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wingnut771 said:
Is the pumped storage broken or something?
Looks like stage 6 loading when the diesel runs out:
View attachment 1463235

Station build-up for the last 7 days - Eskom Data Portal

This shows how resources were used to build-up the demand over the past 7 days, and it includes both generation and demand side resources that Eskom has contracts with.
www.eskom.co.za www.eskom.co.za
Click to expand...
My money is tomorrow evening/Thursday afternoon, and we are back to stage 6, maybe even 7 with how some of the backups are looking (eg pumped, imports, etc). Unless they got diesel and aren't telling us.
 
Humour me and help work out what household load reduction/electrical production would give us enough power to avoid lets say stage 5 loadshedding.
5000 000 000 watts need to be produced by the 500 000 people who earn over R500k a year meaning 10kw each of lets say solar on an average day in an average place in SA.
10kw is 30x 333watt panels and a nice inverter, installation, accessories and extras....say R200k a system (no batteries). 500 000 systems at R 200k is R100 billion required.
If the 200k is financed at say R2k a month and the production per system is 10kw x 6 hours a day making 1800kwh a month to sell to eskom/municipalities.
At a R1/kwh feed in tariff that would break even as soon as the feed in tariff hits about R1.10.

So R100 billion loaned to the wealthy 500 000 households/businesses, to put up 30 panels each would pretty much break even and go a hell of a long way to solving load shedding?
It would obviously be easier if more/smaller systems could be built as even wealthy households and many businesses would struggle to place 30 panels in an efficient manner.
How much did our latest power station disasters cost?
 
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https://twitter.com/x/status/1617991524817723393

So going by the numbers from the last while, the units that have been constantly failing are the ones that failed and pushed us into stage 2/3/4 before. Now with all the new generation (Kusile and Medupi) offline, plus 1/2 of koeberg, we are at a base of 2/3/4 being pushed into 5+ when said unreliable units break down...

Grand... wonder what the actual attainable base generation is now, don't believe we have gone past 26gw in the past several months
 
flytek said:
Humour me and help work out what household load reduction/electrical production would give us enough power to avoid lets say stage 5 loadshedding.
5000 000 000 watts need to be produced by the 500 000 people who earn over R500k a year meaning 10kw each of lets say solar on an average day in an average place in SA.
10kw is 30x 333watt panels and a nice inverter, installation, accessories and extras....say R200k a system (no batteries). 500 000 systems at R 200k is R100 billion required.
If the 200k is financed at say R2k a month and the production per system is 10kw x 6 hours a day making 1800kwh a month to sell to eskom/municipalities.
At a R1/kwh feed in tariff that would break even as soon as the feed in tariff hits about R1.10.

So R100 billion loaned to the wealthy 500 000 households/businesses, to put up 30 panels each would pretty much break even and go a hell of a long way to solving load shedding?
It would obviously be easier if more/smaller systems could be built as even wealthy households and many businesses would struggle to place 30 panels in an efficient manner.
How much did our latest power station disasters cost?
Click to expand...

That’s not a sustainable solution. You have many variables that will affect the output. Such as efficiency of panels, (normally 80%) angle of panels on roof. Which direction are they facing? (North is best. Not everyone’s roof face north)

Then there is the weather. Clouds, rain etc.
I have 12 panels and on a good day the house will consume 20kWh - before I have anything extra to give to the grid. So your outputs to grid feeds will be lower than expected.

We need more power generation to cover our base load. Solar is not reliable enough for that.

100 billon will be better spent building a power plant rather.
 
flytek said:
So R100 billion loaned to the wealthy 500 000 households/businesses, to put up 30 panels each would pretty much break even and go a hell of a long way to solving load shedding?
It would obviously be easier if more/smaller systems could be built as even wealthy households and many businesses would struggle to place 30 panels in an efficient manner.
How much did our latest power station disasters cost?
Click to expand...
I agree with your thinking! Kusile power station (according to wikipedia) could produce 4800MW and cost R118 billion to build. If we give people incentive (grid feed in payment, etc.) they will build the systems and contribute. I have also proposed taking it further and really increasing the incentive, why make it R1.10/kWh for grid feed in, why not make it the same price as you would pay Eskom (that way they aren't losing any money but gaining a more stable grid). If we change the tariffs to be time based we can discourage people from using power during the evening peaks by making it too expensive (and why not block e.g. free basic electricity use during those times?) and make it cheaper to buy power during the middle of the night when demand is low, that will encourage people to export power from their batteries as well, 2 ways of lessening the effect of the evening demand peak.
 
Priapus said:
Then there is the weather. Clouds, rain etc.
I have 12 panels and on a good day the house will consume 20kWh - before I have anything extra to give to the grid. So your outputs to grid feeds will be lower than expected.

We need more power generation to cover our base load. Solar is not reliable enough for that.

100 billon will be better spent building a power plant rather.
Click to expand...
Yes cloud and rain definitely reduces solar production, but by spreading the systems out onto houses all over the country you're minimizing your risk, it's not raining over the entire country at the same time. Also, perhaps you do have a few days when production is significantly reduced, so implement loadshedding then. We currently have loadshedding always, we could have loadshedding just on rainy days, still could be a win.

If your house consumed as much power as you're producing and you're not exporting to the grid, you're still removing that consumption from the grid, so the nett effect to the grid is the same.

Why not do both, build a new power plant and ramp up home solar production at the same time in parallel? At the moment we have nothing, no plants being built and no home solar contributions. It's not helpful either.
 
1am7h30n3 said:
Why not do both, build a new power plant and ramp up home solar production at the same time in parallel? At the moment we have nothing, no plants being built and no home solar contributions. It's not helpful either.
Click to expand...

There are Solar projects all over the place ie Kenhardt's 540MW, REIPPPP's 270MW and ACWA's 100MW CSP
Among others.
www.solarfeeds.com

15 Biggest Solar Projects in South Africa

South Africa is a leader in the development of renewable energy. A wealth of renewable energy resources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated
www.solarfeeds.com
Problem was that up to last year there was a 100MW limit:

New ones will take time so we will likely only see fruit only from end of next year or so on.
 
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AlphaJohn said:
There are Solar projects all over the place ie Kenhardt's 540MW, REIPPPP's 270MW and ACWA's 100MW CSP
Among others.
www.solarfeeds.com

15 Biggest Solar Projects in South Africa

South Africa is a leader in the development of renewable energy. A wealth of renewable energy resources such as solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrated
www.solarfeeds.com
Problem was that up to last year there was a 100MW limit:

New ones will take time so we will likely only see fruit only from end of next year or so on.
Click to expand...
also people need to stop looking at the peaks, those are the maximum it can produce, so 540MW will more then likely give us 100 most of the time
 
Lupus said:
also people need to stop looking at the peaks, those are the maximum it can produce, so 540MW will more then likely give us 100 most of the time
Click to expand...

True but at this stage every MW helps thats why Cape Town's drive would be great if implemented country wide.
 
AlphaJohn said:
True but at this stage every MW helps thats why Cape Town's drive would be great if implemented country wide.
Click to expand...
Clean, reliable MW helps, unreliable solar and wind doesn't really help, hence it's not even counted in the stages of load shedding.
 
Lupus said:
Clean, reliable MW helps, unreliable solar and wind doesn't really help, hence it's not even counted in the stages of load shedding.
Click to expand...

Erm
1674626604802.png

1674626705571.png

Not counted?

Yes I know it small compaired but up to now, who is to blame for that?

Give you a hint (starts with an A and ends with a C)
 
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Lupus said:
Clean, reliable MW helps, unreliable solar and wind doesn't really help, hence it's not even counted in the stages of load shedding.
Click to expand...

Solar would definitely help lower LS stages during the day though if there was enough installed capacity. A bit harder during evening peaks of course, but then maybe Eskom wouldn't have to burn so much diesel during the day. So it's a win-win situation. It would greatly help many businesses if there was no load-shedding between 8-4PM for example.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Erm
View attachment 1463467

View attachment 1463471

Not counted?

Yes I know it small compaired but up to now, who is to blame for that?

Give you a hint (starts with an A and ends with a C)
Click to expand...
It's not counted in the overall system for when a stage of load shedding is called. They can't say oh we can go to stage 3 now cause of renewables.
Mainly as there is no certain number to base that on.
 
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The_Right_Honourable_Brit said:
Solar would definitely help lower LS stages during the day though if there was enough installed capacity. A bit harder during evening peaks of course, but then maybe Eskom wouldn't have to burn so much diesel during the day. So it's a win-win situation. It would greatly help many businesses if there was no load-shedding between 8-4PM for example.
Click to expand...
No it won't lower stages of load shedding, renewables aren't reliable enough for them to do that.
As it is variable, if there was 35GW of installed capacity and they knew for certain it would give 3GW definitely perhaps.
But not with the measly amount we have installed
 
wingnut771 said:
How so? Do you only get 1/5th output from your panels?
Click to expand...
Over a 24 hour period yes, remember solar peak hours. There are only 5.6 in JHB, the rest of the time I'm on batteries or on Eskom.
So when it comes to renewables you've got to factor in that sure at peak you'll maybe get 540MW but you'll average out at 90 to 140MW.
 
Lupus said:
So when it comes to renewables you've got to factor in that sure at peak you'll maybe get 540MW but you'll average out at 90 to 140MW.
Click to expand...
Agree with that. But I don't think any reasonable expert in power would make the MW Vs MWh mistake that plagues the media.

The baseload stuff is nonsense though. Old thinking.
The EAF of Eskoms fleet is lower than solar right now :) but with solar you plan for it only being full sun 6 hours a day, you don't plan for half your coal fleet to be down.

So sun and wind being up and down is plannable and manageable through diversification -- i.e. turbines and panels all over what should be 2 or 3 time zones. Wonderful "base load" tripping is not plannable and is exactly why we have load shedding.

Ps IPPs should not be mixed with Feedin tariffs. IPPs are procured by Eskom on long fixed contracts. They are charging like 50c/KWh now!
 
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