If human life is to survive on this planet, we must switch to 100% renewable energy very soon—yesterday, if possible. There is now a demonstration project that can help us to visualize this possibility.
Ta’u is the largest island in American Samoa, a U. S. territory in the Southern Pacific Ocean. It’s about 17 square miles and has 790 inhabitants. It previously generated electricity by shipping in 109,500 gallons of diesel fuel every year. Not only was this expensive, but there were occasional interruptions of the supply due to rough seas.
Ta’u now runs on nearly 100% solar energy due to the installation of a 1.4 megawatt microgrid consisting of 5328 Solar City solar panels and 60 Tesla Powerpacks, which are batteries for energy storage. This not only gives them enough energy to supply the island’s needs 24/7, it provides enough storage capacity to last for three days without sunlight—a rare occurrence—and recharges in seven hours. Here’s a promotional video from Tesla advertising the project.
The $8 million project was funded by the American Samoa Economic Development Authority, the Department of the Interior and the Environmental Protection Agency. Solar power is almost free once the system is installed. (Three full-time workers are required for plant maintenance.) Unfortunately, I couldn’t find an estimate of the current yearly cost of their diesel fuel, so I can’t tell how long it will take to recover its cost.
Obviously, transforming this small demonstration project to a larger power grid poses all kinds of infrastructure problems, but they are problems that are soluble in principle, and at a much lower cost than the fossil fuel companies would lead us to believe. We have no choice but to do it.
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