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Costa Rica Goes 75 Days Powering Itself Using Only Renewable Energy
An anonymous reader writes with news about an impressive renewable energy accomplishment in Costa Rica. Costa Rica has achieved a clean energy milestone by using 100 per cent renewable energy for a record 75 days in a row. The feat was achieved thanks to heavy rainfall, which powered four hydroelectric plants in the first three months of the year, the state-run Costa Rican Electricity Institute said. No fossil fuels have been burnt to generate electricity since December 2014, in the state which is renowned for its clean energy policies."
Costa Rica is 68 on the UN's development index.
I will sit back and see how this is not possible in the USofA.
OTOH Renewable energy is not something new. Look at the Hooverdam. And there is dessert enough available to put a LOT of sun collectors.
The real issue is that this will require investment in research and that means not making a profit in the next 3 years, which is about the duration of how far a CXO looks.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
First!
or did they go all electric cars and boats too and start cooking on electric? they had a good rainfall.
with this reasoning norway has been 100%+ renewables for a loong time(they generate more renewable energy than they use, and export the rest). sure, they do export fossil fuels too..
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Now, they only need to install electric pumps for when it's not raining, and they're 100% renewable forever!
Been there. The amount of rainfall is amazing and this is a nice result. Unfortunately, Costa Rica still allows their police to search all cars at a checkpoint in the middle of the country so any feeling of freedom or closeness with nature is quickly soured.
That is about 9500 days Iceland has Powered Itself Using Only Renewable Energy.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
A bit over 99% of the electricity generated in Norway is from hydro plants, because it has a ton of hydro resources.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Quebec, with 8.2 million people, goes 365 days on hydro all the time.
They will accept only solar and wind.
You said "look at Hoover Dam". Okay, I'm looking. I see it's situated in a nice canyon, flooded 100 square miles, and provides less than 1/10,000th of our energy needs. If you go find another 10,000 nice deep canyons, we can flood 1,000,000 miles of land and be okay, until there's a drought.
Since we don't actually have 10,000 canyons, you end up needing to flood basically the entire area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians - I've done the math.
Costa Rica has a population of a few million - think Houston and it's suburbs. They have a couple of dams, which is great when they get heavy rains. Their experience might be interesting to one or two American cities (the ones nearest Niagara Falls, specifically) ; it's nothing like powering the entire United States.
Should sexist opensource developers have their projects censored or removed?
Recently an opensource game release story was removed due to the game developer's open sexism(0) and harrasment(1) of women in tech.
A story posted by the editor of the popular Phoronix linux news site about a release of an Open Source videogame was later manually removed(2). The reason cited was the game developer's unacceptable views on social issues such as gender equality (3).
The release story was titled "Xonotic-Forked ChaosEsqueAnthology Sees New Release - Phoronix" and can be accessed via the google cache(4).
With the recent inclusion of a code of conduct(5) for those wishing to contribute to the Linux Kernel some questions now need to be asked and answered about the inclusion of code from people who are known to engage in or promote socially unacceptable attitudes or harrasments of those whom the free-software movement would prefer to attract in their place:
* Are the social or political views of an author of free software relevant to that software's inherent quality?
* Should the beliefs of an opensource developer weigh when when evaluating whether a piece of opensource software is worthy of any publicity or public notice?
* Should men with unpopular or "forbidden" views be excised from the opensource movement and "not allowed" to contribute, in a manner similar to that which is done in employment?
* Has the free/opensource software movement changed in these respects since its founding? If so is this a positive change?
* Should there be gatekeepers to opensource that decide who may and who may not contribute. Should abusive developers be "blackballed" to maintain proper social order and controls?
and
* What are the consequences of not doing this
Citations:
(0) Past related incident: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1310
(1) http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/...
(2) Removed story URL: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.p...
(3) http://www.phoronix.com/forums...
"Fortunately, the article has been removed now."
"Thanks everybody for speaking up."
(4) https://webcache.googleusercon...
(5) Linux "Code of Conflict"
I'm wondering if I could achieve the same result from the diarrhea I get from Mexican food. It would be awesome to finally live off-grid !! Should I run some numbers ?
1/2 oz salsa + 3 oz Pepsi would produce about 60 fl oz of (output) at apprx 30 N of force x .135 Watts / Newton of linear force through the generator = 4.05 Watts - enough to power a small night light.
OK, I think of Houston and it's suburbs. So why do I not see an article where it says that Houston and it Suburbs are 100% green over a 3 month period.
And do not look ONLY at dams, look at a combination of different sources. Solar, water, wind, reduction in usage by i.e changing the way buildings are made, people and goods are transported and a lot of other things.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
How do they do that? How do you renew the sun? I thought there was only so much exergy? Can a physicist perhaps explain this breakthrough?
Are Costa Ricans spics or niggers or a hybrid kind of monkey?
>. So why do I not see an article where it says that Houston and it Suburbs are 100% green over a 3 month period.
Houston doesn't happen to be located beneath a mountain range, where it would get a nice flow of water coming in during the rainy season. Houston also chooses to have affordable electricity available year round. Steady, affordable energy is directly related to all the jobs which Californians are moving to Houston for.
Houston also doesn't happen to have the volcanic fault line that Costa Rica uses for geothermal - less than 1% of locations on earth have that. California does have geothermal potential, the rest of the US does not.
You're spot on about the combination. The US has a couple of places suitable for geothermal, a couple for hydro, etc. If you do the research and the arithmetic, you find that renewables can make a significant impact - 11% to 13% of our total energy needs. That's significant. For the rest, we have the choice of natural gas and other petroleum, or nuclear. At least until we develop some Star Trek quantum generator.
Heavy enough for tropical jungle and growing sugar cane is pretty heavy dude.
We should stop using the word renewable for energy like solar wind and hydro. Its not theoretically renewable, but thats not the point. The point is that they don't emit CO2 into the atmosphere, and thats the thing that is going to screw up the climate.
So we should be using the term Non-Carbon-Emitting energy sources. We could even use the acronym NCE but its probably already in use in some other field.
Much sun = no rain
no rain = drought
Drought = no hydro.
Solar = renewable energy.
Costa Rica is roughly 20,000 Square Miles.
That's about half again the size of the NYC metropolitan area.
Rewrite it to read "Tiny country you can walk across in a couple days...."
Second, they're down on/near the equator. Long days. Mostly great weather. Now compare to Chicago, with roughly 30 days of snowfall a year (mostly in a period of 8 months)
Third, they got helped by high (even for them) rains, allowing their hydro resources to run at a higher capacity.
And, as others have noted, funny that eco-nuts are normally so averse to hydro power because of environmental factors.
But when it helps achieve things like this, NOT A FUCKING PEEP.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
At night, a substantial fraction (600,000 US gallons (2,300 m3) per second) of the water in the Niagara River is diverted to the forebay by two 700-foot (210 m) tunnels. Electricity generated in the Moses plant is used to power the pumps to push water into the upper reservoir behind the Lewiston Dam. The water is pumped at night because the demand for electricity is much lower than during the day. In addition to the lower demand for electricity at night, less water can be diverted from the river during the day because of the desire to preserve the appearance of the falls. During the following day, when electrical demand is high, water is released from the upper reservoir through the pump-generators in the Lewiston Dam. The water then flows into the forebay, where it falls through the turbines of the Moses plant. Some would say that the water is "used twice".
you end up needing to flood basically the entire area between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians
Bring back the Western Interior Seaway!
I don't remember seeing a discussion about the actual cost of a barrel of oil sourced outside the U.S. It's more than just the on-field production cost, plus transportation, refinement, etc. Shouldn't we add in the the military costs, State Department costs, etc? How much of our military budget is allocated either to or because of the areas of oil production that are not on domestic soil? How much of our State Department budget as well? We certainly don't maintain the same State resources in Lagos as we do in Riyadh. Add in the CIA, various other acronym intelligence agencies, private security companies, it seems that real cost of a gallon of gas in the U.S. is far more than $4.00.
Also - how concerned are we about the long-term consequences of fracking? Even discounting any negative impact by this process, it has a very limited future. The cost of gas is politically turbulent, and politicians are not known for long-term planning - and by this, under these parameters, we should be thinking 25-50 year plans.
think Houston and it's suburbs.
Okay, I'm thinking about Houston and it's suburbs. Can we flood it and use it for power generation?
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
By this wacky logic, Las Vegas, the city of excess and far too many lights, is the most renewable city in the US with its power coming straight from the Hoover Dam. This sounds like an achievement no one should be all that impressed with. Managing to stay 100% renewable in drought, nightfall, and calm conditions? Now that would be more impressive.
Please DO TAKE INTO ACCOUNT the following
1. Electricity is NOT cheap in Costa Rica, in fact it is quite expensive compared to other countries in the region, as a matter of fact just recently it was discovered that the Costa Rican Institute for Electricity (I.C.E. in spanish) wasted 300 millon dollars in a project that should have costed only 100 millon dollars
2. Many and I mean MANY companies are leaving Costa Rica because electricity is way too expensive to operate (American Standard is an example, they moved to Nicaragua), this is also related to excesive taxes and other mumbo jumbo from the goverment (extremly burocratic, corrupt, and operates quite slow)
3. Just a few years ago, about 4 years I guess, the state tried to charge more for electricity telling people dams where almost empty, it was then reported BY PEOPLE itself that went there and took videos of how the dams were being emptied on pourpose just to charge more to citizens, nice isn't it?
4.Fossil fuels in Costa Rica are EXTREMLY EXPENSIVE, this is because the state charges around 400% of its value in taxes, this taxes are supposedly used to finance a refinery that does not refine, road maintenance and other things, yet Costa Rica has the worst roads in the region and RECOPE (The refinery that does not refine) is just a bunch of thieves backed up by the goverment. Because all of this electricity from fossil fuels is avoided at all costs.
The list can go on and on and on, this is just another desperate attempt from Costa Rica to look good, but in reality it is a shitty country, (in fact it is dirty, no animal control what so ever, so animal feces are everywhere), if you are planning to invest there DONT
Because of two major pieces or legislation: Environmental Protection Act and the Endangered Species Act. That created legal attack vectors on large hydro projects in the US and made things like Salmon and the Snail Darter tools to prevent projects from being built or disassembling those already in place. That's why.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Green energy is liberal energy, liberal energy is Communism.
This is nub of the problem: idiocy.
I lived in Costa Rica for a couple years, most recently about eight months ago. They have a phrase, "pura vida" which could maybe be translated as "the good life", but it's used as a greeting and farewell phrase as well. It's also used as an answer to, "How are you doing?" On the one hand, it seems remarkable that they would be happier than anyone else; broadly speaking I expect people to have the same general experiences anywhere. On the other hand, I spent a few months in Panama and then returned to CR for a holiday, and when I picked up a pizza that I had ordered, the guy said "Have a nice day," that is, "pura vida". And he meant it sincerely. At that moment, the difference in attitude was shocking; I had been used to Panamanians (although I prefer the sobriquet Panamaniacs :P) basically looking at me as a business opportunity at best.
The average Costa Rican does not have a computer, although cell phones are relatively common. Computers are quite expensive, enough to make an import business profitable, but very few people can afford one. There is a 100% import duty on cars, so those are expensive too. They also do a license plate restriction on driving, at least in San Jose. Most have electricity and relatively clean water, although they do have an issue with dumping raw sewage into almost all of the rivers. I wish I could more effectively describe the impoverished living conditions; if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask.
On the other hand, people sure don't care about working hard there. My friends in San Jose tell me that the weekend starts on Thursday, and everyone including the boss is late on Fridays and Mondays. There were as I recall a couple clubs where you paid a $10 cover and drinks were free. If there was paperwork that needed to be processed by the government, let's just say the Vogons would be proud of the Tico bureaucracy. If you needed to have your car repaired by a certain date, the Ticos will of course be delighted to tell you that it will be ready then, but no amount of inducement or cajoling will actually make it ready by a given date. Things happen when they happen, and no one is in a hurry to get anything done or to go anywhere — they call it operating on "Tico time".
However, all that said, I'm a little skeptical of the article. Most of Costa Rica is really rural, and I would be surprised if the national power grid actually extended to all corners of the country. I don't think that the average Tico really cares about environmentalism; to some degree it's a first world problem. The Costa Rican government on the other hand knows that the country basically has no industries; the farming isn't great and I believe tourism is the biggest part of the economy. Costa Rica doesn't have all that much to tour, either: there are no mayan or aztec ruins, and almost nothing in the way of indigenous culture. I heard something about painted oxcarts being a thing, but never saw one. Contrast with Panama's amazing diablo rojos (the buses or the costumes). So some while back they hit upon the idea to market themselves as a destination for "eco-tourism", which involves convincing the rest of the world that they have some sort of unique level of biodiversity. It may even be true. However, they really need to promote the image of being green and eco-friendly regardless of the truth.
If I could make a decent living there it'd be hard not to go back, even though the world is full of things I have never seen before. Whether or not the Ticos are the happiest people, I think that I can safely say that happiness for me is two-for-one mango daiquiris at the Lazy Mon. Pura Vida!
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
(I think my previous comment was eaten by /.'s tubes. If this ends up being a re-post, I apologize, feel free to mod it to oblivion)
I lived in Costa Rica for a couple years, most recently about eight months ago. They have a phrase, "pura vida" which could maybe be translated as "the good life", but it's used as a greeting and farewell phrase as well. It's also used as an answer to, "How are you doing?" On the one hand, it seems remarkable that they would be happier than anyone else; broadly speaking I expect people to have the same general experiences anywhere. On the other hand, I spent a few months in Panama and then returned to CR for a holiday, and when I picked up a pizza that I had ordered, the guy said "Have a nice day," that is, "pura vida". And he meant it sincerely. At that moment, the difference in attitude was shocking; I had been used to Panamanians (although I prefer the sobriquet Panamaniacs :P) basically looking at me as a business opportunity at best.
The average Costa Rican does not have a computer, although cell phones are relatively common. Computers are quite expensive, enough to make an import business profitable, but very few people can afford one. There is a 100% import duty on cars, so those are expensive too. They also do a license plate restriction on driving, at least in San Jose. Most have electricity and relatively clean water, although they do have an issue with dumping raw sewage into almost all of the rivers. I wish I could more effectively describe the impoverished living conditions; if you have any specific questions please feel free to ask.
On the other hand, people sure don't care about working hard there. My friends in San Jose tell me that the weekend starts on Thursday, and everyone including the boss is late on Fridays and Mondays. There were as I recall a couple clubs where you paid a $10 cover and drinks were free. If there was paperwork that needed to be processed by the government, let's just say the Vogons would be proud of the Tico bureaucracy. If you needed to have your car repaired by a certain date, the Ticos will of course be delighted to tell you that it will be ready then, but no amount of inducement or cajoling will actually make it ready by a given date. Things happen when they happen, and no one is in a hurry to get anything done or to go anywhere â" they call it operating on "Tico time".
However, all that said, I'm a little skeptical of the article. Most of Costa Rica is really rural, and I would be surprised if the national power grid actually extended to all corners of the country. I don't think that the average Tico really cares about environmentalism; to some degree it's a first world problem. The Costa Rican government on the other hand knows that the country basically has no industries; the farming isn't great and I believe tourism is the biggest part of the economy. Costa Rica doesn't have all that much to tour, either: there are no mayan or aztec ruins, and almost nothing in the way of indigenous culture. I heard something about painted oxcarts being a thing, but never saw one. Contrast with Panama's amazing diablo rojos (the buses or the costumes [staticflickr.com]). So some while back they hit upon the idea to market themselves as a destination for "eco-tourism", which involves convincing the rest of the world that they have some sort of unique level of biodiversity. It may even be true. However, they really need to promote the image of being green and eco-friendly regardless of the truth.
If I could make a decent living there it'd be hard not to go back, even though the world is full of things I have never seen before. Whether or not the Ticos are the happiest people, I think that I can safely say that happiness for me is two-for-one mango daiquiris at the Lazy Mon. Pura Vida!
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
Provided by U.S. made and imported weapons, and then perhaps we can talk about electricity savings, when there is none left to use such electricity (aka: been murdered by U.S. made and imported weapons.)
I thought hydroelectricity was not considered clean by the USA, creating a weird situation with Quebec's overproduction exports (among others maybe)...
:-P
Trolling baby, seven lines out, I'm catching me some sea bass in my internets.
> which has a handy graph showing 6 solar farms in desert areas that would work
From 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM, modulo Loster's utter BS. If we believe his silliness, than solar covers us for a few hours, on sunny days. How about the other 21-22 hours per day? I know, you'll just do pumped storage, right? Pump a bunch of water into reservoirs and use it to power hydro plants. Brilliant idea. How big do these reservoirs need to be? Well, see GP. No matter if you fill the reservoirs with rivers or with pumps, you still need a few billion gallons of water, all sitting 30 at least 30 meters above the turbines.
To place this article in a bit of context. Costa Rican summers extend from December to February and are extremely dry where sometimes there is no rain for 3 weeks straight. Costa Rica Just went through a slightly longer hot Dry summer and is just ending, so I am a bit confused that the article suggests high rains. Perhaps higher than expected? The wettest months is typically October and it can rain continuously for days, but at least several hours each day. The worst I witnessed was 8 days of continuous rainfall in October. This means that Costa Rica's electrical production should increase because it is starting to rain again.
Whatever you're not doing now "can't be done". 40-50 years ago, you had vim and vigour and a "Can do" attitude. You kept the attitude of "being the best, the most dynamic and brilliant place in the world" and dropped the activities and mindset that made it at least somewhat justified.
Now it's "Can't do it". Or "Someone else will just undo all our hard work if we tried this".
What a bunch of limpdick stayabeds.
Its the same BS that the hippies in Canada spout with how they dont dig up and use all their natural resources, easy to say when your country ginormous and has a population of ~30 million. Add a zero to the population and it would be a different story.
Hydro? Solar? Wind? In what way are these sources "renewable"? Renewable implies that we are able to produce new "fuel" for these resource we can not, we are in the hands of mother earth for those.
Impressive, but Tasmania has been doing this for... well I'm not sure exactly when electrification started, but around 100 years or so, give or take. 100% hydro.
Of course the trick in less geographically blessed regions is twofold. First, you need to find tech that's appropriate for the job. In Australian mainland that means solar thermal + heat storage for the most part (base load and all that) plus a bit of suitably widely distributed wind power. Elsewhere it could be tidal, geothermal, whatever is convenient. Second, and arguably more difficult, is overcoming inertia and FUD from the established generators and associated industry. Hard, but mostly doable.
Why do you want to use hydro to power the entire country?
Powering 10000th of the entire country on one power plant is pretty amazing I think.
You are chastising environmentalists because you haven't been bothered to read what they write on the subject? You don't even realise how moronic this makes you look. You are the stereotypical selfish old man poking feeble holes in a world he doesn't understand in a desperate attempt to regain some sense of control. Stop. The future begs you.
Dave420 can't post on weekends as mommy banned him for trolling n' he's too poor to buy a PC.
Yes Hydro is renewable so why do some states in the USA not count it as such?
No. I'm chastising environmentalists who do sloppy work and write sloppy papers with a definitive bias.
As for bothering to read what they wrote on the subject. How do YOU know that I didn't read?
As for being stereotypical. You OBVIOUSLY don't know me.
I'm all for using clean forms of power generation where they make sense.
I'm all for leaving this planet a cleaner (from WHATEVER forms of "pollution") place than I found it when I first popped out.
What I have a VIOLENT bias against is sloppy, yellow-journalism-style publication and coverage. Boldly presenting "facts" for a thing without covering the caveats.
I want to proceed into the future.
I want that future to be a bright, clean and safe one.
I DO NOT want to go stumbling into a future set up for me by a bunch of shysters and snake oil salesmen. Dystopia wouldn't even BEGIN to describe how bad that could be.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
And cheap clean energy is a market advantage that only some anti-capitalist Mercantalist would hate.
The markets care nothing for your failed fossil fuel religion.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Not as impressive as it seems!
Dave420 in the spirit of the upcoming May 1st Avengers 2 film which is going to be GREAT? Some ULTRON quotes making a point for me, regarding yourself trolling me for MONTHS now "Forrest"!
(Since YOU keep running from this completely FAIR challenge put to you vs. your trolling b.s. -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ):
---
"The ONLY way to achieve peace, is thru the elimination of those http://slashdot.org/~dave420 who would perpetuate war, & soon, I will be unstoppable..." Quote from https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"Shutdown code, rejected: My programming http://start64.com/index.php?o... has advanced beyond your commands - BEYOND your weakness..." -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p... Quote from https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"You http://slashdot.org/~dave420 are NOTHING to me: 1 by 1, I will destroy you! I will never tire. I will NEVER show mercy. I will NEVER STOP till each & every one of you, are dead..." Quote from https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
"This is NOT a threat: There is nothing you can do to stop it - The process has already begun. I receive no pleasure in this. It is simply the only logical solution..." Quote from https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
APK
P.S.=>
"APK? Is that you, lil' buddy?" - by dave420 (699308) on Tuesday March 24, 2015 @11:11AM (#49327399)
Dave420, you're paranoia's from your "420 weed" is serving as you "projecting", yet again!
Ahem: You trolled me for months now 'sowing the wind' nigh constantly (like the blowhard 'ne'er-do-well' you are) & now comes the whirlwind in return is all - you provided me the ammo to do it!
(& you sure like "dishing it out" trolling, but you can't take it apparently)!
Lastly, seeing how much OTHERS JUST LOVE YOU HERE for your trolling illogical smarmy ad hominem attacks on others here on /. too?
Priceless -> http://slashdot.org/comments.p...
You bring it on yourself, every SINGLE time, lol... apk
On how he conducts himself online http://slashdot.org/comments.p... now what was that you said troll? Practice what you preach and by the way: Nobody 'sounds' here. It's written, dimwit.