Biggest wind farms in South Africa

Jan

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South Africa's biggest wind farms

South Africa's biggest wind farm consists of the Khobab and Loeriesfontein 2 sister facilities in the Northern Cape, which provide a total generating capacity of 280MW.

These two plants began commercial operation in December 2017 and can generate about 535GWh of electricity every year.
 
They are hypnotising! I was in PE some time ago and managed to get to one.
It's initially very intimidating standing at the base and looking up at the blades but was awesome.
Very cool piece of tech.
 
In before someone says how much space they take up. Compared to something like Koeberg...
 
hj2k_x said:
In before someone says how much space they take up. Compared to something like Koeberg...
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Do need some separation between wind turbines, but we famously don't usually build that much offshore*, so there is plenty of space to be used.


*excepting the odd pier. Offshore will work well for us, better than say seismic ****ing bullshit to find more oil.


Onshore - i.e. on land, we might find it more beneficial to actually remove some of the existing farms, as they are placed well. Replacing Darling Wind Farm turbines with larger capacity ones probably makes complete financial sense at this point.

No, I haven't done the math, but I should...
 
itareanlnotani said:
Do need some separation between wind turbines, but we famously don't usually build that much offshore*, so there is plenty of space to be used.


*excepting the odd pier. Offshore will work well for us, better than say seismic ****ing bullshit to find more oil.
Click to expand...
True story. The North Sea is littered with turbines. Seems to work well enough for Europe... We have lots of sea also. So does the rest of the planet, to be fair...
 
There is a list of power stations in South Africa at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_South_Africa. To give some further context, the breakdown of the installed capacity per type of power station is:

Fossil Fuels

  • Coal fired: 40 036 MW
  • Gas turbine: 3 449 MW

Low carbon power and renewable energy

  • Hydroelectric: 3 573 MW
  • Nuclear: 1 860 MW
  • Wind power: 1 369.1 MW
  • Concentrated solar power: 400 MW
  • Solar PV power: 1 224 MW
With the planned future builds, both solar and wind power are set to become more important than nuclear in the near future. There is still some way to go before they can eclipse coal fired stations.
 
garyc said:
There is a list of power stations in South Africa at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_South_Africa. To give some further context, the breakdown of the installed capacity per type of power station is:

Fossil Fuels

  • Coal fired: 40 036 MW
  • Gas turbine: 3 449 MW

Low carbon power and renewable energy

  • Hydroelectric: 3 573 MW
  • Nuclear: 1 860 MW
  • Wind power: 1 369.1 MW
  • Concentrated solar power: 400 MW
  • Solar PV power: 1 224 MW
With the planned future builds, both solar and wind power are set to become more important than nuclear in the near future. There is still some way to go before they can eclipse coal fired stations.
Click to expand...
That must surely be decades behind some more developed countries. Embarrassing state of affairs.
 
alanlesley said:
say good bye to the bird life there
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Where? The Karoo? Not a lot of birds there. North Sea similarly so. Also, have you done some reading about whether that oft-touted alleged problem with wind power is accurate? Because it isn't.
 
hj2k_x said:
Where? The Karoo? Not a lot of birds there. North Sea similarly so. Also, have you done some reading about whether that oft-touted alleged problem with wind power is accurate? Because it isn't.
Click to expand...
go tell that to the endured birds that they killed already.
 
garyc said:
There is a list of power stations in South Africa at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_in_South_Africa. To give some further context, the breakdown of the installed capacity per type of power station is:

Fossil Fuels

  • Coal fired: 40 036 MW
  • Gas turbine: 3 449 MW

Low carbon power and renewable energy

  • Hydroelectric: 3 573 MW
  • Nuclear: 1 860 MW
  • Wind power: 1 369.1 MW
  • Concentrated solar power: 400 MW
  • Solar PV power: 1 224 MW
With the planned future builds, both solar and wind power are set to become more important than nuclear in the near future. There is still some way to go before they can eclipse coal fired stations.
Click to expand...
Don't forget, those Solar PV figures don't match reality.

We do have substantial residential and business solar in place - possibly more than that Solar PV 1.2 GW worth.
I'd guesstimate countrywide we also have substantial battery storage in place too.

Sure, none of those are Eskom resources, but they are due to Eskom.

In some ways we're actually more advanced than other countries due to this.

Places like Australia are only now starting to add battery storage to solar installs.
In South Africa, storage usually comes BEFORE installing solar!
 
Did I get my math wrong, or have these only been generating the equivalent of about 5.2h per day at capacity?
535000/(365) = 1465MWh per day
That means they are equivalent to a coal station of ~61MW, assuming 100% up time - so call it 80MW?
 
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