Chile Forum

admin wrote:. Wind farms and solar plants.

1. Find a community that really really wants to use alternative energy of the type available and supportable in Chile.
2. Take that community off the grid.
3. Use a Chilean company to install sufficient alternative energy production capacity for their present needs/consumption.
4. Charge the community 10 times the price of their current bills to pay for the new source break-even for initial and recurring/life-cycle costs.
5. Install a Chilean government agency and not a private utility to oversee, administer, operate, and maintain the system.
6. Record the wailing and gnashing of teeth from people cursing the frequent and prolonged darkness and service interruptions, the unforeseen environmental impacts, the impossibly high costs, and the premature death of the system.

Welcome to Chile. Here, have a candle.

I found the golden solution to power outages where I live in the south. Go buy a really expensive generator. Guaranteed that the frigen incompetent power company will suddenly become efficient and reliable to the point of making you question why you waisted money on the generator. So just to be sure that was really the case, I forgot to refill the gas can for the generator and the next day power goes down. I can repeat that experiment indefinitely.

admin wrote:I found the golden solution to power outages where I live in the south. Go buy a really expensive generator.

And fuel the equivalent of US$6 a gallon. And a big lock to keep that really expensive generator from growing long legs.

A lot of the generators you buy in Chile produce pretty shitty power quality but we discussed that on other threads. Sometimes shitty power is better than no power.

Energy is really a sad topic in Chile because it should not really be that difficult given the following circumstances:
- relatively small population
- most of population lives in mediterrean climate
- massive potential to increase efficiency
- abundance of renewable energy sources (hydro, geothermal, wind, wave, solar)
- significant inhabited zones (as location for nuclear plants)

With geothermal I mean enhanced geothermal system (hot-dry-rock) which don't require natural convective geothermal resources.

The fact that energy remains a topic given such favourable starting points, really indicates massive policy failures. Some practical suggestions, some of which have been mentioned before. However they would also require to move away from the "low initial investment / high operations cost" model structurally favoured by Chilean policymakers.
- Liberalize electricity prices
- Interconnection of grids
- Mandatory insulation standards (windows et al)
- Regulate the use of some electrical devices (i.e. discourage electrical heaters and boilers and ecourage heat pumps)
- Allow small producers / households to feed into grid being paid the same tariff as users
- Use hydro reservoirs as giant batteries (to dampen demand / supply inbalances) as done in Norway / Switzerland, by the way a massive source of profit
- Implement enhanced geothermal plants (the cost per MWh is similar to hydro and natural gas, but significantly below solar/wind/wave)
- Continue nuclear feasability studies

Fugger, agree with everything, except the nuclear option. Normally I'd be a fan of that as well, but only in seismically quiet areas. Here the mathematics are clear.

Nuclear plant + big earthquakes = BAD IDEA

Yeah, you might get away with it for 10, 20, 50 or more years, but...

.

Remember that we are in Chile:

- massive potential to increase efficiency : There is no word for efficiency in Chilensis. That may have something to do with the lack of interest in pursuing the concept here.

- abundance of renewable energy sources (hydro, geothermal, wind, wave, solar): Substantial part of the population, backed and encited by foreign enviros, fighting hydro tooth and nail almost wherever it is suggested. No domestic expertise in large scale alternatives that would be economically viable and durable (surviving Chilean management and maintenance). Massive geothermal "potential" acknowledged for nearly 100 years. Chilean success in developing this for large scale use? Zilch. That could leave foreign expertise and capital in developing/administering/maintaining a large-scale alternative energy scheme, but again widespread and growing populist sentiment against foreign investment and control of primary industries will create a hostile climate here.

- Interconnection of grids- And increase the magnitude of the outages? Didn't we see just a few weeks ago a massive apagón that took down almost the entire SIC? And again, growing groundswell of populist objection to transmission infrastructure and additional capacity.

- Mandatory insulation standards (windows et al) Enormous existing resistance from the populace, in part because of (1) cost of appropriate materials, (2) congenital ineptitude of builders and inspectors, (3) lack of will for enforcement. These impediments could be eventually overcome within 100 or so years if we start with Draconian measures right now.

- Allow small producers / households to feed into grid being paid the same tariff as users. In Chile this has resulted in very high costs for technically suitable hardware (esp inverters), and resulting pollution of the grid with dirty power effects. Just because this can be done in the civilised countries does not mean that the Chilean version is a good one.

Good ideas for the First World. Chile, now that is something else. Backward and resistant to change but change can be done with the right efforts over a rather long period of time. Any idea how many households in this country still burn wood as primary or secondary heating source? How about Admin? A wood burner?

PX: I guess I'm just a hopeless optimist (despite my own experience supporting your arguments). Actually I thought of adding an increase a gasoline tax and enforcing payment by users of public transportation to pay for additional infrastructure as additional policies, but decided against it in view of political realities.

Ryanar: Regarding nuclear, I was hesitant as well and you probably right

Fugger wrote: but decided against it in view of political realities.
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And the mayhem that would have come from certain people in the patagonia where there is no public transport.

Don't forget that certain social forces are leaning heavily to take more and more public monies to further subsidise public transport, while ironically their political allies burn or otherwise seriously damage hundreds of buses here every year.

Hay que recordar que Santiago no es Chile.

greg~judy wrote:so ya thought she created some havoc last year...?
she'll be baaaack --- with a vengeance...!

time for an update here - fwiw

Chile Drought Threatens Power at Mines as Reservoirs Dwindle

Feb. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Chile’s two-year drought has reduced water levels at reservoirs that supply power dams to 40 percent of capacity, threatening electricity generation for the country’s copper mines.

Levels at reservoir, which also supply water for irrigation, plunged 13 percent in January, Chile’s hottest month, the country’s public water department said in a report yesterday... Summer runs from December through March in the Southern Hemisphere.

The La Nina pattern has brought two years of dry weather to Chile, where dams generate a third of electricity, at a time copper producers are increasing demand for power. Electricity consumption in central Chile, where state-run Codelco and Anglo American Plc operate copper mines, will grow 6 percent a year on average in the next decade...

“If La Nina persists beyond June, it’s foreseeable we’d have a very complex season in terms of energy generation in the second half of the year,”...

Chile’s increasing use of coal, diesel and liquefied natural gas in a bid to cut dependency on hydroelectric dams is increasing power generation costs and reducing the country’s competitiveness,...

The dry spell is also threatening the irrigation of crops in Chile, the world’s largest grape exporter and the second- ranked in avocado exports.

The drought will “undoubtedly” impact the prices of some goods in the short-term, ... that the drought wouldn’t drive up prices of produce and electricity.

The minister is heading a campaign to avoid further forest fires after blazes charred eucalyptus forests on the Pacific Coast, covering Santiago in black smog last week.

Agriculture and people living in rural areas will “undoubtedly” suffer rationing,.... “The economic impact of this drought is very high.”

The drought in central Chile contrasts with flash flooding in mountainous areas of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, where rains have disrupted operations at Codelco and a mine belonging to Zug, Switzerland-based Xstrata Plc.

Modern power- I agree Charles, my second TIG welder would draw 94 amps for 300 watts of power. Our new inverter type of TIG welder only requires 20 amps
to generate 300 watts of output. By not taxing energy efficient equipment, this may intice folks to import more equipment that is less of a juice sucker.

Implement intertie for residential solar systems, promote hybrid vehicles, ban incandescent bulbs.

nwdiver wrote:Implement intertie for residential solar systems, .

Not cost-efficient in Chile; current attempts to intertie have resulted in high cost of government subsidy and dirtying of the utility power

nwdiver wrote: promote hybrid vehicles, .

By increasing use of electrical generation and requiring additional capacity to which the people object in massive numbers

nwdiver wrote: , ban incandescent bulbs.

Since incandescent use in Chile is very small, not much of an impact.