Agree, was not referring to CoCT, but the cancerous ones…. At provincial.
Groetnis
They are just as slow with my SSEG application this time round…
Augh yeah, I see what he meant - the days of loadshedding each year is clearly going up, as in the EskomSePush app’s graph.
D’oh!
Supposedly Ekurhuleni is doing the same: Goodbye Eskom — Ekurhuleni signs 46 independent power producers (mybroadband.co.za)
At least they have a clean audit too! YES!
CoCT has managed to mitigate the effect of LS on its customers by using storage systems and reducing the daytime stage of LS.
My limited understanding of this is the use of dams (e.g. Steenbras) that is used as a pumped storage system.
Does anyone have more details on this?
Also what is the brief from Eskom? Clearly they don’t manage the power to different areas which is left up to the munics. So Eskom must have a decree that says they want a x% reduction of electricity usage (or a cap on the maximum usage) 
See https://www.capetown.gov.za/general/steenbras-dams#Heading2
There is a nice explanation on loadshedding, so it seems the Palmiet pumped storage scheme operated by Eskom and the Steenbras Hydro Pump Station is CoCT. They don’t say it explicitly, but that is how it reads.
Correct. There were recently Munic’s who did not comply with Eskom’s demand to reduce load.
I was in a debate on social media once with someone who claimed pumped storage is a big scam, it is inefficient, and Cape Town is stealing from the rest of the country when they use surplus capacity to pump water while that could have been used (more efficiently) to power other parts of the country.
Sure, Pumped Storage isn’t 100% efficient, but it is a great deal better than many of the other options, plus I think this guy probably have little knowledge about stabilising a grid. Pumped storage systems actually MAKE money… 
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Cape Town is far from SA’s main power stations so hence the reason for Koeberg. But the load on the grid isn’t steady. I believe our peak demand of electricity in the evening (i.e. a domestic peak)
Any large power station can’t ramp up it’s electricity supply quickly so balancing the supply with an erratic demand is tricky.
Well, pumped storage generally is inefficient - 70% to 85%. I can only guess at which end of the spectrum our ancient plants lie. But at night when there is surplus power it is a lot cheaper to use that surplus and pump water for later than to run OCGTs when we need extra, even accounting for poor efficiency. That is probably why they could only abate loadshedding for CT for one cycle - there was not enough surplus to pump the water back up. (All the surplus was used to pump Palmiet).
Li-ion storage is a lot more efficient, and more cost effective in the medium term (unless you already have the dams for pumped).
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Rumours have it there are a few BYD Lithium Iron systems to demo, that Escam installed. Also a number, could be as high as 90, of systems are on a roadmap (do not know if there is funding allocated) to be install over the country.
Groetnis
This is interesting …
I read that snippet and I knew that would be Ivo Vegter. That man is not afraid to utter an opinion. I swear sticks and stones is his family motto!
Must say, what he says made sense to me.
Wind and solar are NOT the only answer for SA or any country out there.
For us who have installed our solar system, we “get” some of the complications. And that is but in our little domain, kingdoms. Not even a country.
It is way more complex than that.
BUT, to go and destroy nature some more, is also not an answer either.
Agree - totally clickbait with no real balance to the story at all.
I think the work ONLY above is NB. Mantashe doesn’t want Wind and Solar and so doesn’t see the economic, environmental, etc benefits. He sees them as a threat to his income personally and his “friends” income. Forget the “real” situation. Kusile for example.
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Ja-nee!
This is what The Economist said on the matter: South Africa, the world’s coal junkie, tries to quit | The Economist
Here is the thing, no matter what, as of the last few years since 2019 about, utility scale combined Soar, Wind and Battery storage became cheaper to install than just the fuel and running costs of all the other energy sources.
And it has got nothing to do with the greenness of the energy source. All energy originated from the sun to start with. Yes, fossil fuels and nuclear as well.
It’s about the money. The monopolies are making money off the energy and use it as a vote buying entity. They also use regulations to stack the deck agains the cheaper sources. Especially locally, the economy was built on coal and gas, mostly.
It already costs most countries more on paying for extracting the coal, gas, nuclear than to generate solar and wind and store it. Policy and dogma prevents the World from making enough batteries and install them on an utility scale, or build virtual power-stations from behind the meter battery systems virtually connected together.
Imagine that every home had enough battery, and the grid allows them to share energy, ie. wheeling, there would be no need for Escam. Most businesses, with the exception of very large industries like smelters etc. will have enough SWB (solar wind battery) to be mostly self sufficient. And when there is a shortage, you can buy from the grid, just a bunch more storage somewhere else.
This however takes them piggies off the gravy train and they will have none of that. Also, on a small scale for residential and commercial, the costs are still to high to make this feasible locally. Other places have got their own laws and policies bedevilling the adoption.
Do not worry, it’s just the ramblings of a mad man…. 
Groetnis
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You know, I have this conversation twice a week… about how EVs will never work… and then people start talking about how far they drive and how few charge stations there are and how many power failures they have to suffer and if the highway is snowed in you may die and if you run out of juice you have to be towed and one car reduced the max speed cause the battery was at 2% and OMG we were almost killed because we could only drive 30 mph!
Nobody said EVs would replace everything… we’re going to have a mix of options for a while to come. And similarly with other energy sources.
Modern people are so… black and white…
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