A plan to end load-shedding fast

Danie_V said:
Not true, our municipality has published rates for purchasing extra energy generated. I just choose to rather put that in my batteries. My system is small, so I probably only have about 3 hours of excess energy per day that I'm losing out on getting any payback. For ROI I used total units generated by solar charge device and consumed into the system x electricity tariff per kWh, less cost for total installation, plus a battery change after 6 years.

It in fact may be better than that, as that is at today's electricity tariffs, which we can expect to go up quite sharply still over the next 9 years I'm working on. But yes, as I mentioned it is also the convenience factor for me, so it was not done purely for ROI at all. But true, it is not an ROI down to the nearest cent or month.
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As Eskom fails more you will be paying more. They will probably invent a new solar tax. Nersa has recommended that solar houses pay x10 the price for electricity, and also the grid connection levy. When they have enough suckers in their trap they might x10 your grid connection price on Nersas recommendation, or maybe even pass a new law to nationalize all solar systems. The more they fail, the more you will pay, put all this in your ROI calculation.
 
Benedict A55h0le said:
As Eskom fails more you will be paying more. They will probably invent a new solar tax. Nersa has recommended that solar houses pay x10 the price for electricity, and also the grid connection levy. When they have enough suckers in their trap they might x10 your grid connection price on Nersas recommendation, or maybe even pass a new law to nationalize all solar systems. The more they fail, the more you will pay, put all this in your ROI calculation.
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Our City has long been charging a fixed connection/availability fee to all households. I understand that the proposed "tax" was for the many (apparently Eskom users) who do not already pay that fee. But despite that, the cost of tariff usage is still going to go up way faster than a fixed connection cost. As I said earlier though, my investment was only partly for the saving I'm making, it is also for the convenience which has no cost saving attached to it.
 
Neptuner said:
Solar and wind doesn't help much during morning and evening peak…
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People can adjust their habits come on man...
Though to be fair why does every body need to be at work 9 to 5?
 
Lupus said:
People can adjust their habits come on man...
Though to be fair why does every body need to be at work 9 to 5?
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"Social" Engineering? LOL

People are not foregoing of their family/work life balance that comes with a 9 to 5 job.

Besides human behaviour is very difficult to control if you suggesting we stagger work hours to reduce peak demand?

Unless you can fit a device (smart breaker) on every home or registered consumer which would effectively limit their consumption during peak by cutting their supply when exceeding a threshold, other than that will you need to rely on trust?
 
I don't believe they want it solved as behind the scenes they want it to be taken over by Patrice Maatsepe's African Rainbow Energy & Power [AREP] Company which they have already signed an agreement behind scenes with in a clandestine manner. So, a coup d'état is being planned here and has most probably been the plan all along.

There is more going on here than we are being told or think...far more
 
TelkomUseless said:
Government should give household subsidies to buy panels etc. Instead of bailing eskom out.
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It won't make a dent.

Government still needs to bail Eskom out until they're ready for the split into separate companies for generation, distribution, and regulation. Even then, the grid nationally is not set up for export from home solar installations. There's a massive infrastructure cost that needs to be made to support this.

If government wanted to make it work, they'd need to subsidise the cost of the equipment by at least 50%, urge municipalities to cut as much red tape as possible, somehow legislate that the cost of installation shouldn't exceed [X] amount to make it viable and protect the public from greedy installers, and they STILL need to improve the infrastructure all across the country to ensure that grid feedback works.

Low-voltage grid feedback with the current tariffs also doesn't make financial sense for homeowners. Who is going to pay the consumer? The municipalities benefit from and rely on sales of electricity, and they are not going to be eager to pay out to customers, especially in areas that already don't pay their Eskom power bill.

The other major problem is supply. Take however many panels you might want to put on your roof (10x 330W panels) and then add in a suitable inverter (5KW inverter with MPTT). All this setup does is offset daily consumption.

For 5GW of installed solar generation, you need roughly 15 million solar panels. You need 1.5 million inverters. You need 1.5 million households all with direct sunlight during the day to maximise production. And then you need all the free space on ships and planes and trains you can afford to transport all of this stuff in a reasonable amount of time.
 
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Lupus said:
People can adjust their habits come on man...
Though to be fair why does every body need to be at work 9 to 5?
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Yep, I'm nocturnal and would work 11 to 8 if that was an option. Problem is it's difficult to rid ourselves of the old fashioned mentality. Remote/hybrid work was a good start but more needs to be done around flexibility, which will boost productivity and contribute to spreading out the electrical load...
 
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cda said:
Im confused, does wind stop blowing magically at certain times?
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Wind capacity is over 2000MW last I checked, last nights evening peak it's actual sent energy was ~600MW which is <30% installed capacity. The system operator does not forecast the installed capacity so don't get too excited when you see "huge" wind farm tenders being signed.

Unless you building a Giga-factory storage scale facility you not effectively addressing the problem.
 
cda said:
Im confused, does wind stop blowing magically at certain times?
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It depends on where the solar went to - by sunset some farms like the molten salt storage in NC still produces power to the grid well into the night. Wind farms are sited where the wind tends to blow the most often, so it will depend. But yes neither are base load generation, which is why grid battery storage is being proposed, and why Cape Town uses its hydroelectric generation to carry it through peak load times. The grid was designed for base load generation only, and is now behind the times, and has needed an upgrade for quite a while to handle variable power generation better.
 
cda said:
Im confused, does wind stop blowing magically at certain times?
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He's err'ed on the day/night thing by grouping solar and wind together.

Solar is limited by time of day, and therefore requires storage.

Wind is limited by it's unpredictability, and therefore also requires storage...
 
cda said:
Im confused, does wind stop blowing magically at certain times?
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Wind energy is mostly driven by the sun's activity, so yes.

There are times when there's no significant wind to drive the windmills, as the sun's energy isn't evenly distributed across the surface of the planet thanks to factors like cloud cover and there being an enormous body of water acting as a giant heatsink, and then there's thermodynamics, fluid dynamics, Boyle's law, ****ing entropy and so on, and there are similarly many days when you get strong gusts for extended periods of time, particularly with heatwaves.

Ocean turbines have the same problem, where output can drop during the night but not stop altogether, because energy from the sun affects ocean currents.

All renewable energy sources may work much less reliably at night and during winter. And with overcast weather.
 
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Danie_V said:
Our City has long been charging a fixed connection/availability fee to all households. I understand that the proposed "tax" was for the many (apparently Eskom users) who do not already pay that fee. But despite that, the cost of tariff usage is still going to go up way faster than a fixed connection cost. As I said earlier though, my investment was only partly for the saving I'm making, it is also for the convenience which has no cost saving attached to it.
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The proposals are all about scaling and increasing that fixed charge. That is why sinking a lot of money into solar generation in order to save on electricity costs may not ultimately realise those savings. Spending that money just for the convenience is one thing. Savings in 10 years depend on whether they maintain the current pricing structure. But there is nothing stopping them having a high fixed charge aimed primarily at those doing their own generation.

Sledgehammer67 said:
I don't believe they want it solved as behind the scenes they want it to be taken over by Patrice Maatsepe's African Rainbow Energy & Power [AREP] Company which they have already signed an agreement behind scenes with in a clandestine manner. So, a coup d'état is being planned here and has most probably been the plan all along.
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So that company is going to become the government? That is what coup d’etat means.
 
Neuk_ said:
I forget who keeps saying that renewables aren't a viable solution to take up base load, @Lupus perhaps? Explained well in this article...

www.biznews.com

Most people in government haven’t got the faintest clue about the basics of engineering – Kenny

As an engineer, Andrew Kenny writes that the idea being mooted that South Africa could solve its energy crisis by installing 10,000 MW of renewable power and 5,
www.biznews.com www.biznews.com
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Sssh the renewable zealots will rise up. They'll tell you that South Australia was a great success and that one day last year they managed to generate electricity at the exact same cost as the rest of Australia.
They'll tell you that wind picks up at night (it varies like wind does). So far everyone that's gone green pays more for their electricity, we should've been looking at the only real renewable Nuclear, it's cleaner, it works out cheaper in the long run.
Think of renewables as renting a house, while nuclear is buying it. Sure initially renting is cheaper, but at the end of the day you've got no return on it.
 
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