South Africa's biggest solar farm

Jan

Jan

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Biggest solar farm in South Africa

The biggest solar farm in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa is Solar Capital's De Aar project in the Northern Cape.

This photovoltaic (PV) solar facility provides a maximum potential generating capacity of 175MW.
 
I need someone to explain to me how all these lekke solar initiatives will benefit me as the electricity consumer. As it stands, it looks like it only benefits investors.
 
LCBXX said:
I need someone to explain to me how all these lekke solar initiatives will benefit me as the electricity consumer. As it stands, it looks like it only benefits investors.
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For you it doesnt... For everyone else it means less loadshedding probably
 
ToxicBunny said:
For you it doesnt... For everyone else it means less loadshedding probably
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How does it mean less loadshedding? I mean there's about 12 hours a day when the sun doesn't shine? And CSPs are expensive and also only provide a few hours over sunset of stored energy, whereby they need to fire off fossil fueled power to keep the salt molten for the next day.
Wind also can't run all the time and even with a "mix" of these 2 you will end up paying more for power, which it has shown in most places that have gone green.
 
Private sector gets sh*t done, guvament just fills their pockets at our expense.
 
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The actual largest sub-saharan Solar Plant - in Angola.


@Jan

The biggest solar farm in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa is Solar Capital's De Aar project in the Northern Cape.
 
This photovoltaic (PV) solar facility provides a maximum potential generating capacity of 175MW.
Click to expand...

This is the amount of power Sibanye Stillwater needs to power all their mines in SA. And then, that may still not be enough on bad weather days and they will still need to make use of Eskom.....
 
Lupus said:
Currently yes, it's not finished yet.
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Full service later this year - its not far off. Entire project is 370MW (Biopio is the largest portion at 188MW).

15% funded by us (Development Bank of SA...)


sunafrica.com

Our Clean Energy Projects | Sun Africa

With a number of solar projects already developed and in progress, Sun Africa is leading the charge of delivering clean energy solutions to Africa.
sunafrica.com sunafrica.com
 
So no more excuses for daytime loadshedding then?
Excellent
 
Lupus said:
How does it mean less loadshedding? I mean there's about 12 hours a day when the sun doesn't shine? And CSPs are expensive and also only provide a few hours over sunset of stored energy, whereby they need to fire off fossil fueled power to keep the salt molten for the next day.
Wind also can't run all the time and even with a "mix" of these 2 you will end up paying more for power, which it has shown in most places that have gone green.
Click to expand...
Cleaner air I suppose, also, this one is likely to be fitted with lithium batteries so none of those salt to keep warm. It will likely be more expensive due to other reasons than solar, Europe isn't expensive because of green energy but due to service level requirements, Texas is cheap exactly because people chose the cheapest option and then ended up paying ultra high rates last year. Just learn from their mistakes and make ours better, but with our ANC, we know they will learn to make all the mistakes and spin it to favour themselves.
 
Lupus said:
How does it mean less loadshedding? I mean there's about 12 hours a day when the sun doesn't shine? And CSPs are expensive and also only provide a few hours over sunset of stored energy, whereby they need to fire off fossil fueled power to keep the salt molten for the next day.
Wind also can't run all the time and even with a "mix" of these 2 you will end up paying more for power, which it has shown in most places that have gone green.
Click to expand...


To quote myself (from here - https://goingsolar.co.za/2021/12/24...at-night-if-we-have-plenty-of-extra-capacity/ )

Interestingly this answers a common “issue” that people continually pose about Solar PV.

Solar doesn’t work at night!! so its useless blah blah blah.

True, Solar famously does not work at night, but by a strange co-incidence much our demand comes in the day when we’re.. awake, so thats really where we need generation. By another hugely strange co-incidence night time demand drops quite a bit when we’re asleep. I know that causation doesn’t imply correlation, but it does make you wonder if there might just be something in that.

It’s almost as if we could use Solar during the day to power things, and not have to run other generation, which would allow us to keep other generation ready for when its needed. Crazy idea, I know.
 
Kawak said:
Cleaner air I suppose, also, this one is likely to be fitted with lithium batteries so none of those salt to keep warm. It will likely be more expensive due to other reasons than solar, Europe isn't expensive because of green energy but due to service level requirements, Texas is cheap exactly because people chose the cheapest option and then ended up paying ultra high rates last year. Just learn from their mistakes and make ours better, but with our ANC, we know they will learn to make all the mistakes and spin it to favour themselves.
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Lithium batteries are really expensive at this point in time for the sizes needed. Not all of Europe is green, but the ones that are, are more expensive then those that aren't.
 
itareanlnotani said:
To quote myself (from here - https://goingsolar.co.za/2021/12/24...at-night-if-we-have-plenty-of-extra-capacity/ )

Interestingly this answers a common “issue” that people continually pose about Solar PV.

Solar doesn’t work at night!! so its useless blah blah blah.

True, Solar famously does not work at night, but by a strange co-incidence much our demand comes in the day when we’re.. awake, so thats really where we need generation. By another hugely strange co-incidence night time demand drops quite a bit when we’re asleep. I know that causation doesn’t imply correlation, but it does make you wonder if there might just be something in that.

It’s almost as if we could use Solar during the day to power things, and not have to run other generation, which would allow us to keep other generation ready for when its needed. Crazy idea, I know.
Click to expand...
Actually no much more demand doesn't happen during the day, there are 2 times that much more demand happens and it's not during the day, early morning and 5 to 9pm at night. The day time loads are generally not as high as you think they are. But those peak loads are sometimes 4 to 5GW over the normal day load.
 
Lupus said:
Lithium batteries are really expensive at this point in time for the sizes needed. Not all of Europe is green, but the ones that are, are more expensive then those that aren't.
Click to expand...

Forget about Europe, think more like Australia.

We're more like Australia.

Large country. Excellent natural resources - in terms of Solar, Wind, Hydro, Tidal, Coal etc.
Thats the comparison.

Europe is relatively tightly integrated, has lots of opportunity for power import/export, and **** weather.
We're not that.
 
Needs crypto mining rigs.
 
itareanlnotani said:
Forget about Europe, think more like Australia.

We're more like Australia.

Large country. Excellent natural resources - in terms of Solar, Wind, Hydro, Tidal, Coal etc.
Thats the comparison.

Europe is relatively tightly integrated, has lots of opportunity for power import/export, and **** weather.
We're not that.
Click to expand...
Oh Australia where South Australia is twice the price of it's Northern neighbours? Why is that oh it's green :)
 
Lupus said:
Actually no much more demand doesn't happen during the day, there are 2 times that much more demand happens and it's not during the day, early morning and 5 to 9pm at night. The day time loads are generally not as high as you think they are. But those peak loads are sometimes 4 to 5GW over the normal day load.
Click to expand...
Suggest read my article there I actually go through that in a bit more detail.

My point is - any generation that uses less fossil fuel is a good thing.
We need a lot more of it though, and Mantashe at the helm, is not a bonus.
 
itareanlnotani said:
Suggest read my article there I actually go through that in a bit more detail.

My point is - any generation that uses less fossil fuel is a good thing.
We need a lot more of it though, and Mantashe at the helm, is not a bonus.
Click to expand...
Nuclear would be great, but the people are afraid.
 
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