ScienceAlert reports Costa Rica has generated 100% of its power from renewables for 75 straight days:
The ICE [Costa Rican Electricity Institute] says the country's zero-emission milestone was enabled thanks to heavy rainfalls at four hydroelectric power facilities in the first quarter of 2015. These downpours have meant that, for the months of January, February and so far in March, there has been no need to burn fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Instead, Costa Rica has been powered primarily by hydro power — both pumped storage and run-of-the-river plants — and a mixture of geothermal, wind, biomass and solar energy.
The original ICE press release (in Spanish) is here. It sounds like Costa Rica has vaulted to the forefront of the energy revolution that Germany and Denmark had been leading. The comparative statics would say oil companies have been taking a bath recently, with an increase in global supply and ongoing demand destruction sending prices well below the previous competitive equilibrium.
Related Stories
Costa Rica has shown the world what is possible this year by achieving 99 percent renewable energy generation. Michael wrote back in April that the country had not used any fossil fuels for electricity so far at that point in the year and, in fact, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute said in a statement that 285 days this year were fossil fuel-free.
Costa Rica is lucky to have a wealth of renewable energy sources to choose from. The bulk of its power generation comes from hydropower thanks to a large river system and heavy tropical rainfalls. The rest is made up of a mix of geothermal energy, which the country is also rich in, wind, biomass and solar power.
The institute said that even though 2015 was a very dry year, Costa Rica was still ahead of its renewable energy targets and goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2021. The country doesn't just want to hit 100 percent renewable energy, but it also wants to clean up energy consumption in general like moving the transportation sector away from fossil fuels and becoming less dependent on hydropower by adding more geothermal energy plants and harnessing energy from other sources.
The citizens of the country have benefited from the cost of energy actually falling by 12% this year and the institute expects it to keep falling in the future.
Imagine what a difference a 99% fossil-fuel free United States would make to geopolitics.
Prior coverage: Costa Rica Gets 100% of Its Power from Renewables for 1st Quarter of 2015.
Costa Rica is much more than a lush, green tourist paradise; it's also a green energy pioneer. The small Central American nation has generated 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources for the past 113 days, and the run isn't over yet. The country, which draws clean energy from a variety of renewable sources, still has its sights on a full year without fossil fuels for electricity generation.
With a 113-day stretch of 100-percent renewable energy under its belt and several months left in the year, Costa Rica is edging closer to its target. Costa Rica could be on track to match the record set with its renewable energy production last year, which accounted for 99 percent of the country's electricity. That included 285 days powered completely by renewable sources, according to the Costa Rican Electricity Institute.
It's a small country with 5 million people and not a lot of heavy industry, but it's still impressive. There are many other countries with similar climate and terrain that could do likewise.
Previously:
Costa Rica Gets 100% of Its Power from Renewables for 1st Quarter of 2015
Costa Rica Achieved 99% Renewable Energy This Year
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:07PM
For the slice of energy usage that isn't vehicles(that is to say 75-85%). And American politics continues to center around how impossible a notion that is.
Other countries can get it practically and completely done before the US can convince ourselves that it's theoretically possible. We're still building new coal and oil and natural gas plants, rather than seriously considering retiring them. I can't imagine what outlook leads someone to believe that locking ourselves in to depletable energy sources "keeps us competitive".
(Score: 3, Informative) by tonyPick on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:14PM
From TFA:
It’s important to remember that Costa Rica is a small nation. It has a total area of about 51,000 square kilometres, which is about half the size of the US state of Kentucky, and it has a population of only 4.8 million people. Furthermore, its primary industries are tourism and agriculture, rather than heavy, more energy-intensive industries such as mining or manufacturing.
And this is electricity only, which is a long way short of power consumption. I mean it's impressive and all, but let's keep it in perspective.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:34PM
On the other hand, imagine telling Kentucky (same population) that they have to source all their electricity locally from renewables...
I know they don't get the same amount of rain, but their power consumption per capita (not even counting cars) is probably a lot higher.
(Score: 2, Touché) by WillAdams on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:53PM
Imagine telling 3M or AK Steel, or Porter Steel or Phillips that they have to run a production line on nothing but solar.
Run through this list: http://www.thinkkentucky.com/kyedc/kpdf/Facilities_by_Location.pdf [thinkkentucky.com] and see which ones could manage w/ just renewables using contemporary technology.
Even American Greetings would have trouble doing it --- I work at a printer and while we got a nice press release out of covering the roof w/ solar panels all that we use them for is charging the batteries for the server room --- the electric bill here is ~$1,000,000
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:00PM
In the very long run, production lines and the like that can never be interrupted for capital cost reasons either will be interrupted and it will be OK in the financial side because all their competitors have the same issue, OR they'll have to move next door to a hydroelectric dam.
In the short term, whatever. But in the long term a company that has to pay extra for power to be located far away from the hydro plant will be financially doomed when a competitor opens up next door to the hydro plant.
There's no demand for interruptible machine tools, but there's no technological reason they can't be made. There are financial/capital reasons you can't currently get money to buy interruptible tools to generate goods only when the wind blows while your competitors work 24x7 off dirty coal, but that'll kind of fix itself once the dirty coal is eliminated from the equation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:28PM
Imagine telling 3M or AK Steel, or Porter Steel or Phillips that they have to run a production line on nothing but solar.
Put your strawman away. Literally nobody advocates that, not even Greenpeace. [greenpeace.org]
You know your suggestion is way out there when your broad brush doesn't even include Greenpeace.
If we remove your artificial scope, and return to the topic at hand which is renewables in general, we see that reality handily disproves your theory.
Hydro powers quite a bit of energy intensive industry in BC, for example. One of about a bajillion examples out there if you care to inform yourself. [bchydro.com]
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:45PM
I believe in renewables, and feel that it's important --- I'm just curious as to what the state of currently available technology.
Hydro, as I noted farther down provides ~4% of Kentucky's power, and they generate more than half of the hydro power in the U.S.
What are the renewable solutions for Kentucky (and its industry)?
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Tuesday March 24 2015, @10:33PM
What are the renewable solutions for Kentucky (and its industry)?
Invest and invent less energy-intensive production methods, or go bankrupt within 100 years?
There's even a science for this problem, called "Constructive Technology Assessment" [wikipedia.org]. Somewhere between chemistry, economy and sociology.
It is not in a corporation's short term interest to invest millions in e.g. batch processing instead of continuous flow. Especially not if none of the competitors are forced to switch either.
It is not in a country's long term interest to have its heavy industry grow outdated and suddenly keel over because they have become uncompetitive due to rising energy prices.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:28PM
But is it worth having turned Kentucky into a toxic shithole that all the bright young people leave as soon as they turn 18?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:34PM
If you're referring to transportation fuels, which would be the next major slice of the energy pie after electricity...well, once you have enough of a surplus of electric generation capacity, you can start using it to turn CO2 into liquid fuel.
It's an energy-intensive process, by its very nature...but, the idea is that you run the process when you're generating more of a surplus than the grid is otherwise comfortable with. Then, you can keep piling on more and more spiky alternative generating sources until they're enough for your baseload capacity and all their bountiful spikes and surpluses go into making liquid fuels.
It's not cheap, either. With today's technology, liquid fuels from solar and wind start to become competitive with petroleum derivatives when crude oil is in the $200/bbl range...
...and that's the real existential crisis we're facing. Because petroleum is definitely headed there as more and more wells reach their carrying capacity and the new ones are farther and deeper out to sea and so on...and it's not at all clear that our economy can actually function with transportation fuels that expensive. Remember, our agriculture system is dependent on diesel as well as fertilizer and pesticides that are almost exclusively derived from crude oil -- and then there's the transportation infrastructure that gets the food from the farms to the processing plants to the stores to the tables, again all running off of diesel.
Interesting times ahead.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:01PM
The other piece of the puzzle for transportation and mobile power sources is going to have to be conservation. Some specific tools that would conserve a great deal:
- Telecommuting and teleconferencing: As that becomes common, a huge percentage of car and air traffic goes away.
- Rail: Rail makes a good replacement for driving anything a long distance, because the amount of fuel used per mile per ton of stuff moved is much lower.
- Auto trains: A subset of rail, obviously, but if you have 400 cars all driving from, say, Chicago to St Louis, it would save a lot of energy if you put all the cars on a train and moved the train rather than moving each car separately.
- 3D printing: As that becomes cheaper, getting some cheap plastic thingamajig becomes a matter of pressing a button, rather than shipping it from China to the US and then trucking it across the country, and then throwing out the half of them that nobody actually wanted.
And breaking the "big vehicles=manliness" idea might put an end to the office workers driving around in 15 mpg trucks rather than 45 mpg hybrids. That's not even technology, that's just a cultural shift.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:21PM
Yep, 10 calories of petro-chemical energy to make 1 calorie of food energy.
You also left out peak phosphorous --- there's a reason why China has quit exporting it and is now importing all that they can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @08:00PM
Plus it is ingrained in the Costa Rican culture to lie. It was the most frustrating thing about daily life there. If a person didn't know the answer to a question, or simply didn't like the answer, they would lie. All the time. It's considered to be normal behavior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @08:30PM
If a person didn't know the answer to a question, or simply didn't think you would like the answer, they would lie. All the time. It's considered to be normal behavior.
FTFY! It's called "politeness. You should try it some time. You sound like an ugly American!
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:17PM
It's probably easier given that they don't have much manufacturing, which is pretty energy intensive. On the other hand, I've heard of manufacturers generating significant portions of their own energy with wind and solar. They do it for pr reasons, a long term economic benefit, and reliability. If power goes out manufacturing comes to a screeching halt.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:33PM
wikipedia [wikipedia.org]
A good 40-50% of Costa Rica's exports are manufactured goods, with a focus on electronics. And that's not counting any of that 26% "unclassified" chunk. So I'm not sure about this "Don't have much manufacturing" claim. Consumers in Costa Rica aren't rich by any means, looking at that article, but for a developing country, they're pretty well off.
I'm totally in agreement that they're not the same as the US, but they aren't the backwater you're painting them as.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:54PM
but for a developing country, they're pretty well off.
Looking at virtually all "median" graphs in the US and developing countries for the past 40 years or so, we've been declining while they've been advancing fast enough that the crossover point isn't too far in the future. In some ways most of the world is already ahead of us, looking at medical. In other ways we do still own some areas, like aerospace and weapon production. Still the day is not far when Costa Rica is better than Detroit, if it isn't already.
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:25PM
Yeah yeah yeah, bash my hometown even though it looks like it was nuked from orbit and Costa Rica is an eco-friendly tropical paradise with a decent quality of life...
Never mind. I'm gonna leave now.
Sigh.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by WillAdams on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:41PM
5.8% medical instruments N.E.S. --- mostly assembly
2.1% orthopedic appliances
9.8% parts of cash registers & calculating machines
7.6% electronic microcircuits
0.8% Articles of paper pulp --- If I remember right, the paper pulp is made from banana leaves and mostly used for packaging and decorative uses and crafts --- and isn't too high in energy requirements since it doesn't get bleached or pulped very fine
0.7% electric wire
0.41% worked aluminum --- no foundries or smelting
"Until just recently, most of the country's industry consisted of small-scale light manufacturing enterprises. This was until 1998 when Intel Corporation's came and demonstrated the very first large-scale manufacturing venture." http://costarica-information.com/about-costa-rica/economy/economic-sectors-industries/manufacturing [costarica-information.com]
I was specifically noting heavy industry and durable goods.
Looks as if the TVA runs half a dozen or so hydroelectric dams, "generating 4 percent of the electricity used in Kentucky" http://energy.ky.gov/renewable/Pages/HydroelectricPower.aspx [ky.gov] (which is more than half the total hydro in the U.S. http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=427&t=3) [eia.gov]
By way of contrast durable and non-durable manufacturing are 12% of the U.S. economy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_United_States [wikipedia.org]
Here's hoping Lockheed-Martin can pull off a fusion power plant --- if not, things are going to get really awkward pretty quickly.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday March 25 2015, @04:42AM
Thanks for the correction, I guess my impression was out of date. Sounds like it might be a decent place to go.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:19PM
> I can't imagine what outlook leads someone to believe that locking ourselves in to depletable energy sources "keeps us competitive".
Because the science that we refuse to fund will provide the God-approved supply answers before the non-renewables run out in areas that will still vote against the providence State... or something like that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TK-421 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:30PM
Hi, friendly resident conservative here. If someone here in the states can offer me a better or comparable power utility at the same or better price. I! WILL! SIGN! UP!
Contrary to popular belief I have no disposition to relying on fossil fuels for my daily electricity. My requirements in decreasing order:
1.) Reliable - I want six 9s of up time or better. If I can't rely on it to safely store and cook my food then what the hell good is it?
2.) Price - I need to be able to afford it. After I pay for my shelter and food it is my next payment priority. If I still can't afford it after only paying for my shelter and food then that is a problem.
3.) Flexible - It ideally should have uses beyond just food purposes. Charge my crap. Let me design some crap. Expound my mental crap to others about crappy things. Manage my crap. Etc.
4.) Source - If I can't do any of the above then it doesn't really matter how it was generated.
I am not so naive as to think there there are people in the states who have a vested interest in keeping the status quo of using fossil fuels. However, the customers also have little reason to move, except those who put #4 at the top of their list. Just realize that those of you who value #4 over all else are in the minority currently. If you want to win the rest of us, find a way to POSITIVELY affect #2 while keeping #1. If that can be done...well...where do I sign?! So far too many people are trying to NEGATIVELY affect #2 without even caring about #1. Not cool, not cool.
(Score: 5, Touché) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:37PM
Sooooo...you want the finest caviar in bulk and you're only willing to pay as much as you would for a single can of tuna?
Typical conservative.
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:50PM
And, those objections have been used to shoot down renewables on scant evidence. Maybe you personally aren't to blame, but your political allies sure are.
This Costa Rican example has shown every one of those empirically false as well:
1. Costa Rica actually has fewer brownouts now than a couple years ago when they were still partially on fossil fuels. This has to do with the necessary energy storage that renewables demand. Peak energy demand can be met by pumped storage. It won't last, because they're dependent on rainy seasons, but as they have plans to expand infrastructure to help cover the gaps.
2. You earn far more than the average Costa Rican. You can afford renewable power. And don't give me any PPP excuses, PPP is actually lower in Costa Rica.
3. okay, I don't actually know what you mean.
4. It does matter how it's generated. You're just tacitly willing to accept the costs fossil fuels have on others. This is why it's such a bugaboo to us liberal types. You can't just set aside climate change(or sulfates, or particulates) as an entirely separate issue from the cost of generating your energy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @09:13PM
> You're just tacitly willing to accept the costs fossil fuels have on others. This is why it's such a bugaboo to us liberal types.
That ought to be the reason its a bugaboo to conservative types. Since when has a conservative been in favor of giving out free lunches?
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Wednesday March 25 2015, @01:17AM
Hydroelectric power is the only source of RELIABLE renewable energy. And it can be further augmented with wind and solar to provide additional base load beyond just sustainable by water flow.
On the other hand, without that hydroelectric power as the real energy backbone, it becomes very tricky to get solar and wind as reliable without long distance haul or storage.
(Score: 1) by darnkitten on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:36PM
Do you actually get 1&2 currently?
In my town, those who can afford it put in solar (and to a lesser extent, wind) and buy expensive storage options in addition to generators, so they can more easily weather the unreliability of power. Those who can't suffer blackouts (multiple interruptions throughout the year, ranging from flickers of less than a second, to over a day without power in -20°F temperatures, this last winter) and power surges that blow through surge protectors/suppressors and UPS and still knock out the equipment behind them (at least one major surge a year); while over 1/3 of the community require some form of subsidy or charity to help them keep lights-and-heat going through the winter.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by TK-421 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:56PM
There are years where I have not gotten six 9s, sure. There are plenty of years where I have gotten five 9s, and there have been a couple years where three+ (around 5 hours of outage in a year) 9s is all I got.
I say "all" but even three+ 9s is pretty good. All I really care about in those situations is whether or not I am going to lose the stored food in the freezer.
So, my request for six 9s is admittedly high. If a renewable option could provide three 9s I would be happy. With that said I would be forced to implement a utility water powered sump pump if three 9s was going to be the norm. PTOCS (Pumps Turn or Carpet Swims) has been an issue at my house more than once but it wasn't due to power.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:30PM
You do NOT need 6 9s to keep your food refrigerated and to cook. Much of the U.S. does not have 6 9's for electricity now.
What the hell is up with item 3? Will your wall warts detect that their electricity is coming from wind and eject themselves from their sockets?
2 is true, but there's a lot of confounding factors there due to un-accounted for externalities.
(Score: 2, Informative) by TK-421 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:54PM
Yeah, I already admitted to that mistake about 40 minutes prior to your post and was mod'd troll for my honesty.
Item three is just me rejecting a complete retrofit of the delivery system. I still want it to be 120VAC @ 60Hz, that is all. I don't advocate that renewable sources will violate 120VAC, I just tend to be explicit when making a list. I want to charge my phones. I want light to work at night. I want to power a computer so I can get mod'd troll on SN. These all run off 120VAC @60Hz and I want it to stay that way.
Agreed, but at the end of the day the man made global warming believer and denier both need to be able to afford the utility.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2015, @08:34PM
The externalities go beyond AGW. There's also the health effects of the pollution. Mercury from coal power is why pregnant women are advised to avoid tuna/fish in general. It doesn't help if your electricity is cheap if you lose the ability to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and electricity due to outrageous medical bills for conditions caused by excess fossil fuel pollution.
As for 120@60Hz, I am not aware of any proposal ever for alternative energy that suggests otherwise other than a few way off the grid DIY installations (and even those typically included having a small inverter). Certainly you won't be getting a note from your local power company telling you to get ready for DC current.
Why muddy a decent point with fluffy FUD?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:57PM
Well there is probably a bit of smoke and mirrors involved in the report (I say this because there -always- is where green claims are involved) but the numbers do look encouraging. The average cost per kilowatt hour I looked up for em is .11 which would be very competitive in most of the U.S. I'm paying less than .10 but again, that .11 number is in the same ballpark, close enough that regulatory cost and other non-energy source factors are probably the bigger influence on price.
I have said for years that green energy is a stupid idea because it is not competitive, that when it does become competitive on cost there won't be a need for the government to force anyone to buy it. That day might be approaching.
Of course they are getting most of their energy from hydro and the greens are already declaring that not to be green. Something that always seems to happen, if any 'alternative' source advances beyond something for hipsters to preen about having into a practical energy source it gets declared 'not green.' When you catch them being honest they will admit that no energy source can ever be green because the point is for us to live with less, to eliminate a good portion of humanity even, to live more 'in harmony with nature' in a lower energy civilization. Solar harms the deserts, kills birds, is made with toxic materials, etc. Wind kills birds and obstructs the pristine views on yuppies seafronts. Geothermal causes earthquakes. And so on.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday March 25 2015, @12:49AM
The cost per watt for solar panels has been falling swiftly the past 5 years. I think the latest stat I saw was that they've reached grid parity in 11 states. It certainly has here in New York. ConEd charges us $.35/kwh.
Also, being in New York and having experienced blackouts and hurricanes in the past 10 years, I'd say resiliency is a pretty good argument for having solar panels too. I would have loved to be driving an EV that I recharged with solar panels on my home instead of getting up at 2am to wait 2hrs in a blizzard in Red Hook to get gas, as I was.
Independence would be another strong motivator for me. Every time I read the ConEd bill, it makes me mad. I have trimmed our electricity usage down to 200kwh/mo, a fraction of the 900kwh the average American family uses, using a combination of LEDs and Energy Star appliances, and the fuckers still charge me $70/mo. Mostly for line charges, not for electricity. How I would love to tell ConEd to shove its bills up its ass. But I can't. I live in an apartment building and cannot put solar panels on the roof.
So there you have 3 good, solid reasons for getting solar panels (or wind turbines or whatever), none of which have to do with Gaia or bunnies. What are you waiting for?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @04:44PM
And American politics continues to center around how impossible a notion that is.
I never fail to be amazed how cheap renewable energy is at small scale.
The local utility offers a "energy for tomorrow" plan where you pay a little more and they buy your KWh from renewables instead of burning coal.
Remember, coal, and coal plants, aren't exactly free. Its not just solar panels that cost money.
Anyway the additional cost for 25% renewable is half a cent per KWh, 50% is unsurprisingly one cent per KWh, and 100% renewable is shockingly two cents per KWh additional. I checked the website. I'm signed up although I don't remember at what level (probably 25%). So I pay half a cent more per KWh but 1/4 of my electricity comes from biomass and wind with some solar. Like 10 years ago the price delta was about three times as large, from memory?
Locally pretty much any organization that leans vaguely left (health food stores, places like that) has a big poster on the wall proudly proclaiming they get 100% of their electricity from renewable sources. Also at least some modern office buildings do this. I believe its a building code / zoning commission thing where you can either put in an extra inch of foam insulation or buy all energy renewable.
What I'd really like to see in a program is nuke only option, where I'd pay about half coal price for 100% nuclear energy.
Obviously this doesn't scale in that you can look at my last month bill for 1000 KWh or whatever (using easy numbers) and simply buy 250 KWh from a local wind farm "in my name" (we have a couple local wind farms). But it would be trickier to run 100% of the entire grid due to load balancing etc. Also we have enough garbage / landfill to generate about a third of renewable power by letting it rot and/or burning it at high temp, but where we'd get 100x as much garbage to expand the program by a factor of 100 is a mystery. And the best sites for wind already have windmills on them so that price would increase as we'd have to use inferior locations.
None the less it always amazes me how cheap renewable power is, after decades of being told its unaffordable or windmills cost $1/KWh or solar is $50/KWh or whatever nonsense that might have been true in 1965. None are as cheap as nuke, but still, its impressive.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by TrumpetPower! on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:42PM
SolarCity's business model is to buy solar PV panels and install them on people's rooftops and then sell them the electricity those panels generate at a cost below what the utility charges.
There's a fair amount of capital investment required of SolarCity to do this...but the fact that they can be profitable with that business model should be all you need to know that, yes, indeed, solar really is the cheapest source of power available today.
If you can afford the capital investment yourself, you can make out like gangbusters -- a guaranteed and inflation-proof 10% or better annual rate of return. Good luck getting anything that safe that pays that well on the stock market these days.
...with a caveat. Utilities are pushing hard for "rate adjustments" that ensure that, no matter how many panels you put on your roof, your electric bill will remain within shouting distance of what it is without panels. Because, duh, if you stop paying them then they stop getting your money, and we can't have that, now, can we?
But the utilities that're doing this are only fucking themselves over, just as Ma Bell did as it fought the shift to mobile telephony and the Internet. With the new rape-you solar rates from these utilities, it's just about break-even to get a battery system and drop off the grid altogether. For new construction, going off the grid is generally cheaper for the home builder than paying the utility for the grid connection. Once Tesla's Gigafactory starts production, battery prices are going to drop rapidly (as solar prices continue to drop)...and, pretty soon, dropping off the grid entirely will be as clear an economical win as grid-tie solar is today. At that point, the utilities start losing customers in earnest...meaning they have to jack up their rates for the remaining customers...making off-grid solar that much more appealing for the remaining...ending in a death spiral for the utilities.
Were the utilities smart, they'd get ahead of the curve. If Ma Bell were smart, she'd have positioned herself to be the leading brand for mobile phones; similarly, the utilities, if they had a clue, would be the leading installers of rooftop solar. As batteries become even marginally affordable, the utilities should be sharing the cost of them with customers in exchange for rights to backfeed the grid from them for load leveling. That would ensure that they're still providing the very useful services of the grid, and they'd still be in the business of installing and servicing the generating infrastructure...it's just that said infrastructure would be spread out over the entire city rather than concentrated in a single industrial facility.
But, no, they're beholden to their sunk costs and the Koch Brothers, and so we've all got to deal with the writhing death throes of another utility industry and the birth pangs of its replacement....
b&
All but God can prove this sentence true.
(Score: 3, Funny) by VLM on Tuesday March 24 2015, @09:04PM
ending in a death spiral for the utilities
Maybe they should try DRM to stop those electrical pirates (just kidding)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Tuesday March 24 2015, @08:03PM
The local utility offers a "energy for tomorrow" plan where you pay a little more and they buy your KWh from renewable instead of burning coal.
Marketing.
I personally hate those little scams as it is basically a way to greenwash. Given that those renewable sources are always trying to sell power to the grid when available all you are doing is subsidizing power for others since the same electrons would be used anyway. Given what I have seen in energy markets wind and solar will typically offer a bid of $0.00/KWh for what ever their current production is thus getting what ever is the lowest bid that will complete meeting the demand. Nuke plants will often do this as well as since they don't want to ramp their output.
This isn't to say that renewable are bad, just don't kid your self that your power is better than those who don't pay extra, but you are subsidizing the power of those who aren't on that plan.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:17PM
As I understand it (which is fairly shallow, alas), the US has looked at the theoretical possibilities, and in fact invested *billions* into renewable energy research, it probably has had a budget that matches or beats many other countries investments. However, all those projects ought to be scrutinised using the ultimate, almost unanswerable because it's almost unaskable, question - "but where did all the money actually go?". Now I hate to say the US is as corrupt as some former soviet-blok countries, but when the technological and developmental return on the government's, and thus tax-payers', investment is so low, you've got to suspect that the whole exercise was more for pocket-stuffing than for actually achieving anything.
Solyndra, meet the Southern Bridge over the Daugava in Riga, Southern Bridge, meet Solyndra. (Although I think Sunpower's loan was closer in cost, but I'm erring on the cautious side.) At least the bridge did finally get completed - almost certainly one of the most expensive per metre in the world. People who stuffed their pockets on either project - GFY, you are a cancer that hinders progress.
In the US's case, I'm not too disappointed, I have nothing invested in the country, and would be only too happy to see local companies finding a huge market over on the other side of the pond. We need to recoup the losses caused the corruption that plagues us somehow! (Can you tell I'm an angry EU taxpayer?)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @05:34PM
Good for *them*. It works for them because of *where* they live.
However, this would not work here. They get WAY more rain than we do. Also a good 1/4th of the united states is borderline/is desert. Which means we could use solar more there. But the rest of the US is not in a *rain* forest. If you think the western states are arguing about water now. Try tying it all up for power.
To get the same results we would need 65 times as much rain as what they got and spread across much of the united states. 65 times that amount of rain we would probably consider that flooding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt_Lake [wikipedia.org]
This covers 125 square miles currently. It is usually at or near capacity. You would have to cover 6000 square miles to get the equivalent power production to cover more people.
The difference here is 4.8 million people vs 312 million. We already use a good amount of hydro power. It however is seasonal too. Currently the melt has started in the colorado river chain. It is about 20% short of the average add.
So while water is a good power source. It needs to be one amongst many in the united states. We like and pay for things like 99.99% power uptime.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday March 24 2015, @06:29PM
Apologies for the neologism in the subject.
Norway has a great deal of hyrdo-elecric power generation. So much so that the total electric power generated each year is more than the annual demand.
However, not all Norwegian consumption is 'green, as (a) they export some surplus and import non-hydro generated power at other times and (b) they sell the certification that the electicity is green to other power companies in other countries, so they can sell 'green; electicity to consumers, which means the electicity consumed by Norwegian consumers is not classed as 'green'.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:08PM
This value does not include the energy used on industrial production imported from foreign coal-dependant manufacturing, which is part of their energy footprint on the world.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:37PM
That's a pretty desperate stretch. What does that say for the U.S. environmental record considering that we import from China? Consider what that says for worker's rights.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @07:48PM
What does the OP have anything to do with the US. My ten-year-old uses your arguments ("well, those guys do it!").
(Score: 2) by sjames on Tuesday March 24 2015, @11:46PM
If it's fair to say Costa Rica is using fossil fuels for electricity because some of the goods it imports were made with fossil fuel generated electricity, then it's fair to say the U.S. has no meaninful environmental and workplace standards because some of the goods it imports were made in China.
Alas, that level of reasoning may have to be spelled out to a 10 year old.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 24 2015, @11:53PM
No, the ten-year-old angle comes into it because YOU ARE THE ONLY ONE BRINGING THE US INTO THE DISCUSSION! What is the size of that chip on your shoulder anyways? Got a little US hate/envy thing going on that you're trying to assuage or something?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday March 25 2015, @12:58AM
You're not getting it and I don't have tiime to explain it to you. Go ask your mom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @01:16PM
then it's fair to say the U.S. has no meaninful environmental and workplace standards because some of the goods it imports were made in China.
Strawman alert. Nobody said anything about them having "no meaningful environmental standards".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 25 2015, @01:26PM
That's a pretty desperate stretch.
Desperate for what? Discrediting the opposition through dismissive wording?
What does that say for the U.S. environmental record considering that we import from China?
That it's artificially deflated.
Consider what that says for worker's rights.
Precisely nothing. Dumping crap into the atmosphere affects the whole world, abusing Chinese workers only affects Chinese workers. Mind you, importing their goods still means you are responsible for promoting their abuse, but not for promoting abuse of workers in your local jurisdiction.