Way to go South Africa

[markslawson + 1,057]

Let’s give a big shout out to the government of South Africa which has managed to completely mismanage the country’s state-owned power grid over many years to the point where power consumers are now enduring blackouts of up to 10 hours a day.

Note that for once this power disaster is not due to renewables. There are no, or hardly any, renewable generators on the South African grid. The bulk of the country’s power comes from coal. However, the country’s plight is an object lesson in what can happen if the so-called transition to renewable generators is mismanaged, particularly if governments insist on throwing away all the fossil fuel backup to those renewables.

In South Africa’s case the government seems to have largely ignored the problem of aging coal fired plants continually falling out of service for maintenance or because they have broken down, despite years of warnings. The government of President Cyril Ramaphosa has curried favour with western activists and governments by portraying the decay in the coal grid as a reduction in emissions but has done nothing about providing any replacement power.

Two new, and quite big coal-fired plants came into service in 2015 and 2017 but they have proved grossly insufficient, especially with increases in demand. Among other issues, homes in the once-notorious apartheid era townships are getting connected to the grid at an increasing rate. Instead of building new generators to meet this demand the power utility, Eskom, is grappling with corruption and systematic theft on a large scale, as well as frequent sabotage of generating units. Why? It seems to be linked to the criminal activity, but there is no clear explanation of this, which is extraordinary as it also seems to have been going on for years. 

The government has finally woken up to the point of suggesting that scheduled closures for some coal plants might be deferred, to deploy army units to protect power plants and, wait for it, refer corruption allegations to the police! Way to go President Ramaphosa! Best not to do too much all at once, however.

Die hard renewable energy enthusiasts please note. Adding intermittent, renewable energy units might just add to the chaos at this stage. A network using renewables requires balancing power units, perhaps open-cycle gas generators easily able to power up when the wind dies or clouds reduce sunlight. It should also have enough battery and pumped hydro storage to tide the grid over until the gas generators are up and, maybe even reduce the need for them. The South African government does not seem to have bothered with any of that stuff at all, apart from some pumped hydro. Otherwise business and homes have to have their own generators or go without.

There is also no quick way out of this problem that I can see apart from installing a heap of large scale diesel generators (about $US100,000 per MW at a guess), which would be very expensive to run. Even installing solar panels and wind generators, at least enough to make any real difference, and a large battery would take time, and installations that large can’t just be placed anywhere. In the mean time the SA economy is being badly affected.       
 

[specinho + 459]

Don't panic.......... Donkey to the rescue...... 

It was the donkey from Aesop's story. Used in grain mill or such.

But, it can be modified to generate electricity at the same time, right? 😯🤭😈

[Rob Plant + 2,755]

1 hour ago, markslawson said:

Let’s give a big shout out to the government of South Africa which has managed to completely mismanage the country’s state-owned power grid over many years to the point where power consumers are now enduring blackouts of up to 10 hours a day.

Note that for once this power disaster is not due to renewables. There are no, or hardly any, renewable generators on the South African grid. The bulk of the country’s power comes from coal. However, the country’s plight is an object lesson in what can happen if the so-called transition to renewable generators is mismanaged, particularly if governments insist on throwing away all the fossil fuel backup to those renewables.

In South Africa’s case the government seems to have largely ignored the problem of aging coal fired plants continually falling out of service for maintenance or because they have broken down, despite years of warnings. The government of President Cyril Ramaphosa has curried favour with western activists and governments by portraying the decay in the coal grid as a reduction in emissions but has done nothing about providing any replacement power.

Two new, and quite big coal-fired plants came into service in 2015 and 2017 but they have proved grossly insufficient, especially with increases in demand. Among other issues, homes in the once-notorious apartheid era townships are getting connected to the grid at an increasing rate. Instead of building new generators to meet this demand the power utility, Eskom, is grappling with corruption and systematic theft on a large scale, as well as frequent sabotage of generating units. Why? It seems to be linked to the criminal activity, but there is no clear explanation of this, which is extraordinary as it also seems to have been going on for years. 

The government has finally woken up to the point of suggesting that scheduled closures for some coal plants might be deferred, to deploy army units to protect power plants and, wait for it, refer corruption allegations to the police! Way to go President Ramaphosa! Best not to do too much all at once, however.

Die hard renewable energy enthusiasts please note. Adding intermittent, renewable energy units might just add to the chaos at this stage. A network using renewables requires balancing power units, perhaps open-cycle gas generators easily able to power up when the wind dies or clouds reduce sunlight. It should also have enough battery and pumped hydro storage to tide the grid over until the gas generators are up and, maybe even reduce the need for them. The South African government does not seem to have bothered with any of that stuff at all, apart from some pumped hydro. Otherwise business and homes have to have their own generators or go without.

There is also no quick way out of this problem that I can see apart from installing a heap of large scale diesel generators (about $US100,000 per MW at a guess), which would be very expensive to run. Even installing solar panels and wind generators, at least enough to make any real difference, and a large battery would take time, and installations that large can’t just be placed anywhere. In the mean time the SA economy is being badly affected.       
 

They have also mis-managed their refineries to the extent that SASOL have closed 5 out of the 6 major refineries in South Africa.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-17/sasol-outage-means-all-south-african-oil-refineries-are-now-shut

An amazing country ruined in the last 5 years by corruption and mis-management. BEE has also been a disaster to their economy.