High Voltage Service to Mid Island Complete

The upgrade of electrical service to North American standards is going well. This phase of providing 5.8 km of new concrete poles and 25,000 volts of power to the mid island area is in its project finalization in 2011. This section of concrete poles attaches to the 3 phase municipal line on the Salinas Town Main road. We have added close to 90 new concrete poles since June 2010, stretching from this area across several miles of farmland to the island. Each pole is grounded and supported with guy wires or an engineered base for the sandy island soil.  We will have hand tool useable electricity in 2011. This is a privately funded and owned power line, for the use of our clients and two neighboring developments. Union Fenosa will not connect any other without our consent, which we are happy to give but need to recover our investment.

The historical milestones of this project are a) Maximum load calculations based upon development designs was perfomed and submitted with a request for 25,000 volts in 2006  b) Union Fenosa approved the power usage for Tamarindo Beach in early 2008. This means the electrical utility will provide the hi voltage amount requested and will make arrangements for a substation to deliver the power.  c)  The final approval for over 85 pole locations was confirmed in January of 2010.  As the land on either side of the public road is private, it was required to gps locate each pole and have Union Fenosa approve the respective pole location.   d) Concrete poles were delivered on site in June 2010 and over 85 poles were erected/grounded/supported to April 2011. This is the bulk of the project. e) Insulators, wire stringing, transformers are in progress in mid 2011.

Electricity is measured in terms of voltage and current. Using the analogy of water supply, voltage is analogous to pressure, and current is analogous to flow. Voltage is measured in Volts (V). Current is measured in Amperes (A). Power is Voltage multiplied by current, measured in Watts (W) or thousands of watts, kilowatts (kW). One kW is equivalent to 1.34 horsepower. 

Electricity is distributed as Alternating Current (AC). Whereas a battery has two terminals, one that is always positive (+), and one that is always negative (-), AC changes, or alternates, from positive (+) to negative (-) at a set frequency, usually 50 times a second (50 cycles per second or Hertz or Hz).

At the development, the power line terminates at a pole mounted transformer. At this point, the 25,000 single phase line is reduced to 110-127 volts that we are familiar with and runs our tools & appliances.

INDIVIDUAL BACKUP SYSTEMS

The individual houses will be offered an alternative generator system.   The electrical hook ups are incorporated into the electrical plans for the houses.  The two options are a) Full automatic Kohler generator system for full household.  It will automatically switch on should the power go out.  The system is either a 40 or 80 gallon tank and uses 1.5 gallon per hour to run the ENTIRE house.  This will cost over $10,000 usd per residence.

The second system is a Honda 11 hp gasoline generator.  One would pull the cord and run the generator until the primary electrical system returns.  The cost of this system is approximately $1400.

We are looking for a suitable battery backup system, however, we do not have a system we can recommend to the homeowners.  The biggest challenge with a battery system is the 2 year life of the battery and system maintenance.