Wind Farm

Hi everyone,

Sorry it has been a while – I had a lot of school work this week.

Last week I went to Monteverde, which is probably one of the most popular places in Costa Rica to go. It is a rainforest located at a relatively high elevation (about 1,8000 meters about sea level) along a string of mountains roughly located along the center of the country.

I will talk more about Monteverde in my next post because, like last time, we made a pit stop. This time at a wind farm.

Compared to the States, Costa Rica gets an immense amount of their electricity from renewable sources. 90% of electricity is renewable, breaking down into 80% hydroelectric, 15% geothermal, 5% wind and ~1% solar. Energy in general, however, is not quite as impressive. About 33% of all energy in Costa Rica is renewable. Like many countries, the Costa Rican  transportation sector relies almost exclusively on oil. Despite this, I was so surprised that Costa Rica got so much of it’s electricity and energy renewably. Moreover, Costa Rica is only producing ¼ of it’s renewable energy potential. The U.S. , which is the second largest energy consumer (China recently passed us, but remember how much larger the Chinese population is than the U.S.’s. So, not something to be proud of since per capita Chinese consumption is much lower than the U.S.) only generates about 8% of their energy from renewables.

I would like to discuss more about energy, but for now I will just put in some facts about wind energy (which you probably already know):

Pros to wind:

Obviously wind energy has very low/negligible greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. Also, of all energy sources, wind has the lowest operating and construction costs

Cons:

However, wind is intermittent and per unit area is not nearly as powerful as a coal fired power plant. The wind farm we saw generated about 3 MW, while a coal power plant generate several hundred MW over the same time period.

I’m especially interested in energy and hope to maybe do my Directed Research on Costa Rica’s energy sources. Unfortunately, this post is getting a little lengthy, so hopefully I will return to this topic soon.

Okay, here are pictures!

Views from the wind farm

Me gazing in wonder...with my super cool hard hat. 

Views of more wind turbines in the distance

More views from the wind farm. You can see a hydroelectric dam in the distance.