

Peru Unveils Plan to Use Solar Panels to Provide Electricity to 2 Million People - dayaz36
http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=848797&CategoryId=14095

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aaron695
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.

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Lazare
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.

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D9u
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.

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brianbreslin
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.

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umsm
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...](http://cleantechnica.com/2011/10/24/cost-of-war-spent-on-solar-power-
instead/)

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stfu
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.

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Mikeb85
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.

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yorak
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.

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droithomme
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.

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

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aleem
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.

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lostlogin
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

