We have too much power: Eskom

[rpm]

We have too much power: Eskom

Eskom says it has too much electricity in the early hours of the morning, and wants to work with business to change the time of day at which electricity is consumed.

 

[Chevron]

We have too much power: Eskom

Eskom says it has too much electricity in the early hours of the morning, and wants to work with business to change the time of day at which electricity is consumed.

This is actually a brilliant idea. Well done to at least trying to find innovative solutions.

 

[Syphonx]

I'm sure every electricity network in the world has that issue, but most don't have to institute rolling blackouts during the day.

 

[kianm]

Interesting this could help a bit if the parties co-operate

 

[km2]

This is actually a brilliant idea. Well done to at least trying to find innovative solutions.

But how much power are they able to draw at these off-peak times without the employees present to operate them? Will they have to shift a lot of peoples working hours backwards? Create a new -0800 Eskom Savings Time zone and stick the whole western half of the country in it.

They already have significantly different off and on peak rates for industrial connections so not sure how much more they can squeeze out that route without (again) adding heavily punitive costs onto peak usage. Maybe they could accelerate their rollout of Homeflex type plans into residential areas to encourage more timed control of geysers and such.

Still can't get any kind of time-of-day based pricing in residential connections supplied by the City of Cape Town, and half of Eskom's links on their page about Homeflex are broken so it doesn't even seem to be properly out of trial phase. Probably more people are able to get VDSL than Homeflex. Why even ask people to shift to off-peak consumption when they still can't be arsed to meet them half-way with an off-peak pricing system that's been common in other countries for years.

Edit: Looked a bit more into it, and it seems that while Homeflex was part of Eskom's 2012-2013 pricing structure, they then ripped the whole thing out for 2013-2014 onwards and have made the whole plan disappear. City Power has their smart meter project, but they've shrugged off any imminent implementation of time-of-day billing. Why is South Africa cursed with these incompetent utilities.

 

[TEXTILE GUY]

We have too much power: Eskom

Eskom says it has too much electricity in the early hours of the morning, and wants to work with business to change the time of day at which electricity is consumed.

Good luck with that. Trying to get workers to work in SA is hard enough.

We tried to change the working day as suggested her to take advantage of off peak tariffs, - the workers simply refused to change their shift.

 

[Sinbad]

What a load of tripe. This is pure propaganda. 'we have too much power' indeed. Rubbish.
You do not have enough capacity, stop trying to whitewash that fact.

 

[Shayd]

What a load of tripe. This is pure propaganda. 'we have too much power' indeed. Rubbish.
You do not have enough capacity, stop trying to whitewash that fact.

You didn't read the article did you?

 

[Venomous]

“The worst case scenario would be a cold front over the whole country, that sits for a couple of days. And if that’s during the week, we would be in trouble in the early evening,” the Telkom spokesperson said.

The what spokesperson?

:erm:

 

[bwana]

He said that a conversation needs to be around incentivising industry to shift towards those hours of the morning.

You discount off peak power. It's not rocket science, it's what countries all around the world already do.

 

[km2]

You didn't read the article did you?

Every electricity company in the world has to deal with the difference between their base load and their peak, and you certainly don't get to claim that you have a "surplus" based on the grid status at 3 am. Just like Telkom doesn't get to tell you that your exchange isn't congestion because you have great pings and download speed at 3 am. And you can't say that we have "too many roads" if there's great 3 am driving, but it's utter grid lock during rush hour.

You discount off peak power. It's not rocket science, it's what countries all around the world already do.

I'm not so sure they want to discount things, you already saw them complaining that DSM was working too well and the revenue drop was going to hurt their ability to fund new plants. They want you to move to off peak and keep paying.

 

[Sinbad]

You didn't read the article did you?

I did read the article.
Every single power utility in the world has spare capacity in off peak time. That's not the same as "having too much power". They're trying to paint it as a uniquely South African problem in order to deflect from the fact that in fact, they do NOT have enough capacity for peak time.