Tokelau Becomes First Country To Go 100% Solar

First time accepted submitter zonky writes "Tokelau has become the first country in the world to go 100% solar power generation, moving away from their entirely diesel power supply, which formerly supplied the energy needs of the 1400 residents of their small south pacific Island Nation. From the article: 'All three atolls in the South Pacific dependency, a New Zealand territory, will have their own solar power system by the end of October, despite a slight delay switching on the first system.'"

Comments

pointless achievement

[dell623]

I am not pro- or anti-solar power, but this is precisely the kind of meaningless 'achievement' that is trumpeted by the media and publicity seekers and will be used to push public opinion in favour of solar energy use and subsidies. What precisely is the point of a town sized nation going all solar? How can it be all solar? They don't use electricity at night? Actually they use a large bank of wonderful expensive polluting short lived rechargaeable batteries to store enough energy for the whole island for the night on cloudy days. They replaced their generator that used just 200 litres of fuel per day (a single truck can use that much) with this pointless and expensive project? I presume they have to import oil, but they can buy and stockpile a hell of a lot of diesel for the money they spent on this project. There is no way they have the expertise or raw material to make batteries or solar panels. So the self reliance theory goes out of the window - if they used wind or tidal energy that might have had some credence. What did the world gain from it? The equivalent of one less diesel truck on the roads, while spending enough money on solar cells and inverters and batteries to keep that truck running for decades. Does it help greenhouse emissions? No. Does it make the island self reliant? No.
Is it a technology that can ever be viable to supply energy to the 3 billion or so people in india and china and the billion or so Africa will have at the current rate? Hell no.
It's just a pointless vanity project for some big politician or UN do gooder or attention seeking billiionaire or an advertising project for some large corporation. I can't be bothered finding out which.

Jelousy

[dutchwhizzman]

You're just jealous that your country isn't the first to move to 100% solar an making up a sad excuse. If they had 30% of the worlds oil reserve and stopped exporting because they wanted to promote solar power, it wouln't take more than three minutes for the USA to come up with an excuse to declare war on them, as a country.