, which is by far the more practical solution. And far less ecologically damaging. The UK's new Hinckley point power plant is both more expensive than solar/wind and puts the UK's energy generation in Chinese hands. There's a reason why Angela Merkel (relevant: probably the only physicist head of state) decided to shift to wind and solar.

Well it might be but Theresa May still has a chance to veto it...

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#56

Post by jefurii »

goodcanadian wrote: post #49
millettjon wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Chile, the mining companies in the North use a disproportionate amount of energy. They are located in one of the driest deserts in the world and could easily supply their power needs from solar with minimal impact. Instead they continually fight to build dams in pristine temperate rain forest in the South.

I would caution that deserts are some of the most sensitive ecosystems in the world. Covering up large areas of a desert with solar panels may be more harmful than you realize. That said, I am a strong solar advocate; I simply believe we should start with the roofs of warehouses. These are huge areas of relatively flat space where the ecological damage has already been done.

> roofs of warehouses

And parking lots.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#57

Post by savanaly »

ptaipale wrote: post #45
taneq wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why are they fighting so hard to build hydro dams when they could so easily and cheaply run off solar instead?

I bet it is because they want to operate mines also when it is dark. I'm interested if millettjon has any other explanations.

If that were true then solar panels really aren't that cheap. Having to run your mines inefficiently should be counted as a cost when comparing the two. Doesn't mean that solar panels isn't still the best thing, of course, just that his assertion that they're super cheap for the power companies is false.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#58

Post by EGreg »

jfaucett wrote: post #28
jackmott wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nature is inherently violent yes, but the effect of humans on the rest of the species on the planet is equivalent to extinction events that are rare on geologic time scales (already!) and some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones.

"...some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones." That sentence is horrible. We're talking about living, breathing, thinking human beings not "sheeple". And to equate people who have dreams, hopes, and aspirations to a lot of mindless animals whose only desire is to destroy the planet and play on iphones is an egregious misrepresentation of…

If you take out the sheeple statement, then he has a strong point. Look at any graph of the human population or energy use and you'll see the former skyrocketing in the last 300 years and the latter rising even faster than that.

This is unsustainable. But on an individual human level, we don't want to sacrifice the lifestyle we have. And many religious people will not use birth control.

If this was a graph of any asset in a market, would you take a long or short position?

Habitats are being destroyed through everything from logging to overfishing to melting ice. This is a serious planet-wide risk. Already the number of species gone extinct is larger than in the previous million years combined, I believe.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#59

Post by dec0dedab0de »

jfaucett wrote: post #19

Notice this is because 80% of the energy obtained was from Hydroelectric power, which is a great energy source because it is reliable - unlike wind and solar which in this case provided 7% and 0.01% respectively and are not reliable. It frustrates me that so many environmentalists are still against hydro because it alters ecosystems when nature itself is inherently violent, dangerous and in a constant state of flux.…

I sometimes think they reject the idea that the whole point of existence is human flourishing and happiness.

Yes, many people reject this idea. As a matter of fact, this is the first time I've ever heard anyone express this idea.

Re: Costa Rica has gone 76 days using 100% renewable electricity

#60

Post by sebastos »

7952 wrote: post #41
jfaucett wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"...some people want to keep making that worse so we can populate the world with even more sheeple who have even more iphones." That sentence is horrible. We're talking about living, breathing, thinking human beings not "sheeple". And to equate people who have dreams, hopes, and aspirations to a lot of mindless animals whose only desire is to destroy the planet and play on iphones is an egregious misrepresentation of…

Ecological protection is not necessarily mutually exclusive with human development. And human beings are massively reliant on those ecosystems in subtle and important ways. Your point seems like a false dichotomy. We just need to approach problems in an environmentally literate way.

It's not a false dichotomy, because the above poster isn't presenting a dichotomy at all. We'd all like to see human flourishing AND ecological protection. Sometimes those goals interfere with each other, and sometimes they don't. In the cases where they do, we can ask: which is our _highest_ priority? If we had the choice between saving the human species and nuking the planet, or going extinct to save the extant ecosystem on Earth, which should we choose?

That's the point being made. Nobody's trying to say that all actions live on a 1-D spectrum between "environment preserving" and "human promoting". That's obviously untrue. I don't think anybody needs reminding that humans can't flourish if the Earth is a barren desert.

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