Maria recovery

In terms of property damage Houston area got hit the hardest and donations are able to get through. In terms of tragedy Puerto Rico is the worst in the US. Unfortunately other than some well connected folks with planes, most charities can not get aid out. Finally the US military is fully engaged, and I hope things will improve soon. The hospital ship - comfort - will finally be operating there Wednesday. In a week roads and power might be good enough for charity to help.

 

el presedente was videoed flipping paper towel rolls into his audience.

 

And I thought that was a video of a tourist tossing treats to caged bears in a zoo.

Bob Wilson

 

And I thought that was a video of a tourist tossing treats to bears in a zoo.

Bob Wilson

 

How Do Wind Turbines Survive Severe Storms? | Department of Energy
Wind even if it is damaged in another hurricane is probably very cost effective on an island like puerto rico. In 2015, half the electrical infrastructure was for petroleum based generators making costs higher than every us state but hawaii. Texas gulf coast wind was threatened by harvey but only one wind farm was hurt for long, transmission lines were damaged which made texas gulf wind drop to about half capacity. Since turbines are so cost effective and odds of a hit on any one so low, replace what gets damaged is not a problem. Compare this to say fossil generator that goes underwater, costs to get back on line are much higher.

I like the idea of micro grids with diversified power - in the case of puerto rico it may be cost effective to be about 3% wind, 20% solar, 40% natural gas/bio gas, 27% from petroleum (down from 50%), 10% from coal (down from 18% today). In such a case having 5% battery may allow the gas/petroleum generators to go on and off line in their optimum way.

The details of the tesla contract with australia were not made public, but it was signed on september 29, so the clock should be ticking.

Puerto rico's primary utility PREPA, has been mismanaged and doing poor maintenance for years, making conditions of the grid bad even without the hurricanes. It had filed for bankrupcy in July. Between the storm and mismanagement, the grid will need federal dollars if it is again going to serve 3.5 million people. Before the hurricane it was claimed it needed an aditional $4B in funds, my guess is to do this right, it will cost much more. That may require privatization, or better yet some competent people in government running it, plus a lot of federal money. I could see the Chinese donating or selling a lot of solar panels on the cheap. The US military may be needed to help clear away debris so workers can get lines back up.

 

No I was not talking about dumping. I was thinking about charity that costs the government little, but could help them both in terms of PR at very low costs. puerto rico is a good place to experiment with massive amounts of solar, because its not that massive. 20 billion kwh/year. To make 20% solar that is 4 billion kwh/year which if I am calculating correctly would need around 4 GW of solar panels. If they can build and ship for $0.50/watt that is $2B. Leave it to solar city or sun run or puerto ricans themselves to build systems and install which is the more expensive part. If it ends up costing $3/watt and the chinese government kicks in the cells, then hopefully the federal government and corporations and bank financing (these things will last for decades) can make up the other $10B. Maybe you need 1 GW of batteries too for reliability. That would be 10 times more battery cells than tesla is building with LG cells for australia. Perhaps you build 20 batteries half the size of the one for Australia and install them strategically in micro grids.
Solar competitors band together to help bring electricity to storm-ravaged Puerto Rico

 

interesting maria documentary on the weather channel