Eskom ... is there ANY chance? In CPT there is

General Discussions
3078

Ditto!!!

IF you want to sort LS in CoCT emass you need to get the entire city grid on the same standard or you can be hampered in the future to go next level, i.e. a smart grid. Our kids may have that. :slight_smile:

Getting there will take years, decades even, as we simply don’t have the capital today to rebuild the grid “quickly”. In phases, yes, probably, and only, due to politics, in Cpt - till the shenanigans Sarel is referring to, are stomped out elsewhere too.

That is IF everyone pulls in the same direction more or less at the same time.

Like a retired engineer said when CoCT made this new bylaw … my words … “so people took chances, now stricter regulations”.

The grid is CoCT’s grid. They need to cater to everyone. If you want to connect to it … here are the rules and regs.

Finish en klaar.

Or go off-grid.

Your choice.

3079

Blame, and hindsight, except for maintenance… Such a nice thing. Perfect 20/20 vision, in hindsight. The culture of consumption, of instant gratification in shortsightedness, and ideology, elitism and the so called intelligentsia, not so smart after all. You have to have a certain mindset. Someone once said, politicians deserve to be…

OnderhoudendeGroetnis

3080

Yeah, I alluded to that, you said it. :slight_smile:

3081

A unit at Kusile was returned to service in the last few days in contravention of national air quality standards.
So, let us be clear: there are two sets of rules, and the strict ones don’t apply to the chosen few.

3082

Something else which I saw on social media over the weekend, which you guys may find interesting, and has areas of overlap with this.

It was a post by a “performance shop”, the kinda of place you take your car to get a few extra ponies added. They were saying how often they get “normal” cars in the shop now, who is there for an exhaust not because the owner wants more power, but because it is the cheaper option. You’d have a 5-year old Peugeot of some kind on the lift, where the factory exhaust is rusted through, the manufacturer wants a 5 digit number to fix it, and there is nothing aftermarket for that vehicle because it is too young. The owners end up bringing it into a performance shop to have a custom stainless steel exhaust put in… because that’s half the price of the dealer.

At this point, if you are in Germany, the TüV comes in. Regulations says all modifications on a car has to be done using TUV-approved equipment, otherwise the car has to be inspected and signed off. So the act of doing the above… in a place like Germany… literally makes the car fail regulations even though it is now better than it was before. It adds extra costs to the owner, through no fault of his own.

3083

And the poor be damned… no inverter for you, no solar either. What quality of life improvement we can bring, no electrical worker will get a shock or be killed, but boy, don’t connect something to the grid, nor remove any illegal non-compliant connection or let people suffer without them basics ne.

Look at Telkom, you could not connect anything to their grid either, end result, they lost the race, cellular outcompeted them. Eksdom is the same, with the mount of Solar being imported and deployed, privately, they too will be irrelevant in the future, and a good thing too.

Behind the meter Solar and battery (base load generation) will kill em off, and the money wasting to boot! Big industry will go the same route, it will ensure survival, big private Solar and battery systems. Wheeling will be the only relevant thing.

SonnigeGroetnis

3084

Let’s face it if you’re Eskom, the regulations are mere guidelines.
Safety regs are out the window if you’re in a township, stealing your supply.
But if you’re struggling middle class, paying through the nose to try and eke out a fraction of an acceptable standard of living, you’re drowned in red tape.
Bolloks, I say.

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3085

The poor are already doing what they can to survive with illegal connections and all that.

If enough panels get installed, and then re-appropriated over time, probably will have that too installed everywhere.

That is a whole new dynamic emerging it seems.

But when a Munic works, the people back it, support it, vote for it … it could lead to a whole new dynamic, where the poor maybe even get free power because it is being planned from the start, and costed properly.

Groete from the Eternal Pissimistc Optimist.

3086

Ahh so EScam is helping (priming really) with the so called redistribution of your wealth! Bravo Eksdom…

DwarsGroetnis

3087

Yeah, I think we need to be wide awake …

Eskom has SSEG applications …

Watch this video: https://youtu.be/BjtlFWyuzJM

Commissioning requirements
Before commissioning, all tests must be done according to the Embedded Generation Installation (EGI) compliance test report, and these must be signed off by a competent Engineering Council of South Africa (ECSA)-registered professional engineer or technologist.

The following documentation has to be submitted before the SSEG will be synchronised with the grid:
• EGI report
• Certificate of compliance (COC) for wiring of the installation – Should be indented under EGI
• • Inverter certificate indicating NRS 097 compliance - Should be indented under EGI
• • NERSA registration or license certificate if SSEG > 100 kW – Should be included under Budget Quote acceptance
• • All labelling of electrical enclosures should be according to SANS 1042-1-2 standards - Should be indented under EGI

Those pesky things in bold that everyone used to say: It is a Cape Town thing.

What happens when there is a grid-tied connection without Eskom approval?
Any grid-tied connection without Eskom permission is deemed unauthorized and Eskom will require the SSEG to be disconnected and a tamper fee may be issued and lost revenue recovered. Customers are required to apply to Eskom to be grid-tied.

And in Tshwane … listen to the vid: https://twitter.com/ewnreporter/status/1703724622301020235

It is coming to a Munic near you … this SSEG Cpt thing. :rofl:

Wees net wakker …

3088

In other Eskom news …

Now where did I hear about THIS before … o wait, it was De Ruyter …

3089

Since you touched on Carbon. This is part of a much much larger “money” shift.

The transitioning to green energy is probably the biggest transition in terms of money and power the world has ever seen. Imagine you are a country such an any Middle Eastern country (except Israel), or even the US, where a substantial amount of your economy is based on oil, and you can to a great extent rule the world via your oil supplies… and then the world decides… naah we’re moving away from that.

Imagine you owned a peat mine, such as this one, which is now a theme park, and then the world moves away from that and basically the entire town is toast? I’ve been to that park, it is not half bad. And there is a Harmonium museum there too, very interesting, if you are ever in the area. You can then also visit Wildlands, where you can see the big five without having to drive around all day. Dutch efficiency.

As I was saying though… there is a larger struggle ongoing in the world too. The power held by OPEC, for example, is about to become significantly less.

In South Africa, this is happening on a much more local level.

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3090

One thing is for sure on this earth… change is inevitable.

The question though is how does one deal with it when it happens?

It is a tough one.

Carbon Credits I have touched on … I think it is a joke.

One of many articles now seeing the light more and more, so yeah, with Eskom, we need to change …

I really hope that this renewable drive, regulations, and all that, are putting us in due course on a new trajectory. It will be painful.

As @Phil.g00 mentioned, people are dying because of Eskom stations and the ignoring of the emissions protocols, collateral damage much …

3091

I think the idea is sound. The equivalent of “credit rating” organisations made a ballsup. They overvalued some of the “stock”, so to speak.

It is essentially a kind of a “derivative”. You don’t own the thing itself (the trees, or whatever), you own the rights to the proceeds. And anyone who knows the derivatives market in the financial world, will tell you this is a place where you can very quickly lose a lot of money.

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3092

Yeah, we’ve heard this before … seems it is legit, probably, maybe:

3093

Much bigger than just Eskom … panel re-appropriation is “new”, wait for the syndicate to “organize” it properly first man. :slight_smile:

3094

I’ve played out a few thought experiments on this topic. Imagine you live in Zimbabwe. The power is on 5 hours a day on average. That means that when the power comes on, EVERYONE on your circuit is pumping water, heating water, maybe cooking, etc. That means you need much larger margins to keep things safe, which hampers the efficiency at which you can deliver what little energy you have.

That old anti-EV chestnut, that they will never work because there is no power… for someone without solar, who lives in Zimbabwe, that may well be true.

3095

It was returned to service. Eskom sought and were granted an exemption for the air quality regulations. Not great, but
a) They didn’t just ignore the regulations
b) Arguably the lesser of evils.

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3096

COCT did reply to the articles about them tightening up the regulations and the fairness thereof.

It’s about cowboy installers. And also people getting argumentative about what is “grid-tied”, “off-grid” etc.

They noted

  • A significant increase in domestic fires
  • Cases where systems were connected so that they reversed the meter when the householder had not signed up for the SSEG tariff.
  • Improper (according to them) connections for non-hybrid inverters.
  • People installing low cost inverter plus battery systems then installing panels later. Which means systems that were never properly connected to the grid now have the ability to start feeding back.

I do feel sorry for some people who got an installer who did the cheapest (for him) possible job and then left his customers exposed. But it is not news that COCT want these systems registered, and that places some onus on the home owner to see that things are done properly.

Even then homeowners may be acting sincerely but fall foul of the law. How one prevents this is not clear to me. When I bought the house I currently live in, my brother-in-law, who is an electrician quickly spotted problems. We then started wondering how a COC had been issued. Of course we both had a pretty good idea and when the truth emerge we were not surprised.

  1. The electrician who had been working in the house was not licensed to work in SA and was not conversant with local regulations. He is licensed to work in Portugal.
  2. Because he is unlicensed he can’t issue a COC.
  3. But he knows a guy in Pretoria who will write out a COC for you. For a fee.

So I took the COC and phoned the Contractor’s board. They told me they had been wondering about the guy who signed off the COC because he signed off so many every day, but they couldn’t do anything unless somebody laid a complaint.

So I said “I’d like to lay a complaint”.

Anyway, I had not sought to contravene regulations. Nor had the seller. The seller and I fell out over this, even though I’d said to them that they weren’t trying to hoodwink me, they had just hired somebody who shouldn’t have taken on the work because he knew he wasn’t qualified. We don’t have time to check the qualifications of every person who presents as a plumber or electrician, nor do we actually know what those qualifications look like.

There will be guys in the solar installation business playing similar games. Or people going down to Builder’s Express and buying some bits and pieces and doing it themselves and over their dead body is that nosy City going to do anything about it. Or you have a conversation with some cut-price installer and ask is this “off grid” and he says “yes, of course”.

So I can see the COCT just cutting to the chase and saying OK… it’s all now “grid-tied” unless you actually disconnect from the grid, and by that we mean that we come along and remove your meters and the cable that supplies the property.

It’s unfair to most of us, but regulations often react to what a naughty minority does and then inconvenience law abiding folks.

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3097

I never said they ignored them; I said they contravened them.
The expression “Not great” is relatively dilute. Let’s flesh that out a bit:

From: https://cer.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Health-impacts-of-Eskoms-non-compliance-with-minimum-emissions-standards-Google-Docs.pdf ( My font bolding).

Health impacts of Eskomʼs
non-compliance with minimum
emissions standards

Key findings
● Under Eskomʼs planned retirement schedule and emission control retrofits,
emissions from the companyʼs power plants would be responsible for a projected
79,500 air pollution-related deaths from 2025 until end-of-life (95% confidence
interval 48,200–122,000).
● Full compliance with the MES at all plants that are scheduled to operate beyond
2030 would avoid a projected 2,300 deaths per year from air pollution (95%
confidence interval: 1,500 – 3,400) and economic costs of R42 billion (USD2.9
billion) per year (95% confidence interval: R26 – 60bn), starting from 2025 .

● Eskomʼs retrofit plan only realizes one quarter of the health benefits associated
with compliance with the MES, due to the almost complete failure to address SO2
emissions.
● On a cumulative basis until the end-of-life of the power plants, compliance would
avoid a projected 34,400 deaths from air pollution (95% confidence interval: 21,600
– 49,300) and economic costs of R620 bn (USD 41.7 bn; 95% confidence interval:
R390 – 870). Other avoided health impacts would include 140,000 asthma
emergency room visits, 5,900 new cases of asthma in children, 57,000 preterm
births, 35.0 million days of work absence, and 50,000 years lived with disability.

Putting aside the economic costs, and related illnesses. ESKOM is estimated to be bumping off nearly 200 people a month.
I don’t know why we have all these solar safety regulations. We rooftop guys should each be given a quota of allowable deaths. It would seem an easy task to stay below the national average.

That sounds horrific, yet however you slice it, ESKOM has been allowed such a quota.

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