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Peru To Provide Free Solar Power To Its Poorest Citizens
An anonymous reader writes "Peru is looking to provide free electricity to over 2 million of its poorest citizens by harvesting energy from the sun. Energy and Mining Minister Jorge Merino said that the National Photovoltaic Household Electrification Program will provide electricity to poor households through the installation of photovoltaic panels."
No, the USA lacks solar panels because everybody is already on the grid.
Peru is using photovoltaics to provide small amounts of electricity without the infrastructure cost, which makes perfect sense.
PVs are still a very expensive way to generate large amounts of power. Only a wealthy country like Germany can afford to waste obscene amounts of money that way, where the benefits are mostly political.
That said, there is no sane reason why countries like the US and Australia should not be use far more solar-powered water heaters, and build homes for passive solar heating. Huge amounts of fossil fuels are being wasted that way.
Two million times say $50 per panel is not crazy money.
TFA says "about 12,500 solar (photovoltaic) systems to provide for approximately 500,000 households at an overall cost of about $200 million."
So $16,000 per village system. They are not simply putting one small panel and a motocycle battery on each house.
The photos in the inhabit.com article are very misleading. Shoddy work, taking somebody else's article, and adding your own vaguely related stock photos.
from the first page of google : http://inhabitat.com/nyc/new-york-citys-bureaucracy-slowing-down-construction-of-residential-solar-panels/ http://www.thestate.com/2012/10/14/2480345/why-solar-power-rarely-shines.html http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/solar-at-home/2009/06/04/what-you-really-need-to-install-solar-a-cpa/