Costa Rica and Renewable Energy

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
How would you like to live in a country that
depends solely on clean renewable energy. Well, pack your bags,
we're moving the Costa Rica. I'm Jonathan Strickland and this
is tex Stuff. Daily. Eco Watch reports that the country
of Costa Rica in Central America has run on nothing
but renewable energy sources for three hundred days. That's according

(00:26):
to the Costa Rican Institute of Electricity, which in turn
pulls data from the National Center for Energy Control. And
that's a record breaker. Back in two thousand fifteen, Costa
Rica set the record of two hundred nine nine days
at renewable energy reliance. Last year they had a little setback,
with just two d seventy one days out of the year.

(00:47):
That renewable energy comes from several different sources. The overwhelming
majority of it, at seventy eight point to six percent,
is from hydropower. This is largely possible because Costa Rica
has a high concentration per capita of rivers and dams.
In twenty sixteen, the country brought two big hydropower plants online,
one of which the Riventazon facility, is the second largest

(01:10):
in the country. The first would be a little thing
called the Panama Canal. Hydropower uses the movement of water
to generate electricity. Typically, the way this is done is
that you create a channel for water from a high
elevation to flow down to a lower elevation. In other words,
the potential energy of the water converts to kinetic energy

(01:31):
as it moves through the channel. Gravity is doing all
the work for you. On its way down, the water
collides with the blades of a turbine. The force of
the moving water causes the turbine to rotate. This rotating
turbine provides mechanical energy to a generator. Generators work on
a pretty simple principle. If you move a conductive material,
such as copper wire through a magnetic field, it will

(01:53):
induce an electrical current to flow through the wire. Imagine
the turbine has an axle that connects to some copper
wire position between two permanent magnets. The north end of
one magnet and the south end of the other magnet
face the copper wire. As the turbine turns, so does
the axle, which rotates the copper wire within the magnetic
field of those magnets. This induces current to flow. In

(02:14):
this example, it would be an alternating current, as the
direction of electricity would reverse every time the copper wire
moves from the magnetic field of one magnet to the
field of the other one. That's the basic principle behind hydropower.
You convert potential energy to kinetic energy, and then kinetic
energy into electrical energy. Because Costa Rica has no shortage
of rivers and dams, it can produce enough electricity this

(02:35):
way to meet more than sevent its needs. After hydropower,
the next big source comes from wind power. Costa Rica
draws ten point to nine of its electrical power from
wind farms. Wind farms use high tech windmills or wind
turbines to generate electricity, and we just explained how water
turbines work. Wind turbines work in pretty much the same way,

(02:58):
only it's obviously wind rather than water that turns the blades.
And while you might be able to count on water
to continue flowing barring any disastrous droughts, wind sometimes just
isn't there. During those times you can't really generate electricity.
Costa Rica, being a relatively narrow country with two major
oceans bordering it, fortunately gets a lot of wind throughout

(03:20):
the year. Next in line, is geo thermal energy, which
accounts for ten point to three percent of electricity generation
in Costa Rica, just a hair behind wind power. Most
geo thermal plants working a way similar to fossil fuel
power plants. The only difference is that in traditional power plants,
we burn fossil fuels in order to heat water into
steam and use that steam to turn turbines. In geothermal plants,

(03:43):
we rely upon the earth itself to heat water into steam.
Deep beneath the surface of the Earth there are hot spots.
Most of these are near geologically young volcanoes, of which
Costa Rica has several. At these locations, cool water gets
heated into steam, drilled down to those loots and create
a loop where water can move down, heat up, turn
into steam, move up a parallel path to turn a turbine,

(04:07):
condense back into water, and start all over again, and
you've got yourself a geothermal plant. Like hydropower and wind power,
this method once again turns the turbine to provide mechanical
energy and create a generator. Because if it ain't broke,
don't fix it right. That leaves a little less than
a single percentage point of electricity for biomass and solar power.

(04:29):
Biomass refers to any sort of renewable fuel source like
biodiesel or ethanol. Solar power converts the energy of photons
into electricity, and it might come as a surprise that
Costa Rica receives less than one percent of its electricity
from solar panels. But solar panels, while on attractive technology,
have some limitations. One is that they only generate electricity
while there is sun exposure on cloudy days or at night.

(04:52):
That's just not happening. Another is that they have a
relatively low efficiency when it comes to converting the amount
of energy hitting them into actual electricity. And third is
that if you aren't putting that electricity to use right
away or storing it in batteries, you'll lose it. Actually,
that's the case with all electricity generators. You either use it,
store it, or lose it. Traditional power plants monitor the

(05:13):
demand for electricity and then either step up or step
down operations to meet that demand. That's less of a
concern for hydropower, geothermal or wind power sources, but with
wind and solar power, you're not always generating electricity anyway.
Costa Rica's goal is to switch to dependence on renewable
energy sources by twenty thirty. Other countries have similar aspirations,

(05:34):
with different distributions concentrating on various sources of power. Not
every country has the access to good hydropower options, for example,
but we can still look to Costa Rica for inspiration
to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, as well as
creating less pollution and reversing our contributions to climate change.
To learn more about electricity, power plants and how we
can use technology and more environmentally friendly ways, subscribe to

(05:56):
The tech Stuff podcast. We publish on Wednesdays and Fridays
and explore tech in a deep dive approach. I'll see
you again soon.