&gt; It looks like electricity costs around US$0.30&#x2F;kWh in Costa Rica.<p>Typically I find costa ricans using about 300 kwh per month per person, and on the first 300 kwh you pay about 12c per kwh or so. It&#x27;s very similar to the US, really and much cheaper than the EU where the average sits above 20c.<p>And that says a lot. Yes, $1 spent by a CR is &#x27;more expensive&#x27; than for a North American when looking at income levels. But that&#x27;s not very relevant. The discussion is really about &#x27;are these renewable energy sources good for Costa Rica?&#x27;, someone like you says &#x27;perhaps not so much because it&#x27;s expensive&#x27;. But that&#x27;s silly. Energy is necessary, if not renewable, then something else. So compare alternative energy sources for CR. And then you&#x27;ll get a question &#x27;is 12c per kwh that electricity in CR costs today under 99% renewables, much more expensive than a non-renewable alternative?&#x27;. And you&#x27;ll find the answer is generally no. Decentralised diesel generators, or a bunch of coal firing plants will not be much cheaper at all, nor alleviate all outage problems. You&#x27;ll also find that general all utilities are often more expensive in poorer countries, the cost of 1 kwh of electricity, x amounts of lumens to light up your room or 1 liter of clean water, is generally much cheaper in New York than in a small village in central africa.<p>In short, financially electricity in CR is relatively well organised. If you read through the reddit threat referenced you&#x27;ll find people giving examples of how little they pay monthly, and if you compare the costs to neighbouring countries or countries at similar income levels worldwide (particularly pre-subsidies) or countries with very few renewables, CR actually does quite well.<p>As for outages, it depends. In big cities they occur almost never, like once every few months. (I lived in Montreal for comparison, it was once every few weeks). In rural areas it&#x27;s more frequent, but then consider two things. One, 75% of Costa Rica is urban, and two, in significant rural areas in Central America you would be lucky to even be connected in the first place for any period of time, say in neighbouring Nicaragua. CR is the exception with nearly 100% electrification levels, compared to say 58% in Nicaragua, while outages outside big cities do happen, it&#x27;s better than having no electricity at all. No CA country has CR&#x27;s levels of electrification. Except of course Belize, a country of just 300k people (hardly a fair comparison) which generates about half of its electricity from fossil and surprise surprise, has more expensive electricity rates than CR as far as I can tell.<p>In short, the notion that CRs are paying much more because of renewables is bs, and the notion they&#x27;re worse off than similar or neighbouring countries isn&#x27;t true, either.