A plan to end load-shedding fast

Mike Hoxbig said:
What's 5,000 MW of battery storage?

Anyway that's 1,000,000 x 5 kWh of batteries. At R27k a pop, that's R27bn. Which orifice is Eskom going to pull that kind of money out of?
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What about the inverters? accessories and infrastructure. This will most likely be several storage plants. Seems simple enough when you selling it…
 
Stand to be corrected the largest storage facility is 400-500MW in CA(US). Cost in excess of $400Million, multiply that by ten facilities then by the forex. This is probably still ballpark.

2years seems like a good advertisement, but I guess its all smooth sailing as the media is more tolerant of anything renewable even its a few years overdue
 
Not going to work. For many reasons. Solar, wind and water energy, even if one can bypass all laws and government in total, will not be sufficient to save the energy crisis the country is facing.
 
Neptuner said:
Residents don't have the know how (ok Im not giving credit where it is due PBMR, we do have the know how in design). But even Koeberg’s Framatome reactors are being supported by the OEM during refuelling.
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I was making a funny regarding residents :)

Yeah, its too pie in the sky for africa imho. Still not convinced of the long term implications of decommissioning and storage. What will koeberg be in 50 years time?
 
Energy expert Chris Yelland has proposed a national priority project to build 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy and 5,000 megawatts of battery storage in two years.
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Is this a direct quote? Because measuring energy storage in terms of power output is not correct. It is like answering the question: "how big is your car's fuel tank" with "It is 500 horsepower". Saying an energy storage device can deliver 5GW is only half the question, the other half is how long can you deliver it.

That being said

Funnily enough (because this is what engineers do in their spare time), I put together a spread sheet that calculates some back of the envelope calculations regarding storage using iron flow batteries:
Namely these batteries:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/tech...ap-alternative-to-lithium-ion-technology.html


Using the recent data on these things, namely:
Its 3 MW Energy Center for utility-scale applications packs 6 MW/74 MWh per acre footprint.
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And
Compared to their technological cousins – vanadium-flow batteries – iron flow claims to win by a large margin. According to Greenshields, the cost of iron-flow stands at around $20/kWh, whereas vanadium-flow costs can be as much as $200/kWh.
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https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/05/24/iron-flow-battery-maker-ess-expands-into-europe/

The energy center as configured can deliver 6MW for about 12.3 hours.

Plugging in the numbers into my spreadsheet:
Screenshot 2022-07-04 at 21.12.31.png

R20 Bn on just energy storage alone (assuming the land usage isn't really going to play into the cost as the government has f-tons of land), is pretty steep. But it is actually quite a bit cheaper than other forms of storage, namely hydropower.
(using SA numbers to represent labor costs and what not)
Ingula pumped storage scheme has a capacity of 21000 MHW, and it cost about R25 bn over its construction period (2005-2015).

To put it in comparison, the square is about the total size of battery area needed. Considering it has about 3 times the energy, isn't actually that bad.
Screenshot 2022-07-04 at 21.27.03.png
 
konfab said:
Is this a direct quote? Because measuring energy storage in terms of power output is not correct. It is like answering the question: "how big is your car's fuel tank" with "It is 500 horsepower". Saying an energy storage device can deliver 5GW is only half the question, the other half is how long can you deliver it.

That being said

Funnily enough (because this is what engineers do in their spare time), I put together a spread sheet that calculates some back of the envelope calculations regarding storage using iron flow batteries:
Namely these batteries:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/tech...ap-alternative-to-lithium-ion-technology.html


Using the recent data on these things, namely:

And

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2022/05/24/iron-flow-battery-maker-ess-expands-into-europe/

The energy center as configured can deliver 6MW for about 12.3 hours.

Plugging in the numbers into my spreadsheet:
View attachment 1340296

R20 Bn on just energy storage alone (assuming the land usage isn't really going to play into the cost as the government has f-tons of land), is pretty steep. But it is actually quite a bit cheaper than other forms of storage, namely hydropower.
(using SA numbers to represent labor costs and what not)
Ingula pumped storage scheme has a capacity of 21000 MHW, and it cost about R25 bn over its construction period (2005-2015).

To put it in comparison, the square is about the total size of battery area needed. Considering it has about 3 times the energy, isn't actually that bad.
View attachment 1340306
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Isn't it better to scatter the batteries all around the country like a few at each sub station?
 
The most immediate action authorities could take is bump up the infeed tariff to a compelling value. Power would start to flow as quickly as people could sign up and just keep increasing.
 
The only realistic very quick fix is the Karpower ships, like it or not. Longer term, we need to understand that renewables are not a panacea and we will probably still need to invest in coal fired stations. Longer term, ideally, nuclear is the best bet for base load.

The most optimal way of doing nuclear would be to deregulate and open up to international nuclear operators to provide a turnkey service at a fixed cost.

There are also a lot of very promising developments with small modular reactors which could very well be an option in the near future. For instance, there’s a micro reactor in development that is a completely sealed unit that can power a small village, with enough fuel to last 10 years. It gets shipped as a complete unit, installed and then simply replaced every 10 yrs. There is no risk of a meltdown and minimal management required.

 
garp said:
The only realistic very quick fix is the Karpower ships, like it or not. Longer term, we need to understand that renewables are not a panacea and we will probably still need to invest in coal fired stations. Longer term, ideally, nuclear is the best bet for base load.

The most optimal way of doing nuclear would be to deregulate and open up to international nuclear operators to provide a turnkey service at a fixed cost.

There are also a lot of very promising developments with small modular reactors which could very well be an option in the near future. For instance, there’s a micro reactor in development that is a completely sealed unit that can power a small village, with enough fuel to last 10 years. It gets shipped as a complete unit, installed and then simply replaced every 10 yrs. There is no risk of a meltdown and minimal management required.

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The power ships are only 2000MW, how will that fix anything?
 
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