At least be now know why EAF is where it is… Money will run out at some stage.
Eskom All F.ed-up? 
Well it’s paywalled, so all I can see is the headline. Sad to say, headlines don’t always match the actual report. So can you give us a summary?
Soooooooo … what are the bets for when LS returns?
Or is it on the way to be sorted?
Cause where I sit, solar, what is that? 23w from 5.2kW array … PAYG meter is sucking units like a Isuzu will suck diesel driving at 181.6 km/h …
Before or during the weekend…serious cold spell predicted over most of the country 
I think the improvements we have seen are the real deal. Data shows that Eskom were not burning googleplexes of diesel.
But
- City Power in Jhb are warning that there may be outages as the weather gets colder and demand increases.
- There is a lot of rooftop solar around now. That’s reducing the demand on Eskom.
- But Eskom have been saying for some time, at least back in last summer, that they could see this reduction in demand. But that didn’t translate into a immediate benefit. In fact shedding went up. So I think Eskom have upped their game.
Can this be sustained? I’d bet that City Power are right and the increased demand in winter will result in outages. But maybe not so common.
Long term? No idea. But I was encouraged by the news about that big PV installation that had come on line. Uses panels to charge batteries. Batteries discharge during the early evening peak.
I should have posted it here as well. I’ve been having discussions with people (the over a beer type, not the discussions with involved people just to be clear) and raised the thought that City Power in Johannesburg (who generally blamed loadshedding whenever something goes wrong) just simply did not put enough investment into the grid over the last couple of years and now has a problem with demand being too high for them to manage and that will lead to breakdowns that cannot be blamed on loadshedding.
Don’t get me wrong. I know loadshedding breakdowns are real and it did cost them a ton.
If you’ve driven in / around Johannesburg at night there’s a ton of ‘blocks’ of streetlights that are out. But the next night that block is on and another block is off which made my mind think that they’re doing it in an attempt to reduce load. (I believe the non-LED lights suck quite a bit of juice).
And now they announced their own load reduction for areas that are consuming ‘too much’ after these last couple of weeks of asking to reduce consumption.
I’m not against this. I know there’s limitations to what they can handle, but it’s a bit concerning that even if Eskom is managing to supply there will essentially still be loadshedding in Johannesburg during the winter months. I have already heard threats that communities will block access to the substation when they are scheduled to be ‘load reduced’ as City Power still does manual switching for a lot of substations.
City_Power_implements_load_reduction_in_areas_with_exceedingly_high_usage_levels.pdf (72.2 KB)
Some bits:
relieve the severe strain on our electricity network due to a massive increase
in energy demand
Load reduction will be implemented during peak times from 6 to 10 am and 4 to 10 pm in high-density areas and suburbs with concerning usage levels that threaten to overload the electricity equipment.
And calling it cost savings:
Load Limiting, through smart meters, will also be implemented in July to further assist customers in saving energy without switching them off completely.
And they are also switching off ripple-relay connected geysers:
we can monitor customers’ consumption load remotely. City Power will remotely switch off the customer geyser once they reach high consumption levels.
The TLDR bit:
Our network is now at critical levels due to continuous demand, which is higher than the electricity equipment can withstand. As a result, load reduction will be implemented in areas where the load exceeds the designated maximum capacity of our transformers, transmission lines, or cables.
will not exceed 2 1\2hrs per block.
1 Like
Quite possible. City Power have issued a list of areas where load will be reduced, and it is mostly areas where they have been doing a lot of disconnections. I wonder if it is about load or capacity at all. OTOH why poke a hornet’s nest if you don’t have to?
They will likely go in with police protection.
One of the areas to get “reduction” is Naturena. They have a lot of high using non-payers there. When they went to disconnect last year things got confrontational, but JMPD stepped in. City Power had gone in to disconnect specific properties, but after the confrontation they proceeded to cut off the streets where these properties were located, thus punishing people who weren’t marked down for disconnection.
This is why Johannesburg has a 1% mayor. Just about every party on either side of council can point at Mr 1% and say “it wasn’t us, it was him”. And they will.
1 Like
This is nothing compared to what recently went down in my neck of the woods where threats of violence were made to CP staff who were replacing a substation to restore power.
CP just decided it was knocking off time and went home. So this was not only uncalled for, it was counter productive.
This is quite interesting. Mirrors, in my total ignorance, what I have “stumbled across” a long time ago: Install a balanced system.
See, I used to add panels during winter till I realized one winter that from that point forward, it makes NO difference if I add more. The weather and other factors.
So I stopped adding more panels. 
… I WANT’s MORE!!! … can quickly hit HOBBY level.
But NEED’s are covered.
ROI is “balanced”. Replacement is not ridiculous in another wot, 10(?) years?
Does anyone know Discovery Green??
Seems like people have been asking that question for quite some time…
but seriously, it is part of the Discovery group (medical aid, insurance…those guys). From their web site:
Whether your business wants to maximise savings from renewable energy, or minimise business emissions, we have the products to help you achieve these objectives.
appears the “article” with a nice clickbait headline definitely succeeded as a marketing tool.
Link to the actual document referenced for the marketing piece.
That’s the model they use, if I am not mistaken. For roughly 20k or so, they will publish your advert disguised as a well written article by this guy …
1 Like
Interesting to see the replies on this post of mine about “Warning for solar users”.
Hint, over and over one would hear the question: I have so much spare, my batts are charged by 10am. What do I do with the spare?
… and then ideas come forth to solve that “21ste century problem”.
I did introduce that post with a personal note to “guide” where I’m going with it, did I not?
And I did not pay R20k for that comment of mine, written by me and again, baby/bathwater comes to mind, I quote a piece out of the original doc link posted:
Business, home user, it is a balancing act.
Yes, yes, I know, MBB.
BUT … we’ve been speculating about this for years … seems Eskom is making a move on min connection fees?
Thank snot we live in Cpt under CoCT.
1 Like
CoCT already does what that article suggest Eskom wants to do.
Look in a way, it’s quite understandable. Originally the infrastructure (and the maintenance thereof) would’ve been costed out against a certain predicted future usage income.
Now that that usage income has dried up, it has become only a less-used backup supply.
But the ESKOM sine wave to synchronize to has become more important to the user than ever.
Yeah, we don’t disagree with you about that. It’s just… you know… old news. The fact that Discovery Green is telling you about this, even though common knowledge to us old hands, is WAY more interesting. Sorry man…
To actually reply to the part you find interesting: While I agree that overinvesting in generation that you cannot use, and then taking on the additional future costs of maintaining that equipment, I don’t thing the solar panels are the biggest issue. Solar panels are cheap, comparatively. The stuff you should probably spec more carefully is inverters and batteries, especially the inverter and MPPTs, which are likely to be the shortest-lived components, and the battery, which is the most expensive.
Solar panels? They are cheap enough and last long enough that slightly overdoing it isn’t the biggest sin in the world. Besides, once you own an EV, and you see how winter time sucks down on those prepaid units, the use case for an oversized PV array (even if wasteful in summer) seems a whole lot obvious
Of course my use case is somewhat peculiar. Our EV is home by 2PM, so can charge from the sun in the afternoon, meaning a lopsided setup with too much solar may not be that silly to me.