Earth Hour saved 350MW says Eskom

[The Trutherizer]

You're mistaken. They dont switch off during earth hour, but they definitely reduce their output power. They reduce output by dropping the turbine speed....i.e burning less coal.
I've been to an Eskom power plant and you can literally see when demand goes up or down, and you vary your output accordingly.

Oh... cool to know.

[Haldex]

Mostly because all the electricity from Samrand to New Road were out for the entire weekend!!!!

[The_Librarian]

Mostly because all the electricity from Samrand to New Road were out for the entire weekend!!!!

Most probably Sanral who ordered the lights be switched off as they can't afford to pay for that

[noxibox]

Earth Hour will not address the climate change issues. It's a stunt that makes people feel that they are doing something about the environment, but does not address the real issues - like cheap, clean renewable energy.

Nuclear is the way to go for the near future. But cheap, dirty coal stations are what we should be building and using right now.

As for Eskom - they will continue to be the biggest polluter on the African continent.

The most important thing is to generate sufficient electricity. Pollution is very much secondary. We are not yet a first world country.

This is bollocks. The power stations do not switch off during earth hour. They burn coal full steam ahead. The only thing that can really save fossil fuels (which is the real issue) is to lower the baseline usage so that the power station do not have to output so much at any given time and to develop smart electricity grid networks that can channel electricity intelligently and store excess electricity when the usage is low for when the usage is high.

They did lower usage. But where are we going to store this excess?

Excellent now the yuppies can use up power for the other 364 days of the year guilt free.....

I use power guilt-free all year.

[atomcrusher]

enough to power Bloemfontein for a whole day, Eskom said on Tuesday.

They have electricity in Bloem now?