And when the sun isn't shining, or the wind isn't blowing? What do you do then? Expensive peaking plants are fired up to take the load, everyone complains about when Eskom uses the OCTGs to prevent load shedding.
But that's what their jobs are for, to take over when base load cannot meet demands and when your demands are early morning and early evening the sun isn't generating enough power.
The wind is also not reliable can even see it by looking at the Eskom data portal, sometimes we can hit high peaks of 1Gw same as at the peak of sun we hit 1.7Gw, but by the evening when demand is needed PV is non existent and CSP is maybe 100Mw and wind can be as low as 400Mw so a massive 500Mw from renewables, out of a possible 4Gw
As I said, let's see how long this hype lasts before the real costs set in, building 79skm of wind farms or solar panels to match Koeberg sounds nice on paper, I want to see how you clean the panels spread over an area of that size, once the Karoo wind blows.
I am also curious to see how none of these panels are going to be stolen, copper wires going to go missing etc etc. Not to mention that the cost of gas will likely increase as they will need to be deployed to different locations in the country,
Theoretically all these problems can be overcome, you can technically adopt your grid for intermittence etc, but it is one massive exercise in complexity, compared to 1 single source that provides base load at a reliable rate and competitive cost. This sounds to be as one massive exercise in futility, but engineers and scientists have historically had a tendency to overcomplicate systems.
I still maintain that the LNG companies love Wind and Solar, because they know that the system will ultimately allow them to sell gas when the intermittence fails. This massive craze deployment is one big subsidy for them and that is why I am not surprise that the Koch Brothers are also funding the Sierra club.
To illustrate what I mean, France recently closed down its Fessenheimer Power Plant, and it could easily have had its life extended for another 20 years.
The proponents of Renewables promised us that it is going to be Unicrons and Rainbows, but in practice France now has to relight some coal power plants to make up for the intermittency.
You see this pattern repeating itself in Germany, the UK, California, etc, but when we point this out, the evidence is caveated away.
The Chinese are slowly and steadily building more Nuclear Power plants and perfecting the technique, while putting the renewable face on. They know that the western countries have lost their know-how on building these power stations and it is just one more step in the direction of outcompeting everyone else.
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