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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

#221

Post by sliverstorm »

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 think environmentalists would be more accepting of dams if we didn't dam just about every damn river.

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

#222

Post by AStellersSeaCow »

mhurron wrote: post #122
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.…

Dams are an ecological disaster, just as much as burning fossil fuels. Dams have directly caused or are causing the extinction of several species around the world, that is not counting all the permanent environmental impacts a dam creates. Hydro is a green energy source if you define green as simply not burning fuel.

This is akin to saying that stepping on a nail is just as bad as walking into an industrial meat grinder, since they will both hurt your foot.

I don't think anyone is arguing that dams are zero impact. They can and do negatively impact local ecologies, and have the potential to impact animal populations at a broader scale. These problems can theoretically be offset to some degree with good planning and management, but thus far management has been uneven and middlingly successful.

I'm not being flippant and dismissing extinctions and the disruption of food chains as "breaking a few eggs": they are tragedies, but they are extremely small-scale tragedies compared to the ongoing disasters all other forms of reliable energy generation are inflicting on us. Hydro isn't above criticism, but blanket declarations that it's just as bad as fossil fuels is incredibly dangerous misinformation.

If your point of view is that any energy generation that in any way negatively impacts the environment are anathemas and that we should all be living in caves, then okay, but I don't know how you're powering your computer. Otherwise, you're being hyperbolic and enabling regressive and catastrophic ideas and practices.

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

#223

Post by pc2g4d »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #207
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.…

The biggest real problem with hydro is proper assessment of impact of local climate change and damage on ecosystems. You can find some readings about the effects of big hydropower projects in Siberia or Middle Asia. In the latter construction of hydropower plant may even become a casus belli due to deficite of water and impact on agriculture of the countries down the river.

I think that has more to do with the diversion of water for irrigation. For example, the almost-total vanishing of the Aral Sea.

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

#224

Post by davedx »

mason240 wrote: post #102
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.

We have had 6 and half decades now of successful operation in the US.

Are we conveniently ignoring Three Mile Island? It happened in 1979, 37 years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident

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

#225

Post by wstrange »

pilom wrote: post #191
wstrange wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How about 171,000 people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

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

#226

Post by bpodgursky »

jdmichal wrote: post #216
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.

> Come back to me when battery technology has gotten even close to that. Define "battery". Pumped-storage hydro is literally hydro as a "battery". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricit... Also completely ignoring the fact that every joule provided by solar is one less joule that hydro needs to provide, which in turn extends their stored energy life.

...

Pumped-storage hydro is pumping water behind a dam.

You can TRY to hollow out the top of a mountain and put the water there (yeah, that's also suuuuuuper environmentally friendly), but it's incredibly difficult to do it at reasonable scale, and when it fails it wipes out towns.

You'll find the only reasonable way to store enough water to make a difference it is to put it in a valley, where the terrain helps you.

And in the end, you've just rube-goldberged your way to hydro power; to actually get scale, it has very comparable environmental impact to hydropower because it ends up being almost the same thing.

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

#227

Post by maratd »

metaphorm wrote: post #212
guelo wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your grandkids are less happy because you destroyed the environment in order to increase your happiness is that a negative or a positive in this philosophical framework?

it was unthinkable in the original Aristotelean framework. They had no notion of being capable of destroying the environment in the way that we can now.

I don't think that's true at all. They could have easily over-fished, exhausted the land through improper farming, or cut down all the trees in a particular area. And they had a very good idea that they could do this and screw over future generations.

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

#228

Post by ocschwar »

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.…

The really nice thing about hydro is that it's nimble enough to make up for the intermittent nature of wind and solar.

Costa Rica's hydro capacity is enough to enable a huge expansion of solar and wind not only in-house but in the neighboring countries.

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

#229

Post by wstrange »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #193
beat wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That waste dump was built for the nuclear weapons program, not for reactor waste. Different issue (plutonium is indeed nasty stuff).
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