Explosion at Matla power station - at least nine injured, one critical

Lupus said:
No we haven't removed so much load, plus the fact that they didn't announce load shedding the moment this happened indicates they have actually fixed things.
Plus this happened at 5pm, that's peak and solar isn't working then.
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My 88kWh that I used from Eskom in the last 3 months tend to disagree.
And if I go and look outside there are people with even better systems.

My batteries which ran whole night disagree with your second statement not to mention that 5pm is still daylight and people with panels looking west are still producing.

It would be interesting to see how much less electricity is our suburb using compared to 5 years ago.

Maybe they are doing maintenance and I'm happy for that but you can not deny that there is no significant drop in usage due to solar.
 
aleksandar said:
My 88kWh that I used from Eskom in the last 3 months tend to disagree.
And if I go and look outside there are people with even better systems.

My batteries which ran whole night disagree with your second statement not to mention that 5pm is still daylight and people with panels looking west are still producing.

It would be interesting to see how much less electricity is our suburb using compared to 5 years ago.

Maybe they are doing maintenance and I'm happy for that but you can not deny that there is no significant drop in usage due to solar.
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Residential demand is barely 20% of the total demand from Eskom, so at most it would be 6GW, now pray tell out of that 6GW how much do you think us who have solar really take off from the grid? We make a paltry dent to the picture.
The big guys who would make a dent would start switching back to use more Eskom from about 5pm. The biggest drop isn't due to solar, it's due to the thousands of businesses that closed shop over the 2 years of load shedding.
 
Lupus said:
Residential demand is barely 20% of the total demand from Eskom, so at most it would be 6GW, now pray tell out of that 6GW how much do you think us who have solar really take off from the grid? We make a paltry dent to the picture.
The big guys who would make a dent would start switching back to use more Eskom from about 5pm. The biggest drop isn't due to solar, it's due to the thousands of businesses that closed shop over the 2 years of load shedding.
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Eskom estimated in its latest Weekly System Status report that there are 5,412 MW of private rooftop solar installed in South Africa.
mybroadband.co.za

South Africa’s record-breaking R17.5-billion solar panel import boom

Driven by intense load-shedding, South Africa tripled its solar panel imports in 2023, reaching a record-breaking R17.5 billion.
mybroadband.co.za mybroadband.co.za
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That's last years figures (2023/early 2024) and includes businesses. I would guess that's overspec'ed and stuff, so would guess it's ~3GW to be conservative (since you'll also have those who just added some for minimum). It would not surprise me if the 2024 figure added another 3GW at least. It's basically gotten to the point that if you have rooftop space, install solar, it will reduce the energy bill, and if business, you at least have power to operate the minimum.
Tomtomtom said:
Also the highest PCLF period.
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Sure, just saying there are factors outside of Eskom that mostly allow Eskom this breathing room to do maintenance.
Demand has noticeably trended down every year and I would argue it's accelerating the next few years still (until everyone who can afford and has space will have done so).
 
Johnatan56 said:
That's last years figures (2023/early 2024) and includes businesses. I would guess that's overspec'ed and stuff, so would guess it's ~3GW to be conservative (since you'll also have those who just added some for minimum). It would not surprise me if the 2024 figure added another 3GW at least. It's basically gotten to the point that if you have rooftop space, install solar, it will reduce the energy bill, and if business, you at least have power to operate the minimum.

Sure, just saying there are factors outside of Eskom that mostly allow Eskom this breathing room to do maintenance.
Demand has noticeably trended down every year and I would argue it's accelerating the next few years still (until everyone who can afford and has space will have done so).
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you're right
 
Johnatan56 said:
Demand has noticeably trended down every year and I would argue it's accelerating the next few years still (until everyone who can afford and has space will have done so).
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It has not trended down over the past ~9 months though. See that chart.

I think we basically agree that an improvement at Eskom isn't the whole reason we haven't had LS recently.

But my take is we actually haven't given Eskom much breathing room, and the trend is that people are returning to the grid rather than accelerating off it... so 2025 could be interesting.

Edit: "(until everyone who can afford and has space will have done so)." - I think this is part of it... almost everyone who can has already done so. The low-hanging demand fruit was picked months ago already.
 
Ivan Leon said:
Stay tuned for Eishkom's highly anticipated sequel for 2025 - 'Stage 6 - The Return of The Gennies'...
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i don't think so

the fact that we had such an abrubt end to shedding and eskom could save so much diesel with pumped storage
and so many seeing the coost benefit of going solar , i doubt we will see shedding again

but yea cadre incompetence should never be under estimated , NEVER SAY NEVER
they always seem to find a way to surprise us
 
leon.davibe said:
and so many seeing the coost benefit of going solar , i doubt we will see shedding again
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I wouldn't call the end till 2035 or so.

The next 10 years are critical, because the coal stations are still in the last phase of their lives, terminal decline, and we haven't seen the huge ramp in investment in new generation and critically new transmission infrastructure that's required to transition.

In fact Eskom is in yet another generation-capital investment moratorium thanks to National Treasury and I'm pretty sure people are going to look back on that as a huge mistake. I mean wtf, it's exactly how we got into this position in the first place. (Yes there's a rationale, but that was true last time too.)
 
Ivan Leon said:
Stay tuned for Eishkom's highly anticipated sequel for 2025 - 'Stage 6 - The Return of The Gennies'...
Click to expand...

Johnatan56 said:
More like 2-3 stages.

Weekly peak demand - Eskom Data Portal

Weekly peak demand is shown for the current and previous financial year. Peak demand is calculated as the maximum of the hourly average values for each week (only full weeks are used).
www.eskom.co.za www.eskom.co.za
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imo peak data is irrelevant or at least less relevant

lots have smaller battery capacity and thus still cooking from eskom and reduce their load from the system during the day when relying on solar and low load times over night draining the batteries

that is what allows eskom to focus on pumped storage
and thus reduced diesel bills

total energy produced would be a better indicator imo of actual state of affairs
 
Tomtomtom said:
It has not trended down over the past ~9 months though. See that chart.

I think we basically agree that an improvement at Eskom isn't the whole reason we haven't had LS recently.

But my take is we actually haven't given Eskom much breathing room, and the trend is that people are returning to the grid rather than accelerating off it... so 2025 could be interesting.

Edit: "(until everyone who can afford and has space will have done so)." - I think this is part of it... almost everyone who can has already done so. The low-hanging demand fruit was picked months ago already.
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You mean the one chart you posted that says 1-2GW down in November/December? You have part of June and August up by ~1GW, rest is all down with some months touching 3GW. Not sure where your only down 1MW comes from, you might mean 1GW.

Smoothing that graph also isn't great since should be daily peaks, takes a while to get a coal plant to a good output, you can't just constantly reduce it to match hourly demand or something.

And I meant a trend, as in more than just last year.

leon.davibe said:
imo peak data is irrelevant or at least less relevant

lots have smaller battery capacity and thus still cooking from eskom and reduce their load from the system during the day when relying on solar and low load times over night draining the batteries

that is what allows eskom to focus on pumped storage
and thus reduced diesel bills

total energy produced would be a better indicator imo of actual state of affairs
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Peak demand matters as you have to have enough online to meet it. If battery/gas/hydro manages it, that's fine and gives Eskom breathing room. Around the world we're moving away from always on to meet peak demand to only what is needed as can use battery to instant respond to peaks, that can often reduce need by GW as instant dispatch for just those few seconds/minutes when a coal/nuclear powerplant needs to stay up for at least hours/days (gas peakers are "good" since they're within 5 minutes, battery is instant and changes it even more).
 
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Lupus said:
Residential demand is barely 20% of the total demand from Eskom, so at most it would be 6GW, now pray tell out of that 6GW how much do you think us who have solar really take off from the grid? We make a paltry dent to the picture.
The big guys who would make a dent would start switching back to use more Eskom from about 5pm. The biggest drop isn't due to solar, it's due to the thousands of businesses that closed shop over the 2 years of load shedding.
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by the same logic there would be no point to ripple devices?

peak is just one metric
area under the graph is another

ie my base load is 1kw i remove that from eskom for 10 hours a day and boil my geysers from solar time shifting other loads for a total of 25kwh

when i cook from eskom and draw 6kw for an hour i only used 6kwh

so the peak means nothing imo ie eskom can deal with the peak by using pumped storage and ocgt
the problem comes in if they can barely meet the need and can't focus on pumped storage and thus at night can't meet the peak and therfore have to loadshed at peak and probabluy off peak to try and get reserves back up

so in this discussion peak is all but irrelevant area under the graph is what matters and that is exactly what solar does it gives breathing room for pumped storage, yes this brething room also allows helps for maintennace

with less pressure less likely to do a rush job that fails

is solar responsible for it all probably not but it is the catalyst that makes it possible imo
 
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Only about 1,100 MW of wiggle room. Eskom better pray they don't lose a couple of bigger units.
 
Sinbad said:
What does high pressure steam have to do with a transformer? That goes between the boilers and the turbine.
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zolly said:
Only about 1,100 MW of wiggle room. Eskom better pray they don't lose a couple of bigger units.
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How exciting! With chicks tighter less wiggle room makes for a better experience.
 
As I said: Incompetence/gross negligence.

Someone wasn't doing their job monitoring the steam pressure.
Sinbad said:
What does high pressure steam have to do with a transformer? That goes between the boilers and the turbine.
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They obviously had no idea of what happened. How they got to "a transformer" (outside the building and far away from the generating area) to a burst steam pipe (inside, and supplying superheated steam to the turbine) is beyond me, and beyond any logic.
 
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