71–80 of 305 posts
People should never forget that green energry is not 100% green and embrace minimalism
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I've read about expats praising Costa Rica for its low costs and beautiful properties that foreigners can buy. How was your experience there?
It took about 2 months of us being there to pull the trigger and buy a house. Costs for most things are low, except for cars. Cars are insanely expensive due to the ~50% import tax. Electricity is also fairly expensive per KWH. The people are very nice and generally welcoming to foreigners. You never run out of things to do, either. There’s always another adventure to explore. Fiber internet is accessible in most are…
Thanks for helping make the pieces fit.
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Seems like an opportunity for a massive battery system similar to the Hornsdale Power Reserve in Australia that Tesla pulled out all the stops for.
"Massive" Honsdale battery is capable of supplying much less than 1% of grid power in Australia. An installation of that size could help at the margins to prevent some brownout events, but don't overestimate the capacity of batteries compared to grid demand. It looks like Costa Rica has about 3600 MW of generating capacity. The Hornsdale battery is good for 150 MW.
This the classic, usual kind of misleading news about renewable energy. Keep dreaming, hoping and advocating for renewables, but it's just not the solution. Nuclear is the only viable solution.
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https://www.electricitymap.org/zone/CR?wind=false&solar=fals... (Electricitymap.org: Costa Rica) 2.36GW of total hydro generating capacity, 595MW of wind, and 1.64GW of geothermal, as well as interconnectors with Panama and Nicaragua to export excess renewables generation (or import when in nation generation isn't meeting consumption). With CR's favorable geography for hydro, it'd make a lot of sense for central amer…
What do you mean Tasmania’s hydro is used as a big battery? My understanding is it barely provides enough electricity for the state, and the interconnect is used to consume power from Victoria 99% of the time
Hover over exports on the right hand side. There are imports from VIC occasionally, but Tas Hydro's plan is to build pumped hydro infra [1], as well as an additional interconnector to South Australia [2] which has robust renewables resources.
[1] https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/battery-of-the-nation/...
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…
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What do you mean Tasmania’s hydro is used as a big battery? My understanding is it barely provides enough electricity for the state, and the interconnect is used to consume power from Victoria 99% of the time
https://opennem.org.au/energy/tas1/?range=all&interval=1M Hover over exports on the right hand side. There are imports from VIC occasionally, but Tas Hydro's plan is to build pumped hydro infra [1], as well as an additional interconnector to South Australia [2] which has robust renewables resources. [1] https://www.hydro.com.au/clean-energy/battery-of-the-nation/... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marinus_Link
> Because of that, the country has an abundance of geothermal renewable sources that account for much of the necessary energy to make the country successfully function. >Also, Costa Rica can get a lot of rain. With consistent rainfall, their hydroelectric plants can produce a plethora of energy. While wind and solar get most of the headlines, it seems that geothermal and hydroelectric are actually more useful in goin…
They've been around for longer.
Solar and wind are crazy cheap but they haven't been cheap for that long.
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This has to be a huge part and it's sad but not surprising that you're being downvoted here. Almost every other country in Latin America has either been invaded by the US, or has gone through US-backed coups, economic sanctions during the cold war, etc. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_r...
From your link: Tensions between government and the opposition, supported by the CIA, caused the short-lived Costa Rican Civil War of 1948 that ended Calderón's government and led to the short de facto rule of 18 months by José Figueres Ferrer.
It's important to keep in mind that wind and solar aren't really a part of this success story.