Like we are on 4, we get the hours over 4 days.
Then it jumps to 5, so a new schedule kicks in, over 4 days.
Then back to 2 then back to 5 - 6 - 4.
In that flip-flopping, I see 10h per day, then 4, then 8, then 14. The worse was the other day, from 4 to 6 in 14 hours… which cannot possibly correlate anymore to the 4-day cycle, we are down for big hours per day consecutively and not over 4 days the hours.
You only really notice this in Cpt, with the weather, at your desk, adjusting the SOC based on the most used App in solar today … the Weather App.
Allow me to throw another scary thought into the mix: I expect that as the loadshedding stage increases that it becomes less effective in reducing the strain on Eskom, since users’ consumption will necessarily become more and more concentrated in the hours outside loadshedding.
Take geysers and recharging UPS batteries as examples. Those devices will suck up a certain amount of energy over the course of a day, and increasing loadshedding stage will do little to mitigate that (up to a total blackout of course).
My point is that there probably won’t be a linear relationship between the loadshedding stage and the supply gap as it grows beyond what we’ve seen before. In a couple of months we may well be wishing you prediction of stage 10/11 loadshedding was accurate.
I think that is why there are rumours of changing the schedules to have some overlap. Put some places on odd rather than even hours for example. Having the entire country in 2-hour lock-step blocks makes it worse.
Even some interleaving may only help us a few more stages. I think the point where things properly goes to the dogs, is when you have power less than 8 hours a day. This is the point where food starts to go bad in freezers, because they need that many hours a day to remain cold enough. Beyond that point, we should almost expect the load to reduce, as people just start to switch things off permanently.
I fired up the hand crank torch to look for a ray of light. There might be some hope that the shortage does not have to increase at a rate based on summer numbers leading to the obvious stage 8/9/10.
I guess load curtailment could be used more to take some edge of the evening peak - other than cost to Eskom this will obviously also have general economic impact due to reduced production etc.
The intention to roll out ripple relay to about 8million geysers is probably not of much hope for this year. A planned additional 1GW being imported form the SA Power Pool at least adds another drop in the bucket. Increasing use of the OCGT’s are the more likely to be used I think (don’t want to be the person who calculates how to use the approximate R30billion that Eskom should have access to for diesel…). [ link for numbers referred to - listen to audio do not focus on headline - for the time constrained about 7:00-8:00 ]
Got to love the smoke and mirrors… All or nothing even if it wastes huge amounts of power… They will appeal I hope… IPPs will be running away from SA at this rate …
nothing to appeal. The application was dismissed without ruling on the merits as Rural Maintenance needed an affidavit from the municipality indicating that the municipality authorises Rural to litigate. They did not have this affidavit - they should have had their ducks in a row before approaching the court.
“Authority to initiate proceedings on behalf of Municipality not furnished on the Court – Application not properly before the Court and stands to be dismissed”
I suspect Rural will not ever get that affidavit - yes, probably because higher ups in the ANC willed it so. I also think they will run into a problem with NRS048-09.
This is my question (serious question btw, not trying to be contrarian), if Rural gets legal precedent (that big oil tanker that seems to be impossible to turn around) that a municipality with unpredictable IPP (Rural’s own FB profile pic is of a PV array covered with patchy clouds) and with IPP capacity lower than their load, can decide how/if/when they implement load shedding while still being connected to an energised national grid - how will that impact the national grid in its current state if multiples of this occurs from multiple municipalities?
@Village_Idiot , for a while now I’ve entertained the thought that what is really going on here is not properly communicated. The story, as it is retold to us, is “Eskom is being spiteful and don’t want people to use their own power!”, but I deeply suspect it is more a case of “There is a risk associated with allowing external entities to operate outside the planning parameters needed to keep the grid stable”.
This is already happening, has been for a while, example is Howick, which is uMngeni Municipal District, KZN. Today: 01:00 - 03:30 and 09:00 - 13:30 and 17:00 - 21:30.
in this case I will hedge my bets more to the scripted side than the media just misunderstood - but then again “bad news porn” gets clicks. If we accept Eskom’s version (linked by @mmaritzEskom ... is there ANY chance? In CPT there is - #2166 by mmaritz) then Rural actually went outside of the terms they negotiated with Eskom in how to implement measures to keep critical municipal infrastructure going during load shedding. Eskom wanted this to end and then the story became “Eskom wants to stop a town from using their own PV”.
It also seems they are outside NRS048-09. And the other vibe I get from reading it, is that a solar plant (without batteries) is a lot less “dispatchable”. If it trips, or the production reduces for any other reason, Eskom is immediately expected to pick up the slack… and if you didn’t properly negotiate it, you shouldn’t expect them to be okay with it.
