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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.'"
It is amazing that the USA is NOT investing more into getting Hawaii moved onto AE for energy and tesla is not pushing their car there.
The reason why is because right now, nearly ALL of Hawaii's energy is from oil.
Tesla could jump the production line to an easy 30K or even 40K for the model S and would still sell 100% of those cars on Hawaii.
Oddly, Hawaii is setting up free electrical charging posts.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
that they are a pacific island with a population of 1400.
Not that far from saying something like Sealand is the first nation to adopt bitcoin as a national currency, which I am sure they would if they thought they could profit off it.
Great Intellect...
Sadly Tokelau will be the first nation to go under the waves when the waters rise. I've met a few Tokelauans and they are uniformly terrific people. Their culture will pretty much vanish when migrate to New Zealand.and their kids become Kiwis (New Zelanders - the fruit is named after the people who are named after the bird).
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
Well PV actually is quite cost effective against the carbon alternatives in this case. Not only is the country small making this project quite easy, but it's in the middle of nowhere so shipping costs for carbon based energy sources were equal to the cost of energy itself. One article mentioned that they were spending $800000 on shipping $1m worth of diesel every year.
I can see how solar PV could pay for itself quite quickly in this case.
It's a territory of NZ.
And it's apparently not at all on solar yet, the first system turns on in two weeks, the last in October.
I'm not even going to grouse about the 3 cars that run on fossil fuel, because that's peanuts next to the fact that the country won't even have power 24 hours a day (article says 12-18h).
This article is just plain wrong.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
The news isn't that it's a country - which it's not - but that an entire island, cut off from mainland grid, is able to use solar power as its only means of generating electric power. This makes it very interesting, and I would like to know a lot more about what their grid looks like, how they handle peaks and lows in solar output (like day and night), and so on.
Yeah, and some idiot shooting a nobody Viscount and his Wife in Serbia, started World War One. From small things, world changing events unfold. Who knows, being the first might provide them with some special status in the future, or help make something else possible because we learned from their example.
Every activity and accomplishment is a learning experience. I hope there *is* something the world can gain from this. That's not sarcasm.
I'm simply pointing out the obvious, that although a first and a possible inspiration and benefit to others, it's no leap-ahead in engineering or scaling.
I know that we've had a history of disagreements on a number of topics on /. in the past and almost certainly will again, but allow me to agree with you when there is common ground. I'm not unreasonable, even though we have differing views.
I'm not against solar or alternative energy in the broad sense at all. There is an appropriate tool for every job, and here solar may well be it. I just object on principle when every every unique energy need is made an identical nail for the same supply source/method/policy hammer. It offends the engineer in me.
However, if something makes more practical and economic real-word sense than the alternatives, I'm all for using the right tool for the job. I sincerely wish the islanders all luck and fair winds.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
A fridge left closed should have insulating properties be able to keep food from spoiling for a good 24 hours.
Also, they know when the sun is going down, so they could use the daytime electricity to "pre-chill" the fridge below its normal temperature, so it doesn't warm above a safe level overnight. Many companies that run refrigerators do the opposite: they use cheap overnight base-load electricity to pre-chill, so they need less electricity during the day when rates are higher.
I think last year I had to hose off some bird poop once. And nobody I know has had an inverter fail. I would just mod you down, but I'd like to call attention to the fact that solidraven is full of bird poop.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
The problem is everything expects AC, so you'd have to do a lot of work to cut the AC cord anyway. Or do you run your AC TV from a DC source? Where do you buy a DC TV from?
Learn to love Alaska
They spent about $2,000,000 a year on fuel. They won't anymore.
Learn to love Alaska
There are actually a fair number of boats that have TVs running off DC.
What does that have to do with being a country of not?
Curiously, I am a New Zealander and this island is New Zealand territory with the New Zealand mainland funding the entire project and being constructed by New Zealand companies.
So, as a matter of fact, it is MY country ...
BTW - nice troll on the anti-USA war/oil thing ... a nice old standard ... i rate 3/10 for effort
Vanadium redox cells are typically cited as over 10000 cycles. I don't know what simulations you refer to, but given that the average US household uses 6000kWh/year, that's an average of 0.7kW, and assuming an average of 3 people per household would mean that 1MWh per person (3 MWh per household) would be enough to run it for 180 days. Which sounds utterly absurd, especially once you start building more regional interconnects (heck, they're already talking about adding even *Iceland* to the European grid). Lastly, simulating a "100% scenario" is pointless. What's so wrong with a 90% or a 95% scenario (aka, using existing fossil plants if there's some low-probability shortfall event) if it makes the problem much easier to handle? Lastly, existing hydro plants in most regions can be uprated and used as battery buffers, holding months worth of power in their reservoir behind them. Pumped hydro's added cost per kWh sold is usually cited in the $0.01-$0.02/kWh range. It's cheap enough that it's starting to be used extensively in some places (such as China), not to support renewables, but simply to avoid having to build new power plants to meet daytime demand.
It should be noted that even PbA cells are a viable option in some locations (I believe there's a huge bank up in Alaska). It all depends on the scenario.
The chloride owes the sodium money.
I'm always shocked at the venom aimed at solar and wind power on Slashdot. I can't think something much geekier or high tech than solar cells. I constantly see posts about how wildly impractical they are and how they create more CO2 than coal power with no facts to back any of it up. The fact is, and yes I have run the numbers, without government subsidies the payback is no more than 5 to 7 years and depending on location and power needs it can be less. With subsidies depending on the area it's usually 3 to 5 years for payback. Considering bank interest is at best a couple of percent it's a staggering return on your investment considering they'll likely power your house for 30 years, 25 to 35 depending on how much excess capacity you initially install. They will continue to produce usable power for another 15 to 25 years. I've never seen evidence suggesting that enough solar cells to power your house releases more CO2 to make than 30 years of coal based electricity. If there's actual data I'd love to see it! As to wind power contributing as much as coal fire I can firmly call bullshit on that one since I can assemble a windmill out of scrap parts and an alternator out of a junk car. The technology isn't that different than a portion of what runs your car so there's simply no way a wind mill large enough to power a home takes more CO2 to produce than a car. Also once it's set up it contributes no CO2. Localized solar cells require no infrastructure saving a massive amount of resources needed to support power line and substations. Also substations use large amounts of PCBs, a very bad thing to have laying around. The argument always descends into a "nuclear good" "solar bad". Ignoring all the problems we've had with nuclear and I'm not talking about just Russia and Japan, we have our own places like Hanford. Even under the most ideal situation with flawless performance nuclear needs a massive distribution network. Also as much of the east coast found out this summer when it goes down vast areas are screwed. Guess what happens when your neighbors solar cells stop working? You still have AC like the rest of the neighborhood with solar cells. No one is suggesting we dump all other forms of energy and focus on solar although I've heard people try to claim we should drop everything in favor of nuclear. The flaw in that plan being without a massive infrastructure of breeders and reprocessing plants that don't exist we run out of fuel for the reactors in something like 40 years if we switched over entirely. Let's drop the my teams better than your team approach to solving the energy crisis and use what works best in each situation. Lets give them credit for what they are doing switching to a sustainable solution that works for them. I noticed multiple well modded posts saying what they did doesn't count. Personally I think it counts for a lot. They are leading by example and the least we can do is not whine about it!
3. Currently, Germany is in a "20% scenario". We already have the highest electricity prices in the world (for a major country) ~26 âct/kWh and the import/export saldo in the area of 15% of total production. The electricity prices will likely increase by another 3-4 cents next year and so far there's no end to the price hike in sight.
Germany might be a horrible example as the political system there seems to insist making bad choices while shutting down the nuclear powerplants.
Look at your northern neighbours instead: Denmark. In the year 2011 the electricity used in Denmark was 28% wind and 11% other renewable energy (solar, biomass, imported hydroelectric power from Sweden and Norway, etc). 41% of electricity produced in Denmark was from renewable sources while only 39% electricity used was from renewable sources. This is because Denmark will sell a lot of wind generated power to neighbours (eg. Norway) and later buy some of it back from the big hydroelectric dams in Norway.
In year 2020 Denmark will have 78% of the used electric power from renewable sources. 48% will be from wind.
There is no "battery" as such needed. Not even pumped storage. The trick is to use wind and solar when available. And power from the dams and bio when there is a lack of wind and solar.
2) While wind doesn't track consumption requirements, solar generally does pretty well. Inter-seasonal variations are handled by geographic and generation-mix diversity.
This depends on your location. For Denmark wind actually tracks consumption very well. The country uses much more electricity during the cold winter months compared to summer. And wind produces more during winter as well. If the country were to build 100% wind about 70% of the power would be produced when needed.
there's a certain segment of society that listens to faux news and reads the drudge report and faithfully accepts the propaganda from the oligopolies who want to retain their rent-seeking parasite status on our societies. why these people's minds are so beholden to the corporate propaganda and the well-paid demagogues is beyond my understanding. some people retain open minds, other minds close up and never think critically again, and are forever more enthralled to the propaganda channels that, for some reason, they dutifully accept without any resistance. it's a strange world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm not sure if the size of population matters - with more population, you have more money. So the question is, how does the economics of the system scale on a per-capita basis?
If it's affordable on a per-capita basis for 1400 people, why not 140 million people?
It's an interesting experiment at a small scale which will help answer either if solar is viable (technically and financially) at a smaller scale, or not.
I would point out that I doubt that this tiny pacific island has much in the way of heavy industry, however. I think wind and solar could potentially (if they get cheap enough), become a larger portion of the U.S. and other developed nations economies (perhaps something like 40-50% of total generation. I don't think for an industrialized nation, it can become 100% of the power grid - industry uses just too much power.
Also - I wonder how much air conditioning is used on that island? I imagine that, since historically their electric has been expensive, they probably largely haven't depended a lot on A/C? I also wonder what the weather is like there? South Pacific, I believe, is pretty much warm year 'round - but does it ever really get stiflingly hot like it does in places on the mainland (in Ohio, where I live, and surrounding states, back at the end of June and beginning of July, we had 2 or 3 weeks of 100+ degree days).