poweralert....

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Lupus said:
Yes but on the flip side there are those that are coming back at the same time who wouldn't have had either, your geyser and fridge unless it's off at the wall will kick in, a lot of people will start cooking, watching TV, boiling kettles, bathing, street lights, office buildings and stuff will all kick back on, whereas before on stage 4 you'd only have 4 areas coming back at once vs 6
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I don’t think so. Same areas still comes on as normal 2hour apart. Like I said, the areas before me share my first two hours but then go on two hours before me as I still have 2 left. Then the areas after me only go on again two hours after us.
So there is not more people coming on at a certain time, but more people are off at any given time.
Yes on stage 6 where there is sometimes a 2 hour slot thrown in the mix will change the above a bit.
 
Given current storage tech I'd say it is tough to go to very high levels of renewables in a grid, unless one is blessed with significant hydro resources (last I saw Germany was around 40%). But our levels are actually so low that it's a shame we now seem to be constrained by our transmission system (insert Gwede-related theory here). So we can't add more solar in some areas until new lines are built and added now new wind last year, etc. Because, far from worrying about the duck curve or other issues associated with high levels of renewables, we have high levels of loadshedding during the day and are burning diesel on top! We have great solar resources and a bit more would surely help with daytime demand and possibly filling our pumped storage schemes for evening peak.

Personally I don't see much being done in this regard though, who knows what is going one with the new "transmission company" and the endless delays. I just hope they can somehow get the bandaids over the coal plants working a bit better as more individuals, companies and cities make their own plans in the coming years, which seem to be a mix of dispatchable / solar / storage. Yes, these little 50-220 MW projects are nowhere near a Koeberg or Medupi but scattering them around the country and making us less reliant on one company or one union seems to be the only option given what has happened to Eskom.
 
Grieta Thanburg said:
I don't always agree with Zapiro, but he does have a point here. My concerns are that coal will never be turned off.

Ideally, nuclear is the way to go, but as long as we keep extending coal, we'll never get there. It's like taping a band-aid over the red engine light, trying to push as much as you can before the car finally fails.
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I don't think i want to live (i already don't) in Africa anymore if there are more nuclear plants that can blow us all up...
 
Jean Claude Vaaldamme said:
With higher stages and 4hour slots there is also much more people offline. Maybe double the amount as with 2 hour slots. Because areas are overlapping. The area that normally is the 2 hours before us now share our first 2hours of being off. Then the areas that is after us, share with us being off for the second half of the 4 hour slot. So I don’t think that is what is increasing the demand. More people can now not use electricity.
The colder weather obviously had impact, but the reason for being higher than previous years I think is all the batteries for the inverters that is now getting charged when you have electricity, over and above all you normal usage.
From end of last year, the demand for all these backup system increased hugely. So we should look at the obvious first
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I think the point is that all of the factors add up. In summer days are longer, and people can spread out their activities in the evening. In winter nobody wants to wait until 8pm for mealtime, so the peak is really compressed around 6pm. The point about the 2/4 hour slots is that all the geysers will warm up in 30-60 minutes, so the peak is always concentrated around the even numbered hours, also around 6pm. The number of backup systems has increased significantly, but they represent a small fraction of the load, and recharge over a longer time period than geysers. Anyway, these are just band-aid ideas, when there is load shedding 24/7...
 
Lupus said:
Not even storage will save us, in order for renewables and storage to save us we'd need close to our actual entire fleet of power in renewables and storage, which would cost a considerable fortune. Everyone goes on about look they built a 170MW plant and a 100MW battery. It's like that's great we'd need 600 of those please
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Some of us aren't looking at it as a "save", merely a direction we need to start more strongly working towards. Of course with those involved with decision making here, it's all a pipe dream anyway.
 
Brian_G said:
Some of us aren't looking at it as a "save", merely a direction we need to start stongly working towards. Of course with those involved with decision making here, it's all a pipe dream anyway.
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In SA it's not the direction we need to move towards, there is no infrastructure for it, what would be needed is the coal plants to be fixed, or a big project to look at nuclear, but none of that will happen. Our only hope is that we somehow get money for Visas out of here.
 
Lupus said:
In SA it's not the direction we need to move towards, there is no infrastructure for it, what would be needed is the coal plants to be fixed, or a big project to look at nuclear, but none of that will happen. Our only hope is that we somehow get money for Visas out of here.
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It's the future*. As far as we go, if this country is going to sit in the new dark ages for many decades, I agree with you. But we must think in the direction of trying to be more in line with a natural balance - that even though current tech is so lacking, innovation will come out of desire and effort.


* For those new to the debate here - by "future" some of us mean a future need for many reasons, not just pollution which is bad but not as terrible as currently painted by politicians.
 
CrypticZA said:
I don't think i want to live (i already don't) in Africa anymore if there are more nuclear plants that can blow us all up...
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That's not the concern. But nuclear energy production can of course still be dangerous if proper controls aren't maintained, and despite best and excellently laid out efforts...

1. The anc do what they want, even ignoring their international "influencers" all too often
2. Issues in the last few years at Koeberg suggest exactly that, and/or even some sabotage would seem to be going on

And then there's the Japs - very well organised in every way, yet their accident still couldn't be prevented..
 
Brian_G said:
That's not the concern. But nuclear energy production can of course still be dangerous if proper controls aren't maintained, and despite best and excellently laid out efforts...

1. The anc do what they want, even ignoring their international "influencers" all too often
2. Issues in the last few years at Koeberg suggest exactly that, and/or even some sabotage would seem to be going on

And then there's the Japs - very well organised in every way, yet their accident still couldn't be prevented..
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Oh imagine Eskom had multiple Nuclear plants they would be able to threaten and be able to get away with more murder... It would e like a we want 35% increase or else *looks at nuclear plant*

Or some corrupt knob doing sabotage and boom another Chernobyl
 
R13... said:
It is also worth remembering that Eskom will probably start to load curtail more to avoid having to declare higher stages as that is politically unpalatable.
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wingnut771 said:
You would think they would do that before they do any loadshedding.
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The problem is many big industries and mining have traditionally funded the ANC. If you want mineral rights and tax breaks you lube the guys in charge, right?

But it's Sipho sitting in his miserable little tin shack who actually votes for the ANC and keeps them in power.

So the ANC somehow needs to balance this all out and keep both extremes from getting too p****d-off at them.
 
vaakseun said:
The problem is many big industries and mining have traditionally funded the ANC. If you want mineral rights and tax breaks you lube the guys in charge, right?

But it's Sipho sitting in his miserable little tin shack who actually votes for the ANC and keeps them in power.

So the ANC somehow needs to balance this all out and keep both extremes from getting too p****d-off at them.
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Too late. People are pissed.
 
AlphaJohn said:
Sad thing is some ANC supporters still think this time, yes this time they will fix it.

Cause they said they will.
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I have legit spoken to people who said they don't care how bad things are they will only ever vote ANC because ANC stopped apartheid ...
 
vaakseun said:
The problem is many big industries and mining have traditionally funded the ANC. If you want mineral rights and tax breaks you lube the guys in charge, right?

But it's Sipho sitting in his miserable little tin shack who actually votes for the ANC and keeps them in power.

So the ANC somehow needs to balance this all out and keep both extremes from getting too p****d-off at them.
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They probably got airtight contracts too.
 
CrypticZA said:
I have legit spoken to people who said they don't care how bad things are they will only ever vote ANC because ANC stopped apartheid ...
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Let me guess, they weren't even born yet or too young to remember the apartheid years?
 
wingnut771 said:
Their brains must really overheat when they say apartheid was better.
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vaakseun said:
Let me guess, they weren't even born yet or too young to remember the apartheid years?
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They were born just like me after apartheid so no experience just brainwashed from their elders

It is quite a common trends when speaking to people from the township
 
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