I was also always wondering where that fits in. Especially the Eskom statements with “the delay in returning to service of x generating units” and the like.
A day late and about R19 (excluding international transaction fee) short… I was bored enough to look at this.
yes, nuggets of truth to be found while seeing ads for samsung phones and Mecer products - surely the “article” does not contain mostly convenient fluff that support a clickable headline without consideration of the source (assuming there is no pay to play going on).
The analyst is for instance quoted:
“Government somehow refuses to attend to this elephant in the room. Instead, they keep throwing curveballs at other opportunistic projects,” he said.
A more complete quote is, for me, more insightful: [all following quotes from the same interview]
[3:50] government somehow refuses to attend to this elephant in the room… instead they keep on throwing the curve balls and other opportunistic projects such as you know expanding the grid doing away in terms of the transmission part of it… they talk about Renewables introducing of Renewables which none of them really attend to the real problem of load shedding.
Load shedding sits with Eskom’s power plants that are producing high level in terms of high frequency uh high voltage frequency power that needs to be transmitted into the network…the current Renewables do not produce high frequency high voltage, they produce low voltage at a lower frequency level and cannot be transmitted into the network so we can’t even waste time discussing the issue around Renewables and investment in Renewables
the major project of South Africa should be powering up the power plants returning back to Coal, bringing in fossil fuel, your gas as well as your peakers and ensuring that we have pumped Hydro storage we have nuclear as a solution.
- i.e. Expanding the grid will not stop load shedding, the lower frequency and voltage of renewables make them unhelpful for load shedding - we shall be saved by fossil fuels and nuclear?
[5:02] Load shedding was solved when we had Mpho Makwana as the chairperson of Eskom and he performed very well to the level where they immediately within 6 months managed to eliminate almost to an end of load shedding as soon as he left load shedding stages started going up
- Load shedding was fixed?
[10:00] through our intelligence we’ve picked up that there is a plan to sell Eskom before the elections they want to sell the power generating units into six packs which means they’re going to bundle up the power stations and the units into six packs of companies that should be actually buying them up those six companies will be allocated as power units and we will be told through a press conference or some announcement or a presidential executive order to say these power stations will be sold off so that we can remove the problem of load shedding and the new companies can operate and run that is the plan that is the current discussion in government
- If privatisation is the quickest answer, we are saved? Not sure why there has not been much bigger noise about this plan to sell Eskom plants
My point? I am not convinced the analyst is a very good source to draw conclusions/confirmation from about what Eskom is doing and should be doing. When reviewing the interview, the analyst’s plan to stop load shedding is that eskom/government must just fix the coal plants. How will you do that without load shedding? The analyst concludes we know Eskom/government is not doing what is needed and only talks because we have load shedding. We stop load shedding by just fixing the coal stations. We have…a circle.
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This was said in 2012 …
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544212004690/
CoCT, let’s see where they stand in wot, 2026, of solving CoCT’s issues with Renewables.
So we cannot sort CoJHB from renewables along the coast If the above thing from 2012 is still the case, CoJHB can “maak 'n plan” like CoCT and a few other place, have, are doing.
“Miniature Solar Grids” as per the interview, or as I have it, “Decentralized Grid”. Victron/SMA has made presentations for that like 10 years back if memory serves.
Probably more in response to media speculation around Eskom’s maintenance but I guess it touches on your posts…
I think no one outside of Eskom, and apparently an external service provider that reports to the board, knows what “maintenance” is being done and the true effect thereof. The terms “maintenance” and “outage” are potentially also not that useful? - planned/unplanned capacity loss are probably more relevant.
The planned maintenance part will generally be a full on “outage” and apparently includes anything from “small” defect repair to major plant overhaul that takes months to complete. In the previous financial year for instance,
an additional 30 short-term outages have been completed. In this case, short-term refers to corrective maintenance to avoid an increased risk of availability loss, and does not depend on the duration of the outage
*emphasis my own
An example of a specific longer planned outage, that technically is not maintenance (?), was Kendal Unit 3 which went out in August 2023 and only returned two weeks ago. It returned later than planned and therefore became part of unplanned capacity loss - which was one of the factors that contributed to the need for the most recent stage 6 load shedding. (Kendal have ~680MW units btw).
The reason for the outage was to upgrade the emissions equipment since Kendal has very serious problems in this regard (including leading to court cases and possible environmental Department instruction to not operate). So, this outage might contribute to less likelihood of future “non-mechanical unavailability” of the unit. Also, the time overun while adding to the unplanned capacity unavailability is actually not an example of “look, UCLF increased - something else obviously broke”. BTW, Kendal’s ash disposal facility is also being upgraded, and is reportedly 80% done.
Other planned capacity unavailability has nothing to do with maintenance. For instance:
The baseline testing of existing coal-fired units to benchmark minimum generation and ramp-rates to accommodate renewable energy penetration is critical. To this end, Medupi Unit 1, Duhva Unit 5, Kusile Unit 3 and Kriel Unit 6 have been evaluated. Given the constrained state of the system, approval to operate at minimum generation levels has not been easily obtainable, however, the remainder of the coal-fired fleet is scheduled for assessment during the 2024 financial year.
So, unless anyone can actually provide information that shows Unit X of plant A was taken out speciffically to overhaul/do a major repair (part of the famed performance recovery programme) and that unit after months performs the same/worse we can but only speculate how successful all the planned maintenance is. Looking at only EAF and PCLF/UCLF numbers/graphs will not yet do this. I do also believe though that the pace of the recovery plan is slower than hoped because of the balance between constrained capacity, trying to keep the lights on (economy or election doesn’t matter - outcome is the same) etc.
Btw, Medupi 4’s temporary second hand generator stator apparently arrived in South Africa [paywalled]
EDIT - not fond of paywalled links, so at least a pic for the curious
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City Power recently fired up their first mini-grid. This was in Alexander and serves 500 houses. There was no promise that there would be NO load shedding for those houses.
Of course, this being a City of J project, the Mayor was absent but Panyaza Lesufi was smiling for the cameras and cutting ribbons.
Ek het so bietjie opgegooi in my mond oor daai kinderagtige stelling … As a Nation, we KNEW how to generate electricity, until the Nation got new “leaders”. The ANC did not have a clue … not the Nation.
Elections are expensive you know…
VerkieslikeGroetnis
IF he is talking about the “majority” not knowing how complex the stations are…he is not wrong…
you know…the same “majority” that vote ANC and help them win elections.
I will mar be “that guy”. Why do you put the word majority in quotation marks? If the majority of total people who vote, vote in a certain direction, then as a voting group they certainly are the political majority and not “majority”?
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Amazed we are only @ Stage 4 
18 OCGT’s being used as well… (5-8l/s diesel per OCGT= 324000 l/hour minimum)
Maybe load curtailment? Don’t think curtailment is included in any numbers anywhere.
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Voluntary Power Saving (VPS) = 288MW but I think LC is in the Loadshedding Stat.
Probably because he is quoting what the man said… benefit of the doubt and all, probably not to suggest that the majority isn’t the majority. After all, democracy is being oppressed by the 51% 
Ironically we’re not too far off the number in that joke.
Then also, democracy is the worst system there is, except for all those others. Think Churchill said that. I’ve heard many suggestions for limiting voting to people who contribute economically, or for giving some people more of a vote based on some metric, of for requiring some basic level of education to vote, etc etc. In the end, all of them have the same problem: They get manipulated by those on the right side of the metric, to exclude those on the wrong side of it.
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I think if one can ban political parties and only allow individuals the problem would go away as a person then needs to stand on his own merits and not hide behind a political party.
Well we’d still have to vote on the basis of a certain set of values, of promises made. And these independents would naturally band together on certain issues.
We’d have to have a return to the old constituency based system for Parlimentary elections, and there are reasons that system was abandoned and we have PR in it’s place.
The so-called independents would still have funding from backers otherwise it wouldn’t be worth their while and they wouldn’t be able to run a campaign. And a backer could make sure that he had multiple “independents” in his pocket. So maybe parties, and having to disclose their funding, is a better system.
One thing it would do is diminish the power of the whips. They have that to a degree in the UK where even if your party kicks you out you retain your seat, because the people in your constituency picked YOU. So you’re safe until Parliament is dissolved before the next election, and then, if you have the money to run a campaign, you find out if they liked you or the party whose colours you wore.
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I do wish we had the equivalent of the Monster Raving Loony Party here. (this discussion is now seriously off course). It does lighten the mood a little, and allow us to blow a raspberry at the system.
But ISTR that one year, in local government elections, enough people blew raspberries that two MRLP candidates ended up getting elected, and now they had to start going to council meetings, putting forward proposals (because they now had a ward who had elected them and expected representation) and voting on motions. Which was not what anybody, least of all themselves, had expected.
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Because I don’t see myself as part of that group. Unsure if this is the thread for this discussion though.
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Any sellers on this forum?
No “affordable” meters yet + another few months it seems, before the “rest of us” to join the fray.