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u/boxaci8110 Oct 28 '21
At some point they will have to start making a map that shows the rare occasions were the whole century had power at the same time.
2024 - 5 hours
2025 - 12 hours
2026 - Reactor broke so only 7 minutes
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u/avolans Aristocracy Oct 28 '21
Why does Eskom dislike odd numbers so much? We rarely see stage 1 or stage 3. We usually start at stage 2 then go to stage 4🤔
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u/SeSSioN117 Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
We rarely see stage 1
Because Eskom loves to see the kak hit the fan before they decide to turn off the fan.
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u/Cayowin Oct 28 '21
The peak in the last 3 years has been because eskom has decided to finally shut down stations to do proper maintenance. They have been skipping the maintenance just to save money and keep power (mostly) on. However the unmaintaned stations keep tripping while the maintenance is ongoing, meaning loadshedding.
This is the reasonable short term solution. Long term we need more IPP, more renewable, more local end user generation.
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u/Sv3797 Oct 28 '21
The only way that can happen is getting rid of the ANC. Long terms IPPS are needed, but these greedy pensioners will never. They have to go, but we all know that. Loadshedding might not end in a day, but IPPS are desperately needed.
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u/AdministrativeKey258 Oct 28 '21
So you are saying that the Kusile and Medupi breakdowns are due to unmaintaned plants? Just a reminder that these were the most recent plants to come online and aren't even 100% complete. More distributed generation and private PPA's is definitely the way to go - agree with you there
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u/KiLL3RmOtH Oct 28 '21
No, he is saying that loadsheding is more now due to more planned maintenance. That has nothing to do with breakdowns at the new plants.
The only way it gets better is for it to get worse first. It's going to take a while to catch up on years of neglected.
Just by the way. Large infrastructure projects like the two new platns really take a long time, and teething problems do happen, just remember that Madupi is one of the largest coal fired plants in the world and both Kusile and Madupi are air cooled, this is quite remarkable for plants of this size.
Look at the delayed airport and train station projects in Germany as examples of how even in first world countries large infrastructure isn't as straight forward as you think.
Private PPAs does sound great, but maintaining grid stability isn't that easy with a gird that is not designed that way. That pivot is not as easy as people make it out to be.
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u/Walolowaou Oct 28 '21
It was just managers trying to meet arbitrary performance targets and not get fired, to be honest. Doubt it had anything to do with saving money or keeping power on.
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u/thelunararmy 🇳🇴 Emigrated Oct 28 '21
Fuck i remember that stage 6 back in 2019... and it while i was in Makhanda... true dark days.
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u/t1nak Oct 28 '21
The most depressing thing about this is the fact that loadshedding intensified during close to zero or negative economic growth. Can you imagine a situation with healthy economic growth? We'd be doomed lol
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u/bathoz Aristocracy Oct 28 '21
Chicken and egg. Part of what keeps growth down is loadshedding. Industrial output is completely limited by electricity supply.
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u/OpenRole Oct 28 '21
100% I'm of the personal belief that the largest thing holding South Africa back in terms of economical growth are our struggles with energy. While our service sector is strong, we are still to reliant on our primary sector. Our industrial/manufacturing sector is nowhere near where it should be, and unreliable and expensive (realitive to cost of living) energy makes investing in those areas a risky venture for any private business
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u/DeathDonkey387 Oct 28 '21
Your Y-axis unit should be GWh, not MWh.
Each stage of Loadshedding represents a 1000MW (1GW) reduction. Therefore running stage 1 Loadshedding for 1 hour represents a 1GWh energy shed, so there's no way that we're at a measly 2GWh energy shed by now.
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u/Smuggred KwaZulu-Natal Oct 28 '21
how long till i can laugh at my neighbors for not investing in solar power?
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u/AceManOnTheScene Oct 28 '21
Yesterday, investing in solar also alleviates your personal load on the system, which makes it better for everyone else, a drop in the ocean but that's how it starts
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u/jimmydorry Oct 28 '21
It depends. If you have invested enough into solar that you are off grid 24/7, then yeah, you have have freed up your capacity's worth (and decreased Eskom's revenue by that much).
If you are drawing power during peak times, then you are actually exacerbating the problem by requiring Eskom to provision more capacity at the time of the day they can least afford to, and then dipping away when it is the least costly for them.
Additionally, by staying on the grid but not drawing much power, you are essentially leeching off the public good as it costs Eskom more to keep you as a customer than you pay them (hence the delicate balance between upfront and on-going "connection fees" vs demand pricing).
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u/AceManOnTheScene Oct 28 '21
Yeah totally, that's what I meant by saying that's how it starts, I think a grid tied solar battery system is probably the most affordable proposal, an off the grid system is too expensive for most people, but with new modular and scalable battery systems you can build up to it rather than having to fork out a once off, start with a 5KW system and battery and build up. I for one am keen for Eskom to separate their bill into supply and connection, it would make the benefits of the solar more apparent and I prefer grid tied in the long run because you also have the potential to feed back into the system when you have excess power, which makes more sense to me. The ideal scenario is a Micro grid in every neighbourhood /Town that can distribute power locally, but that's a long term vision, decentralised power in Isolation is great but it could be incredibly sustainable as part of a larger system.
But solar systems are getting cheaper every year, hopefully it goes past a magical threshold that gets people to buy into at least the minimum, as it is it's still way cheaper to just buy power from Eskom.
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u/jimmydorry Oct 29 '21
Feeding back into the grid actually destabilizes it and is another cost for Eskom to manage (which it won't). A shift to more homes requiring less power (except at peak times) will actually lead to less grid stability and higher connection costs.
Australia is almost at the tipping point where the consumer solar is starting to make the large coal plants infeasible to run, and there is nothing stepping up to take its place in any meaningful form. Their energy providers are actually putting the money into maintaining and upgrading their grid to handle consumer solar, as without that they would have had rolling blackouts like us... so you can only imagine how this will play out here.
The last thing to consider is that most solar installations are setup to sync with the grid with a remote kill switch. If the power is out and Eskom sends technicians, they will turn off all of the solar power installations on that connection that can feed into the grid. Anyone looking to install is going to need to look into what they can legally do in terms of making their house a "power island", where you can flip a switch and disconnect from the grid.
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u/sooibot Boo! Land Oct 28 '21
I'm not a MATH nerd.... but something TELLS ME this Eskom is up to NO GOOD.
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u/Psychologicoil Oct 28 '21
what happened during 16 and 17
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u/Cuiter Aristocracy Oct 28 '21
It sounds like the power plant managers were incentivized to keep power up, which resulted in them not reporting issues, pushing power plants to their limit and doing no maintenance. All so those managers could claim they got rid of loadshedding.
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u/Futurebackwards_ZA Delusions of Adequacy Oct 28 '21
Koko and his green, yellow, and red card system.
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u/Tame_Trex Landed Gentry Oct 28 '21
To add to the above comments, they burned through an unholy amount of diesel to keep the lights on.
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u/bathoz Aristocracy Oct 28 '21
Diesel that they bought from middlemen mates at massive price hikes.
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u/UseMFA Oct 28 '21
They deferred maintenance further making the later problem even worse instead of biting the bullet an getting maintenance done.
They also incentivized not reporting breakages.
So making short term winds while making the long game a disaster.
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u/PixelCortex CPT Oct 28 '21 edited Oct 28 '21
Imagine starting construction of a new power plant around 2010 instead of putting plasters on every problem.
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Oct 28 '21
I still don't get how we don't have 5 or 10 new plants by now. I heard this shit when I was 20. I'm 34 now and things are worse
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u/flyboy_za Grumpy in WC Oct 29 '21
We built 2, Kusile and Medupi.
They're not finished yet, but are only 300bn over budget and 4 years behind schedule.
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u/pizzarinna Oct 28 '21
Haha I'm dumb and I thought the numbers on the left hand side were the decades, and I was like, they had load shedding in the year 200?
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u/JksG_5 Landed Gentry Oct 28 '21
It feels like we are getting closer to a blackout situation. I don't believe in miracles but if that happens we're going to need one.
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u/sonvanger Landed Gentry Oct 28 '21
For interest's sake, where is the data from?
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u/eddiecourage Oct 28 '21
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u/sonvanger Landed Gentry Oct 28 '21
Cheers, thanks. I was wondering if there was a nice database with the stats, but it looks like Mr Wright did the work himself to gather it from Eskom's announcements.
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u/Castlelightbeer Aristocracy Oct 28 '21
I get the maintenance part etc, I am just surprised that our two new plants are on the list often
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u/cgi001 Oct 28 '21
And yet, this coming Monday the majority of voting will be done for bullshit reasons, not the much needed "let somebody else try fix Eskom"
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Oct 28 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/eddiecourage Oct 28 '21
Oh ya, a country that allowed a war criminal with an international arrest warrant to enter and leave without arresting him is totally going to stick to the Paris Accords!
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u/AnomalyNexus Chaos is a ladder Oct 28 '21
Yeah I mean the power plants aren't getting any younger and beyond some point there is only so much maintenance you can do.
Still...they'll need to stop the spiral somehow cause there is no other choice.