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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

#191

Post by pilom »

wstrange wrote: post #168
DenisM wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with nuclear is that we can't trust the people running it to follow instructions without failure for decades in a row. Sooner or later a politician shows up and demands an experiment to be done, or maintenance to be postponed. Failures are rare, but the failure mode is catastrophic.

The same could be said for Hydro Dams. When they fail it is catastrophic.

Totally agree. Teton Dam failure in the US killed 11 people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdOGPBnfoKE

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

#192

Post by jessaustin »

pilom wrote: post #184
jessaustin wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydropower is somewhat environmentally questionable, but it's "renewable" by any reasonable definition. Your link confirms this: ...because it is an endless, constantly recharging system, hydropower is defined as a renewable energy by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Unfortunately it isn't exactly endless. Even if you ignore the decreasing amounts of water at many dams due to climate change, eventually dams fill up with sediment. Lake Powell and Lake Mead already have about 10% less capacity than they did when built due to sediment infill.

Dams aren't endless, but no human artifact is. It is totally within design parameters to have to drain and excavate (and perhaps patch the cracks in the dam) every hundred years or so. The rain will still fall.

Actually one expects that aquatic sediment-removing robots will eventually be created to obviate this basic maintenance task, but that sort of assumes that humans will want dams in future. It's possible that they'll develop cheap energy without the drawbacks inherent in hydropower, and decide that rivers are better than artificial lakes.

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

#193

Post by ZeroGravitas »

beat wrote: post #180
wstrange wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I don't follow your reasoning. The long term data (over decades) shows that nuclear kills fewer people than other forms of power generation. Maybe that will change over time (fewer people falling off of roofs when installing solar). That data includes "high impact" events, including things like Fukushima, which evidently has not resulted in any radiation-related fatalities.

I'm not just measuring fatalities. I'm measuring economic costs. A nuclear accident can render a city uninhabitable, even if no one dies. edit: An additional risk is that a nuclear plant is much more complex and expensive than a solar plant. A major accident, if nothing else, wrecks the plant, taking away a key resource that could take a decade and billions of dollars to rebuild (if it's politically possible to rebui…

A recent explosion in a US nuclear waste facility is estimated to cost $2 Billion. It was caused by using the wrong kind of kitty litter apparently:

https://www.abqjournal.com/830731/2014-nuclear-accident-at-w...

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

#194

Post by honkhonkpants »

ctdonath wrote: post #169
goodcanadian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Covering up large areas of a desert with solar panels may be more harmful than you realize. I've heard & use the term solar strip-mining . Solar power maxes out at no better than 1kW/m^2 (sun at zenith, clear day, practically 100% efficient conversion), we're talking an absolute minimum of 1 sq km to match a baseline 1GW power plant ... and likely 100 times larger for real-world scenarios (10% efficiency, night/cloud…

> 1 sq km to match a baseline 1GW power plant

Does that sound like a lot to you? A single airport runway is much larger than 1 sq km.

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

#195

Post by maxerickson »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #189
maxerickson wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Estimates say there are ~100 billion planets in the galaxy. I'm also not sure that In fact we've found nothing remotely similar to Earth in all the thousands of samples we've taken. is reasonable. Take Proxima b . It orbits the Sun's closest neighbor, is in the habitable zone (doesn't mean it is habitable, necessary but not sufficient) and is roughly earth sized. Sure, we don't know a whole lot more about it, so it i…

So many, many things can be wrong and make a planet uninhabitable. Earth is probably unique in being - Earthlike. Such a delicate balance.

Okay, but now we've gone from habitable to sufficiently Earth-like to meet an unspoken definition of Earth-like.

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

#196

Post by unprepare »

jessaustin wrote: post #186
unprepare wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans may not be the only beings on this planet with agency/ consciousness, whatever you want to call it. How do you know the planet isnt a gift to them, instead of us?

This argument is flawed. If there's a gift, there must have been a giver, so why don't we ask the giver? Well the Christians already have, and they like the answer they got. Why don't you like it?

Well, im not the one who used the phrase gift, so this isnt the appropriate place to nitpick that.

Other than, 'some other group of humans told me this' what evidence do you have that the earth should be the birthright of humans more than that of any other thing on earth?

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

#197

Post by goodcanadian »

Arnt wrote: post #188
goodcanadian wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Solar panels are large compared to a house, not large compared to a desert.

Here is a couple of square miles of solar panels in the Mojave Desert. If you zoom out, you'll find quite a bit more nearby. Whether or not you count this as large, the impact is not negligible.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/34%C2%B048'44.1%22N+118%C2...

EDIT: To be clear, I am not fundamentally opposed to such installations just as I am not fundamentally opposed to new hydroelectric projects, but we need to be aware of the impacts, and we need to make conscious decisions about when the costs are worth paying and when they are not.

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

#198

Post by nixos »

solipsism wrote: post #178
BinaryIdiot wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To presume that one (or ones species) is the most important thing in the world (or universe) is basically the definition of narcissism Humans are the most important things in the world. Why? Because I am a human. My family are humans. To me, and likely most people, humans are most important. If I were an Otter and capable of self reflection I would likely think Otters were the most important things in the world. No…

Replace "humans" with "white people" in your post, and you'll get a sense of how silly your beliefs seem to me. Not to say my beliefs are more right than yours -- to each his/her own.

Would you kill two black men to save a white man. I wouldn't.

Would you kill two otters to save a human? Yes. Absolutely.

Would you kill two bacteria to save a human? Yes. Absolutely. I would kill a million bacteria to save a human. In fact, we do it all the time.

It's about the lack of consciousness in bacteria, as I would never kill even one mentally deficient adult, even to save the life of a genius.

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

#199

Post by sickbeard »

taneq wrote: post #40
sickbeard wrote: post #38

Same story every month. Can't wait for the 100 day update

Future 100 day update: We got 99 days before we had to fall back on non-renewable resources for a day. That's only a 99% fuel saving, which is not enough and means renewables are terrible and we should never try to use them again.

I think you misunderstood my comment. This article has been posted before when it was about 50 or 60 days. Now it appears again at 76 days. Why does the number of days matter?

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

#200

Post by bpodgursky »

Arnt wrote: post #190
bpodgursky wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No -- hydro is like solar, _if we had unfathomably large, incredibly cheap, low-leakage batteries_. The US southwest is generating hydro power using water it saved up from 30 years ago, behind the hoover and glen canyon dams. That is MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE past what we can do with solar. Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that.

Or I can come back to you when technology allows timeshifting usage to match availability. Even if you want to run a factory 24×7, you don't have to run the most power-hungry parts at an invariant pace, see?

? Except you're talking about _seasonal_ differences in sunlight availability.

I'm really glad I'll be able to run my power-hungry electronics like a refrigerator during peak production times, like during the spring!

We'll just have to make sure that people go to the hospital during probably-non-uninterruptible power windows.

Sorry, but you're dealing with human beings and actual society, not a car factory. Leave me out of your plans.

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