Peru Unveils Plan to Use Solar Panels to Provide Electricity to 2 Million People | Hacker News Reader

Peru Unveils Plan to Use Solar Panels to Provide Electricity to 2 Million People

laht.com

52 pointsdayaz3625 comments

Shame about the last dumb statement, since it is a interesting project that they seem to not understand.

"If Peru can do this for its people, it makes you wonder why more prosperous countries can’t do the same."

Which purely takes away from the whole concept of helping remote, poor people who a little electricity can mean a lot.

As compared with the different issue of mass producing energy for high use, rich consumers in a efficient and environment friendly way.

Looks like the link has already been changed to a neutral newspaper article.

You're quite right, the initial story was stupid. "Peru deploying modern technology to electrify remote villages who aren't on the grid!" "Why can't more prosperous countries do this?" Answer: They did...a hundred years ago.

I live in the USA, in a rural agricultural community, and there is still no electricity on my part of the road. Apparently the funds from the "Rural Electrification Program" were spent elsewhere.

We got phone lines in during the 1990's but no power, yet my neighbors right up the road from me have had electricity for years.

What this is really doing is showing Peru making a bet on DISTRIBUTED energy generation or decentralized power generation because due to the terrain in many areas running a grid there is prohibitive (not cost, but maintenance and repair, and distances are great).

Would love to see them get wireless access as well to get phone/internet in there too if they can at the same time as the solar cells/capacitors.

Is it true that many nations could afford to provide unlimited renewable energy, but choose not to?

http://cleantechnica.com/2011/10/24/cost-of-war-spent-on-sol...

Not to speak of education, or gasp preventing famine. The military budget of the US alone ($+1trillion [1]) would eradicate world hunger ($44 billion [2]) more than 20 times over and still have money left to build them housing. I know it's not a realistic example but it's purpose is simply to add some perspectives.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S... [2] http://www.deliveringdata.com/2010/11/how-much-money-is-need... (UN-FAO)

> Is it true that many nations could afford to provide unlimited renewable energy, but choose not to?

No. What your link suggests is that roughly $2.5 trillion would be enough to, maybe, with some optimistic assumptions, shift the amount of renewable electricity in the US from 13% to maybe 25%. Give or take.

It couldn't be further from "unlimited renewable energy"; we're talking about installing around 467 MWh/yr of solar panels in a country that consumes ten times that. (And mostly consumes that in different places and at different times than the solar panels would be functioning; a brief skim of the article indicates that they're being wildly optimistic about the actual net impact of the solar panel installation...)

The problem is that the US does not have $2.5 trillion lying around to do this with. They didn't have $2.5 trillion for the GWoT either, but the money was scrounged up anyhow. But while there was an interest in aggressively fighting terror, nobody (not voters, not Congress) has any real interest in installing a zillion solar panels. So...it's not really clear if, any any meaningful sense, the US could have "chosen" to do this.

And while we're on the subject, we're discussing spending $2.5 trillion to get 466,989 GWh/yr of clean energy. Which is...fine. But it's worth noting that one single nuclear installation in Japan generates 33,317 GWh/yr of clean energy. The last reactor built there had install costs of...um...around $3k per kW, which means the whole thing would cost maybe $23 billion to replace. Fifteen of them would cost $340 billion, and generate slightly more power than the solar panels. Or for $2.5 trillion you could build 110 of the stupid things, generating, roughly, ten times more power than the solar panels would, and roughly as much power as the US currently consumes. Even with operating and decommissioning costs, that would be pretty huge. (Let's not even start on what you could do with a similar investment in thorium power...)

TL;DR: You cannot generate unlimited energy. Spending very large amount on solar would generate a fair amount of energy. Spending similar sums on nuclear would generate a ton of energy.

I know that nuclear power is broadly seen as clean here, but the perception in Japan right now is quite different from the things I have read. A lot of diligence, commitment, money and long term storage is required to make it clean. Japan was found wanting.

Perception is one thing, but safety and emissions are objective facts. And nuclear power is both clean and safe.

You're right that the Japanese are now very skeptical of nuclear power. But it's also an objective fact that this skepticism is dangerous, is costing real lives, and is damaging to the environment. Nuclear power is just that much safer and cleaner than the alternatives.

Even after Fukishima, nuclear power is still ten times safer...than sticking solar panels on rooftops (on a per TWh basis). Cite: http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-so...

You forgot to include the costs of insurance, disposal of waste and dismanteling the nuclear plants after usage. If you include those, the numbers for nuclear are much less impressive.

Actually, I said something about "Even with operating and decommissioning costs", so I hardly "forgot" them, I just didn't bother digging them up. And solar has some ongoing costs too, including for dismantling the panels at end of life, repairing storm damage, etc., etc.

And if you want to be picky, the best data we have says that, even if you include all the costs of nuclear, it's still much cheaper than the best case for solar (and the suggestion of "a solar panel on every roof" isn't the best case for solar). For more estimates than you can shake a stick at (although they all broadly agree) see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

At least here in Germany there is no insurance for the nuclear plants. Risk is covered by the public, while the profits flow into a private company. Someone calculated, that if the plants were insured, the nuclear kWh would cost more than 60ct (normal consumer price right now about 25ct).

But of course the risk and the damage are very vey hard to calculate, as we can see right now, live and in colour in Japan at the Fukushima plant. And that is the reason why no insurance company would ever offer an insurance for a nuclear plant.

To me it is beyond comprehension why while looking at the horrendous desaster over there, people are still suggesting nuclear power as a safe, clean and cheap alternative. It obviously is not.

Uh....

Actually the risk and potential damage of nuclear is very easy to calculate. "Extremely low." And that's counting Fukushima, because the alternatives are all much, much more dangerous.

We're talking about a technology which, in terms of deaths per TWh of installed capacity, is ten times safer than rooftop solar. Yes, it's safe, yes, it's clean, and our best estimates of the entire costs, including subsidies, say it's significantly cheaper than other clean options.

What's beyond comprehension to me is why people refuse to look at what's truly happening in Japan, and somehow think that it does something other than prove nuclears potential. And it's trivial to show that more people will die in Japan due to their switch from nuclear power than will ever die from Fukushima. That's the real horrendous "desaster".

In the real world, nuclear is quite clean, extremely safe, and moderately cheap. That's cold, objective fact.

In my opinion this whole thing doesn't work because renewable energy is still for many some sort of hippie talk.

If it were about become-independent-and-never-pay-electric-bills again there would be potential for a much wider adoption. But the save the whales perspective just doesn't work especially for many in the single-home-owner areas.

Indeed, there seems to be an open hostility towards that approach. It's like the greens don't want the technology to spread outside their little club, which means it will never have real ecological benefits.

I will buy a Tesla as soon as I can afford it, and it has nothing to do with a desire to save the Earth.

No. It's because there are legitimate hurdles to going 100% green, mainly power storage. Because both solar and wind generate lots of power sometimes, and no power at other times, there needs to be a way to generate electricity when the solar panels aren't producing, and a way to store it when the panels are producing too much.

On a small scale this is do-able, but not on a massive scale.

While it might be hard to go 100% green, it is doable to go maybe 50% green and desirable too.

It is a popular verbal feat by the fossil fuel energy industry to state: "Yes, but we can't go 100% because of x.", to chill the discussion and the momentum of renewables.

In fact I just discovered that there are Pumped-storage hydroelectricity plants (PSPS) because they were planning to build one also to Finland into a old mine (with mile long shaft). PSPS could solves the power storage problem for wind and solar as long as there is enough suitable locations to use as PSPS reservoirs.

Another good way to pitch renewable energy to people like that is disaster tolerance, including ... "what if terrorists blow up all the power plants?"

(And the kernel of truth is that the grid itself is pretty close to capacity in a lot of places, so decentralized generation, even if it costs per-KWh more than centralized, defers or avoids huge capital costs in upgrading the grid, lowering cost overall. That works even if it's cogen with gas turbines vs. something like solar or wind. The subset of crazies on the pro-renewable/green side never remember that the capital equipment also has embodied energy costs/pollution, so avoiding spending on that also is a win.)

In Germany it's the other way round: The renewables are not sitting where the people are who are consuming them. E.g. industry in the south, lots of wind from the north.

Also lots of photovoltaic in the south (Freiburg for eg.) where there is significantly more sunlight.

For those interested in the numbers:

$200,000,000 to install 12,500 PV arrays, at a expected cost of $16,000 per array all inclusive.

The 12,500 arrays will power 500,000 households consisting of 2 million people.

Therefore 160 people will be using each $16,000 array.

Free electricity for life for only $100 per head? Sounds like a good deal to me

Not free for life. The energy is stored in a battery which needs to be replaced every few years. The batteries aren't cheap either.

From personal experience, they last well. Until at 10 years old, in pretty much perfect health according to the installer and maintainer, the house sitter runs them completely flat. Then continues to use them each time they charge 1%, flattening them again and again. Then they are no longer any good. That was a $10-20k NZ exercise

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