What is catching my eye, with all the renewables added, Eskom is not doing the claimed so-called maintenance they always say they are doing, are going to do.
Or, they are doing it, but like with everything really old working really hard for far too long, no amount of maintenance done is going to stop this from slipping one of these months …
Ignore me … I’m just musing …
The thing with coal plants, is you cannot just switch them off when the sun comes up, and switch them back on for the evening peak. When they run… they run. When they are down, they are DOWN. Rooftop solar can at best improve daytime levels, but to take more stations offline for maintenance would require higher stages at night. Again, also just musing, but I think the fact that the sun only shines on T… ahem… during day time has something to do with it 
Dont assume a unit is better after maintenance. From friends that work there I know many times correct replacement parts are not ordered. And many of the skills needed to do proper repairs are just not present anymore. Then we also know there is sabotage during the maintenance.
It’s all temporary…and back down to Stage 5
But anyhow, SWB (Solar Battery Wind) systems at 4X generating capacity is the sweet spot to deliver 100% of energy 24/7 locally.
Now, the kicker, to get to 100% availability for SWB, we need 4X Solar and Wind generation, and between 35-90 Hours worth of battery storage (weather and season dependent) for the complete SW generation capacity. This is non-linear to Coal plant, ie 4X more generating capacity.
Since 2019, SW is already cheaper than Coal or anything else. Battery storage is predicted to get another 40-50% cheaper by 2030. Tesla has reduced their Megapack storage by 20% earlier last month.
Groetnis
As a side note, SWB plants are already cheaper to build, and way way quicker with much less maintenance, than Coal plant Operating costs alone…
CheapskateGroetnis
I think given all of our pumped hydro storage and the fact that we still sometimes use them throughout the day tells us that we can accommodate a lot more PV that might actually help some (very few) coal units to be taken offline for maintance.
The data is sadly not real time, but you will see we have been using our pumped hydro schemes on some days in the middle of the day
We honestly have a lot going for us in the renewable sphere…
Lots of : Sun, Wind and geography that lends itself to pumped hydro, that Drakensberg range is pretty long 
Groetnis
Thank you!!! We are saved!!!
Cabinet has it all in hand, under control … someone (anyone) Save the Queen!!!
When in Cpt … uhm … ok, I have nothing bar that there is no sun …
Just need the private sector to get that going then … Point is … we can move off coal if SA wants to …
Amen…
In China, the largest market for renewables, BNEF estimates the cost of building and operating a solar farm is now $34/MWh, cheaper than the cost of operating a typical coal-fired power plant at $35/MWh. Similarly in India, new solar can achieve a levelized cost of $25/MWh, compared to an average cost of running existing coal-fired power plants at $26/MWh.
Combined, China and India account for 62% of all coal-fired power capacity worldwide. Together the two countries produce around 5.5 gigatons of CO2 annually, or 44% of global power sector emissions.
From the article link above…
SWBGroetnis
I’ll play devils advocate here, that LCOE probably doesn’t include the cost of BESS to “firm” up that supply of capacity, the anti renewable folks love pointing that out, I am a little lazy / busy at the moment so I don’t want to jump into the rabbit hole, can someone find us the LCOE on PV + Storage (Let’s say the typical 4 hour storage value I have seen other PV + Storage plants sporting)
From that link below, they have PV + BESS;
The daddy of LCOE:
https://www.lazard.com/media/2ozoovyg/lazards-lcoeplus-april-2023.pdf
BESSGroetnis
In SA, with our corruption and lack of productivity issues, it’s likely gonna be more, but this is a social and ideological problem. Elsewhere the technology is/can be cheaper.
Groetnis
Just incase someone missed it …
Another side note here, sadly ideologically based:
Government used Utilities as a form of rent/tax on energy, the CancER is no exception. So here is my take on their strategy. Make all SoE’s apart from SARS useless. That is the impetus to to take more control of more of everything, bit by bit.
The more they control, the more chance of maintaining political control, and then have access to contracts and money. Will they ever fix Eksdom, nope. Will they ever incentivise PV, not really, and I am not talking of the small change residential stuff. Big commercial IPP etc. we have all seen the dragging of them feet. My take (opinion) is that they will do just enough to show em doin stuff, but not enough so they loose that control.
Enough energy cheaply enough is anti NDR and anti control, ie. that equates to loosing control.
BeheerlikeGroetnis
The thing is… which is why I keep harping on incompetence… they are slipping. They may attempt to grab more control, but once the power is out… you will have to buy it from the guy whose got it.
You can of course do what our neighbour did… write a law requiring 51% to be locally owned, and then getting your buddies to seize those assets… but even that, you can only do once. At some point, unless you shape up and maintain what you grabbed… even the little you got will be taken away from you.
But I’m assuming our old guard can’t think in this manner. I think you are right in that respect (yes, I said it ), they are too hardwired in the old ideology.
My favourite writer, old man Chesterton, once said that once you mess with the thinking of the next generation, you have the ability to destroy them. Let’s hope that hasn’t happened too much yet.
That peril is that the human intellect is free to destroy itself. Just as one generation could prevent the very existence of the next generation, by all entering a monastery or jumping into the sea, so one set of thinkers can in some degree prevent further thinking by teaching the next generation that there is no validity in any human thought.
But in Cape Town, there is no ANC … I have hope. See @plonkster, I’m very positive!!! 
Here is why:
Bet ya one day (next year 2024) we will sell to Erana Energy, us “pocket change home solar mannetjies”. 
They are here. They are in the hospitals and the police, because those are controlled by national government. That’s why you have the weird situation of an affluent neighbourhood called “Golden Acre”, at the foot of a mountain with two wine farms called Lourensford and Vergelegen… but the hospital (despite getting upgrades) remains the last place you want to go…
I have no PC in me, I call a Spade a Shovel. I am no pessimist, nor and optimist, just a realist or I guess a pessimistic optimist then. It’s true I always tell the truth, I am lying… 
Groetnis
