Eskom warns it may have to shut down 16,000MW after pollution exemptions declined

[grok]

Don't get your way? load shedd

Well (at the risk of Champie calling me racist, again) its not called blackmail for nothing..

 

[PaulMurkin]

Well (at the risk of Champie calling me racist, again) its not called blackmail for nothing..

blackmail is not a racist word...

 

[Temujin]

Eskom pretending majority of this 16k isn't already permanently offline due to 'breakdowns'... cute

 

[mypetcow]

My fellow South Africans …At this stage of our country’s development we are prioritizing power availability over clean air. There’s barely enough power to go around at the moment. The scrubbers need electricity to run so I can see why Eskom wants an exemption. This was a strategic decision make no mistake about it. Nobody forgot about the scrubbers.

However do not despair. As everyone installs solar at home or at the office bit by bit we’re taking some load off the Eskom grid so the gap between what Eskom can produce with scrubbers vs. what power demand we have and what solar and wind can produce will get smaller and smaller over time. If we’re incredibly lucky by the time Eskom’s exemption expires in a few years time and they actually install the scrubbers we should have beefed up our solar and we should have minimal load shedding if at all.

 

[c3n0byt3]

Quite likely really...

But one would think these requests for exemptions will be done on "worst case scenario" type things for the exemption so would have been requested for Kusile as well.

Kusile does have FGD. It's running currently. It's a hell of a resource intensive thing to run though.
Go onto Google Earth/maps and look at the two stacks (each serving 3 units). The FGD are those pink/orange things on the back.

For Medupi they specified it would be FGD ready and would install after operations began. But looking at the region it would never have worked. Now I've worked with World Bank before, and they really hold recipients accountable. So there's something in that deal we're not privy to.

The MES is per boiler unit (Kusile = 6). But in my opinion this is not the best way to regulate industries (even though this is how its done in many countries). In SA they set these limits but there are many uncertainties involved. The modeling does not consider many other sources and chemistry so they don't really know the full impact say 500mg/Nm3 has on the receiving environment as a whole; i.e., including all other sources etc. Also, regulating by concentration could still result in very large mass of pollutant entering the atmosphere, depending on stack flow rates.

 

[Benedict A55h0le]

My fellow South Africans …At this stage of our country’s development we are prioritizing power availability over clean air. There’s barely enough power to go around at the moment. The scrubbers need electricity to run so I can see why Eskom wants an exemption. This was a strategic decision make no mistake about it. Nobody forgot about the scrubbers.

However do not despair. As everyone installs solar at home or at the office bit by bit we’re taking some load off the Eskom grid so the gap between what Eskom can produce with scrubbers vs. what power demand we have and what solar and wind can produce will get smaller and smaller over time. If we’re incredibly lucky by the time Eskom’s exemption expires in a few years time and they actually install the scrubbers we should have beefed up our solar and we should have minimal load shedding if at all.

Very few people are installing solar at their homes. It does not make sense to do so under the socialist extortion scheme where electricity prices go up 15% but your feed in price goes up by 3%. The feed in price is already less than half the take out price. In 2 years you will have to pay to feed in. In fact, a system that feeds in more than the household consume is illegal and will face fines or disconnection. Who in their right mind will invest in solar for their house under such mad socialist rules? Maybe only the very rich.

 

[Gaz{M}]

Didn't they just get R130bn in grants and loans from the G7? So what's the problem?

 

[Lupus]

Very few people are installing solar at their homes. It does not make sense to do so under the socialist extortion scheme where electricity prices go up 15% but your feed in price goes up by 3%. The feed in price is already less than half the take out price. In 2 years you will have to pay to feed in. In fact, a system that feeds in more than the household consume is illegal and will face fines or disconnection. Who in their right mind will invest in solar for their house under such mad socialist rules? Maybe only the very rich.

They don't install it to feed into the grid, they install it to be off the grid as much as possible.

 

[Benedict A55h0le]

They don't install it to feed into the grid, they install it to be off the grid as much as possible.

The principal still stands. They will continue to change the rules to extort money from households in some way. I read that houses now are forced to have the grid connection and yeah they are also upping this new tax by 15% each year. The more people move away from the grid the more new taxes will be added and raised to make up the shortfall. This is a socialist system and we will not be allowed to buy ourselves out of it by a once off solar system purchase, grid-tied or not. Soon they will add a plain solar system tax.

 

[Swa]

So during that exact scenario what are they using to create power? Magic? Nuclear is costly on the initial install but it actually will eventually even out and become cheaper as it's always running there is no need to supplement it with expensive gas,coal,diesel,batteries or such. Remember solar and wind need the sun and wind and those don't always work, in those times there is either no power or there is something else generating it at a greater cost.
Hence why the consumer is still paying more in South Australia right now.

Nuclear isn't cheaper. Just look at all the problems at Koeberg and the amount of time it's offline at a time. That also doesn't factor in that no country in the world counts the cost of decommissioning.

 

[Lupus]

Nuclear isn't cheaper. Just look at all the problems at Koeberg and the amount of time it's offline at a time. That also doesn't factor in that no country in the world counts the cost of decommissioning.

Where are the costs of the decommissioning of the solar and wind costs? Also where the costs for the peaking plants that need to run to keep power running storage solutions are still expensive as well. Until there are cheaper and more environmentally friendly batteries, nuclear is expensive to build but works out cheaper in the long run.
It's like buying a house vs renting, the bought house is expensive at first but eventually works out cheaper if you keep it for a certain amount of time. Solar and Wind are cheaper initially until you need to put in other costs to actually have power when you need it, not when it can generate it.

 

[mypetcow]

socialist extortion scheme

1. Lol.
2. Why are you worrying about feeding in? Just cover your daytime usage with solar as much as possible in the first place. Later get lithium storage if necessary.
3. I’m sure you can’t speak for all South Africans and your sample size is your suburb and surroundings so I’m taking your ‘very few people install solar’ with a pinch of salt.

 

[mypetcow]

I read that houses now are forced to have the grid connection and yeah they are also upping this new tax by 15% each year.

So I take it you have no installed solar at home right…?

 

[PaulMurkin]

Eskom.... GFY!

 

[mypetcow]

This is a socialist system

Again lol.

 

[mypetcow]

Nuclear isn't cheaper. Just look at all the problems at Koeberg and the amount of time it's offline at a time. That also doesn't factor in that no country in the world counts the cost of decommissioning.

Unless Eskom is lying in their annual report, it seems to me that nuclear is the cheapest source of electricity in SA at the moment at R0.105/kWh...A quarter of the price of coal and at least 20x cheaper than IPPs.

 

[Sapphiron]

Cleaner energy is actually expensive every where, hence why countries/states that have implemented it have higher energy tariffs compared to those that didn't.

That actually changed in about 2010/2012. Lookup South Australia. They were the most expensive state in Australia. Now they are the cheapest.

 

[Lupus]

That actually changed in about 2010/2012. Lookup South Australia. They were the most expensive state in Australia. Now they are the cheapest.

I just put the latest tariffs as of 2021, they are still the most expensive, and it was 2017. Northern Australia is 24 to 29c a unit, South Australia starts at 41c a unit.

 

[markings]

So since 2010 the government did nothing?

 

[Lupus]

You'll need to give a source that nuclear is ever cheaper if construction, running and decommission costs than wind/solar. It does not beat the install costs of a blend of solar, wind and gas peakers/batteries. You also missed the fact that nuclear has a higher operating costs as well, namely what does it use to generate power.

No, you have no understanding of the history of power in South Australia and what actually makes up the prices.

Rise of SA renewables to deliver nation's cheapest wholesale electricity - InDaily

South Australia is expected to have the lowest average wholesale electricity prices in the country by early next year but an Adelaide energy expert says the savings are unlikely to be passed on to consumers in full.

indaily.com.au

Record levels of renewable energy drive down electricity prices across Australia

Power costs zero or negative for one-sixth of the September quarter, energy operator says

www.theguardian.com

And a good read explaining the entire situation of why renewable has become cheaper than fossil.

https://ourworldindata.org/cheap-renewables-growth

Note that's 2020 pricing, it's dropped even more in regards to renewables while coal is set to shoot up this year and next since most countries added emissions taxes.
That nuclear per MWh pricing includes existing btw, all those that have already been paid off in terms of construction and did not have all the new safety legislation etc. during construction.

I'm not going to bother replying in this thread anymore regarding the nonsense you post, already corrected and you'll just keep making baseless claims.

That graph fails to take into account the supplementary charges you need for solar like additional plants to run it when it's not working. Nuclears initial install is more expensive but it is cheaper to run over the period of it's life span which is twice that of a solar plant.

Subscribe to read | Financial Times

News, analysis and comment from the Financial Times, the worldʼs leading global business publication

www.ft.com

" So why are renewable projects able to post such low strike prices? One reason is that they don’t bear all the costs on the network they generate, such as the need for back-up capacity that fires up only a few days a year, or being paid to switch off when there’s too much wind. These costs are mutualised; something that’s easier when renewables are a small part of the energy mix. They don’t disappear though. And the more renewables on the system, the more they intrude. "

This seems very relevant, as stated, installing solar is great, but there are additional costs that are never counted towards it.