Peru To Power 2 Million Of Its Poorest By Solar Energy | Hacker News Reader

Peru To Power 2 Million Of Its Poorest By Solar Energy

planetsave.com

37 pointsllamataboot11 comments

I would highly recommend to read this reddit comment.

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1iiz9x/peru_to_pr...

As it seems a lot of pro-peru-government PR is done currently to mask actual political activities.

    Right now in Perú we have some serious problems with the government.
    Today the congress elected members of political parties that even
    belong to the ruling party ("Gana Perú") as leaders of autonomous
    branches of the government ("tribunal constitucional", "banco central
    de reserva" y "defensoría del pueblo"). This is really bad, because
    the heads of organizations that are meant to protect the people from
    actions of the government and to make the government respect our
    constitution now belong to political parties.

    This means: members of the government, ruling party and allies taking
    control over the mechanisms that were originally meant to control
    them, and make sure they are working for the people. Now this
    institutions won't behave the way they should.

    We currently have protests in the central area of Lima near the
    congress and the "palacio de gobierno" (the residence of the
    president). Television has all the day covered the story of a
    peripheral fire as if it was the main thing happening. And reddit, you
    should know that the main thing in Perú right now aren't the solar
    panels.

    If you want to know something about Perú right know: we are unhappy
    and angry with our government and our inefficient political class. We
    are tired that they work for their own profit and not for the people.
    We are tired of corruption.

I'm an upper white class peruvian living in NA, and my contribution is going to be to say that people in the capital just want business business business.

The city is flush with money because of foreign investment, and absolutely any threat to the country's marketability, such as labor rights or environmental concerns or opposition to american foreign policy, is aggressively denounced by laborers on every forum they can find.

The government got to power on a massive wave of pro-social inclusion, anti-plutocrat sentiment, and the president turned out to be very meek in that regard, and his activist wife is now the focus of endless back and forth in the media spotlight.

I would take anything you hear about Peru's current political class with a grain of salt, we're suffering from libertarian fever a bit.

spot on reply by brazilian redditor: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1iiz9x/peru_to_pr...

Don't understand why they have to use the most expensive power. Even people in wealthy countries cannot afford living on solar, but the poor have to. I am quite sure there are more and better options.

It appears to be part of a rural electrification program for areas not currently connected to the power grid. The alternative would be a classic grid-building effort [1], but those aren't necessarily any cheaper, especially in mountainous areas. There's been some movement in recent years towards small-scale non-grid installations instead, e.g. in Jordan [2].

[1] Along the lines of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_Electrification_Act

[2] http://www.uob.edu.bh/uob__files/458/vol1/6.pdf

Yup, topography influences energy policy greatly in most countries. Peru is special because of its diversity...China-like in a much much smaller package. Mountains are good because of potential for hydroelectric plants, but not good to build a grid ON them. Jungle has proven a great source of natural gas, but the Andes mountains severs the jungle from the population centers on the coast.

I think solar for the mountain population is very interesting. They don't have anything at all now, not like we're increasing their current energy bill. It's cleaner than most other options, and very low environmental impact for these typical rural communities.

Most other energy sources involve vast infrastructure for ongoing operation. Oil requires processing and shipping every gallon, electricity from large generators requires long wires, coal must be transported, etc. Economies of scale keep such vast complex infrastructure cheap and functioning.

Solar panels, while expensive to manufacture, can be put in a box, carried to the point of use, and left to function on-site indefinitely with nigh unto no maintenance.

Other options? Check out http://www.biolitestove.com - a very recent development of a wood-burning stove featuring a thermocouple electrical generator and very low emissions.

This. People often look past the infrastructure that has to be built and the natural resources required to keep it running.

The systems in "developed" countries have been set up over time to make it "cheaper" to run on oil (for now, but this only going to get more expensive). And even then, you must constantly deal with the supply/demand and inflation issues when it comes to acquiring oil. That issue does not exist with acquiring solar energy. With PV's and CSP, one side of the equation takes care of itself (radiant energy from the sun).

Drill baby, drill?

Oil may be cheaper in terms of immediate dollar costs, but by using it you sell our future down the river.

High altitude equatorial nations have their perks, I suppose...

About time we got a perk -I'm Peruvian :). Seriously though, we've had more engineers graduating schools here and more money in state revenues, we're finally seeing that translate into smarter infrastructure projects.

I wish I can say the same energy, engineer, and infrastructure related comment about Puerto Rico.

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