Also, intermittent power can be a function of transmission network quality, not just generation type.
Renewables don't do anything but help. Generating too much? Curtail your production until you can store it in a cost efficient manner. Generating too little? Add more capacity.
It looks like electricity costs around US$0.30/kWh in Costa Rica. In the United States, it's about US$0.13.
So, the electricity in Costa Rica costs 2.3 times as much, and the income is about 20% of that in the United States, meaning that electric bills are effectively over 10 times higher.
Would you be willing to pay an electric bill that was ten times what you pay now? Even if you would, I assure you that many others would not.
If $0.30/kWh is the real price of electricity after externalities have been added in, then so be it. Because the alternative is too awful to imagine.
Also you've forgotten to include in your calculations that Costa Ricans probably use a lot less electricity than Americans. Someone earning $6k.pa probably does not have AC, a huge refrigerator, etc.
Also, if population density everywhere was the same as in Bangladesh, having green energy wouldn't have helped. It is far more "green" for many countries to force a one child policy than it is to switch to green energy.
Which doesn't say anything against having green energy but about current sad state of society and humanity in general...
That's not a sad state of society and humanity, that's the state of finite physical system limits. Less people = less resources consumed.
No, they almost certainly don't. And they almost certainly suffer from the food-borne illness, heat stroke, and other health consequences associated with that fact (not even counting the general quality of life issues). Why do you think this is a good thing?
It's always amazing to me how people living a privileged Western lifestyle blithely condemn people in poor countries to a life of privation and misery, just so they can feel good.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/3xhedt/99_of_cos...
Multiplying by 5 because incomes are 20% of US wages, doesn't make any sense to me. Do you think electricity costs should be linked to income, or something (I suppose it could work as a kind of taxation...)?
I was comparing the U.S. with Costa Rica.
The average U.S. home uses 901 kWH/month, which would put you in the 33 cents per kWH bracket (the source I found earlier said 30, which is pretty close).
The "peak" and "off-peak" pricing doesn't really enter into it, since most of the things you'd want to use a lot of electricity for (e.g., air conditioning) are time-dependent, and can't easily be shifted to "off-peak" times.
So, no, the numbers I was using aren't incorrect.
"Multiplying by 5 because incomes are 20% of US wages, doesn't make any sense to me."
I'm not sure why this doesn't make any sense. You spend x% of your income for electricity. Costa Ricans have to spend 5x% of their income to get the same amount of electricity. It seems perfectly straightforward to me.
In actuality, it's even worse than that, since someone in Costa Rica is going to have far less discretionary income to cover things like outrageous power bills.
I will freely admit that poor people in Costa Rica have less discretionary income than rich people in the USA.
Typically I find costa ricans using about 300 kwh per month per person, and on the first 300 kwh you pay about 12c per kwh or so. It's very similar to the US, really and much cheaper than the EU where the average sits above 20c.
And that says a lot. Yes, $1 spent by a CR is 'more expensive' than for a North American when looking at income levels. But that's not very relevant. The discussion is really about 'are these renewable energy sources good for Costa Rica?', someone like you says 'perhaps not so much because it's expensive'. But that's silly. Energy is necessary, if not renewable, then something else. So compare alternative energy sources for CR. And then you'll get a question 'is 12c per kwh that electricity in CR costs today under 99% renewables, much more expensive than a non-renewable alternative?'. And you'll find the answer is generally no. Decentralised diesel generators, or a bunch of coal firing plants will not be much cheaper at all, nor alleviate all outage problems. You'll also find that general all utilities are often more expensive in poorer countries, the cost of 1 kwh of electricity, x amounts of lumens to light up your room or 1 liter of clean water, is generally much cheaper in New York than in a small village in central africa.
In short, financially electricity in CR is relatively well organised. If you read through the reddit threat referenced you'll find people giving examples of how little they pay monthly, and if you compare the costs to neighbouring countries or countries at similar income levels worldwide (particularly pre-subsidies) or countries with very few renewables, CR actually does quite well.
As for outages, it depends. In big cities they occur almost never, like once every few months. (I lived in Montreal for comparison, it was once every few weeks). In rural areas it's more frequent, but then consider two things. One, 75% of Costa Rica is urban, and two, in significant rural areas in Central America you would be lucky to even be connected in the first place for any period of time, say in neighbouring Nicaragua. CR is the exception with nearly 100% electrification levels, compared to say 58% in Nicaragua, while outages outside big cities do happen, it's better than having no electricity at all. No CA country has CR's levels of electrification. Except of course Belize, a country of just 300k people (hardly a fair comparison) which generates about half of its electricity from fossil and surprise surprise, has more expensive electricity rates than CR as far as I can tell.
In short, the notion that CRs are paying much more because of renewables is bs, and the notion they're worse off than similar or neighbouring countries isn't true, either.
Yes, but hydro is the only renewable power source that is weather-independent. Wind, solar and tidal energy all fluctuate wildly during the day. In case there's no backup/storage (e.g. with pump-hydro systems, cheap-ish and effective, but a crime on nature!) you have to either import power from outside the country or resort to conventional power generation. Oh, and even hydro sucks for nature, because hydro plants interrupt natural pathways for fishes and like pump-hydro plants, there's a HUGE additional negative impact if you use a dam (in contrast to natural state, animals can't pass over the waterway, and as seen in China, important areas of biodiversity simply get flooded).
The lack of a truly environment-friendly energy storage is and will be keeping renewables from ever truly replacing fossil energy. Batteries need vast amounts of (rare) metals which have to be mined, refined and manufactured, molten-salt high power solar towers are a safety risk (as anything operating at three-digits-celsius temperature is)...
Droughts?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0R09YzyuCI
a) Complexity has killed off pretty much every major society prior to ours.
b) People's innate desire to problem solve increases complexity.
c) Cheap energy has enabled this process.
So there's an argument, an unlimited source of free energy would actually be a major problem because
1) It would enable more complexity, which is already pretty unmanagable.
2) You've still the problem of out of control resource usage.
Fortunately this is slowly changing. Different technologies are right in different situations, but the battery story in particular is undergoing rapid development.
For example flow batteries[1] usually don't require rare metals, are (fairly) cheap, reliable and are slowly becoming available.
One of the first uses is on cellular towers in South and Central America where the power grid isn't reliable.
Geothermal and biomass are also weather-independent, in addition to the long-term drought possibility that justinator mentioned.
However, just building two ponds in the middle of nowhere and pumping in water is another option.
Dams also have a life span, which is measured in decades (or less). Once the silt has built up, the dam doesn't really work in generating power any more.
Italy's hydroelectric plants have also been working since the '30s AFAIK, and they don't seem to be on the verge of a shutdown.
There are tens of thousands of dams in the US alone, and most if not all are not built to the proportions of the Hoover Dam. If you would like to use the Hoover Dam - one of the largest dams in the world, holding back one of the largest man made reservoirs in the world as my counterexample, be my guest.
My point wasn't that the dam will fail (although they do) - far from it: my point is that the dam, once put in, is really hard to take out and the dam itself holds back all the debris that usually flows out the river. That debris builds up, until - uh oh - you don't have enough water in your reservoir anymore to generate power.
That, and plugging up an entire watershed is pretty much akin to destroying the ecosystem that depends on the water flowing free to the ocean. Entire species of fish die off; the natural environment of other plants and animals is hopelessly changed, etc.
Some parts of the US only have 5% of rivers flow without a dam. Hydroelectricity is not sustainable now, and is far from inexhaustible.
So, back to the Hoover Dam - who's idea was it, to build a reservoir for water, in the middle of the desert? Did anyone think, "wonder if the water will all evaporate?" Because that's what's happening,
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-lake-mead-low-20150429-s...
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2666/how-long-are-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Dam#Environmental_impac...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qou2KkLkYVg
http://www.nytimes.com/1989/11/25/opinion/too-many-dammed-ri...
Your own link, says "Nowadays, from what structural engineers tell me, the typical design life is more like 100 years".
In Swedish: http://www.entreprenad.com/kategorier/alla/rekorddamm-far-10...
"Although large concrete gravity dams have a theoretical design life of 80-100 years, the actual lifespan of a dam is determined by the rate at which its reservoir fills with sediment. In severely eroding catchments, millions of cubic metres of sediment can be transported annually. The average lifespan of a large dam in China is 45 years. " http://mightyclutha.blogspot.com/2010/02/decommissioning-rox...
"Many scientists predict that within two decades, rising demand for Colorado River water and falling supply will drop the surface of the reservoir to its lowest level, known as “dead pool.” Because the lowest exit from the dam (the river outlet works) is 237 feet above the original riverbed, at dead pool Lake Powell will still hold 2 million acre-feet of water, one-thirteenth of capacity. " https://orionmagazine.org/article/calamity-on-the-colorado/
And on, and on, and on. The takeaway is, the silt and sediment that collects on one side of the dam drastically shortens the usable lifespan of the dam, no matter how long the structure itself will be structurally be sound. That's a total engineering fall.