201–210 of 305 posts
Costa Rica’s per capita electricity use (about 400W right now) is less than half of New York state’s (about 1kW). Solutions to fossil fuel use are going to have to involve drastic cuts in our electricity consumption.
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And in fact the battery method has been proven to work to solve Australia's power issue (thanks Elon!).
Part of the bargain was that Tesla will be recycling the materials for these batteries when they are EoL. Until that actually happens, the battery only solves half the problem.
Building the first grid-scale battery bank, and having it succeed in smoothing out the delivery curve for an intermittent-heavy grid: that's a huge victory! It's a triumph really.
Insisting on the accountability and follow-through is important, sure. But that battery solves the whole problem we have right now, and will serve as a test case for solving the problem which it itself created for a decade down the road.
Maybe Elon will be broke by then, or living on Mars, or we'll all complete the Singularity and have chips in our head. My hope is that they just fulfill the contract. In any case there's no reason to show that kind of skepticism about something which can't have happened yet.
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IIRC part of the answer is that they had a successful revolution led by principled people who realized that cultural capital is just as important as power and in fact maybe keeping a standing army had problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Figueres_Ferrer https://www.spanishpuravida.com/why-costa-rica-has-no-army/
A standing army creates a ton of problems, but what happens if nobody has a standing army? Seems like someone has to play cop and eat the cost (both social and economic) of doing so.
Everyone would prefer to not have an army, because most of the time you don't need them but they're still expensive to maintain and when you do need them they're even more expensive. But if nobody has an army then the bad actors can form an army and take over everybody else. So everybody needs to have an army unless and until you can get global coordination working to the point where everyone de-militarizes and the moment anyone starts militarizing everyone else does the same and joins together to absolutely crush that violator. You just gotta hope they weren't able to massively militarize in secret.
The seems unlikely to ever happen, so until then you have a couple countries that get to live in the sweet spot of not having their own army but still being covered by someone else's.
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>Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? Yes. Anytime you see an article that says "X country runs on 100% renewable" ... it's hydro-electric power every time. So if your country is blessed with a type of geography that makes hydro electric power viable, you're golden! Solar and Wind cannot power a modern economy without fossil fuel back-up.
I'm ignorant - why can't solar and wind provide enough power? What about somewhere like Arizona/Nevada/Utah?
Conceivable, but a massive undertaking at a scale having inevitable significant problems ($66T price tag for starters).
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Germany, between WWI & WWII, officially has no military to worry about. Was able to create a Europe-conquering army very quickly.
So would you describe the Maginot line as a good investment?
Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…
Military in South/Middle America= failure.
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I'm ignorant - why can't solar and wind provide enough power? What about somewhere like Arizona/Nevada/Utah?
Short answer: solar produces ~10 watts per square meter, all factors considered. Wind, even less. USA consumes 3.8T kWh/yr electricity, needing 44,000 square kilometers (20% of Utah) of solar panels & buffer batteries to supply. Conceivable, but a massive undertaking at a scale having inevitable significant problems ($66T price tag for starters).
Renewables are getting much cheaper every year: * In 2020, the global weighted-average levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) from new capacity additions of onshore wind declined by 13%, compared to 2019. * Over the same period, the LCOE of offshore wind fell by 9% and that of utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV) by 7%. Source: https://www.irena.org/publications/2021/Jun/Renewable-Power-...
There is a major cost that is not accounted for here - the cost of balancing the grid. When wind turbines aren't spinning and solar PV is dead, the grid continues to function. The generators doing that have a cost and that cost is paid for by the customer. The source of the problem is the variable generator i.e. wind or solar but the LCOE figure does not account for this because that charge is not passed on to the renewable generator.
Those costs must be part of the LCOE figure else it is like saying that email costs zero.
Is there an easy answer as to why Costa Rica is doing so well? They seem to be a bit of an exception in Central/South America. EDIT: From Wikipedia "It is known for its long-standing and stable democracy, and for its highly educated workforce, most of whom speak English. The country spends roughly 6.9% of its budget (2016) on education, compared to a global average of 4.4%. Its economy, once heavily dependent on agri…