I do find it rather interesting how a lie can spread. Take this disappointed hotel manager who couldn’t get the advertised range out of his new car.
The article doesn’t even tell you what car it is, so you grab the picture, stick it into a google image search, and you find it is a Vauxhall Mokka-E. Armed with that info, you look up the battery capacity, and you get around 47kWh useable. Knowing that on a good day you need 15kWh to do 100km, you know that’s good for around 300km, or 180 miles. The car was advertised as having 209. So… about on par with the usual marketing scheme of quoting the best case scenario. But this guy says he got only 120, or just under 200km, which means he used around 23kWh per 100km.
So… he drove it like he stole it, then called the press and didn’t mention it…
not having adequate generation capacity is not acceptable. After that the variables that will be relevant, based on the current state of the generation fleet, that will dictate the actual stage of loadshedding required, are many and varied. Seasonal heat plays a role - in the past it would have meant less of a reserve margin - now it means anything from needing some loadshedding and when combined with unexpected load, even more loadshedding, and when there are full on unplanned break downs, even more loadshedding.
Like the Eskom guy said, he worked a very long time back at the “Marketing Office” of Eskom. They were actively looking for new customers because they had so much spare. Products for Agri, for Industry, etc. Marketing the spare generation something fierce.
Now the country has grown, more people have electricity, all perfectly normal. One can say you plan for that, budget, and act on the plans/budgets.
But the day Eskom’s 20-year plans were scuttled, the funds reappropriated, then the Zuma reign … today we blame “overheating power stations”, “wat klokslag elke Des kom”, with promises each year that it is “now over” by Des of 20XX, all because we are running on a knife edge because of decisions made 20 years back, decisions thereafter made ignoring every single warning … NO foresight.
Smoke and mirrors, this decades long entire fiasco.
And THAT is my pet peeve with “overheating power stations”. Today it is a “thing”. It was NEVER supposed to get here … the engineers planned for the hot summers … back in the day.
They are both Broad Media. It’s not that the information is wrong… it’s just the inherent bias and tapping into “rage” economy that gets me. The only publication from that stable that gets a pass… is TopAuto.
I recall reading in the Guardian a few years back that SA had beaten several other countries to the punch in using gas from old coal mines to power generators. UK were trialing it, SA were doing it.
Haha. This reminds me of a jolly little gimmick that is used in the UK at election times. They put two inflatables near Commons. One is a likeness of the Tory leader, one is a likeness of the Labour leader. As results come in they add gas to the tory or the labour inflatable. And then they tell you that the leader with the most hot air will be the next PM.
suspect it is coal mine methane (CMM) / coal bed methane (CBM) based power generation - which does not appear to be very big anywhere in the world (including the other major coal/mining based methane sources like China and Australia).
Closest to local related content (from 2015)
Seems like the largest such plant is about 300MW in China (that is equal to roughly 2 of Ankerlig’s 9 x ~150MW OCGTs)
And I wondered … so it has taken this man, wot, say a decade (?) to come to this conclusion? All the suffering, all the blatant theft, the BS … and only now you are “upset” enough to resign? Ok.
Anyone who has two brain cells can just take Eskom as a “temp sensor” and realize HKGK. No, HIGK.
(HKGK - Hier Kom Groot K…K)
(HIGK - Hier Is Groot K…K)
I think that is the point - he has tried and tried to stay committed but has now reached the end… And this might be a “dam breaking” moment. I have a lot of time for a guy who can make this decision and be open and honest about it.
