Time will tell …
I can’t read the article but the headline looks like the “rock and hard place” have moved a lot closer together for @Cyril
Text below:
A presentation on the government’s urgent plans to end load shedding has leaked ahead of its release, promising to “open the floodgates for private investment in generation” and to “accelerate government procurement of renewable energy, gas and battery storage.”
It was presented to political parties by the Presidency on Monday morning and involves a two-pronged approach: improving Eskom’s capacity and increasing the energy supply.
The plan is almost identical to one presented by Eskom to government recently, and is similar to many other expert plans that have been aired in the past few weeks. It does not, however, suspend legislation or impose a state of emergency or disaster. New legislation – for instance, to regulate licensing of own generation projects – is being explored.
It reads:
Our overriding priority is to improve Eskom’s plant performance and add as much new capacity to the grid as possible, as quickly as possible. This requires removing barriers to investment in new capacity and unlocking energy from many different sources – including Eskom, independent private power producers (IPPs), businesses and households – as part of a collective, national effort.
Strategies to improve Eskom capacity include:
- ensuring capable skills and leadership are in place at all power stations by bringing back former employees;
- re-establishing good practices; and
- ensuring there are adequate budgets in Eskom for maintenance.
Government also says there are plans to ensure adequate diesel supplies by improving logistics and diesel storage capacity.
To increase energy supply in the immediate term, the government will give Eskom permission to procure excess energy from existing IPPs and allow it to buy energy from entities that produce their own power – like mines or industrial operations – in a standard offer. This is a request that Eskom made to government as far back as January.
Eskom will also be allowed to “procure immediately available power generation solutions on an emergency basis for two to three years, while ensuring transparency and cost-effectiveness.” This could clear the way for Eskom to contract with gas-fired powerships, assuming they could pass environmental regulation, which has so far blocked plans for their deployment.
Government also wants to ensure that its existing procurement programmes through the Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer Programme (Reippp) succeed and are expanded. Bid window 5 of the programme, which is facing constraints due to onerous local content requirements and pricing that is now inappropriate to global price escalations, will be assisted to ensure that “all projects close” by “adopting a pragmatic approach to local content requirements”.
Bid window 6, which is still open, will be expanded.
Options are also being considered to enable private generation “at a massive scale” by reducing red tape, waiving regulatory requirements as far as possible and exploring new legislation. Eskom will release additional land parcels for lease by private producers to establish projects.
Commercial enterprises and households will be incentivised to install rooftop solar by developing a feed-in tariff to can sell power to Eskom.
In the next three months, the presidency says that more than 7 000MW can be added to the grid. This will mostly be due to the return of units that have been out of service and the reduction of “partial load losses” which occur when units are run below capacity. The units returning to service are Koeberg 2 and Lethabo and Medupi 5 and 6, and the high voltage line from Cahora Bassa will be restored.
Within 12 months another 5 600MW are expected to come online, and within 18 months, close to an additional 10 000MW.
The additional capacity is, however, not guaranteed, as “key enablers will be required to ensure that it materialises,” says the presentation.
Ramaphosa said over the weekend that he would present the plan to the public in the next few days.
Jis, I’m not sure, what exactly are they saying, cause they say a lot yet nothing new.
But as the article also points out, and THIS is where the problem has been all this time …
Also keep in mind that the public is by now deeply suspicious of anything the government and Eskom does, and they would sooner sit in the dark than watch another national disaster being abused for the purposes of channeling funds into connected pockets. Expect resistance!
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And there we go… the line above all lines…
I see we have a family meeting at 20:00 tonight where the president will address the energy crisis.
Anything important that came out of that? I figured I’ll get the highlights off YouTube later…
Nothing… THE 10 point plan on “repeat”
Spot on the money with your prediction 
Business Unity South Africa (BUSA) says that the government must be held accountable for the new energy plan and deliver on hard deadlines and execution targets.
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I’m the type of person, don’t tell me you’ll be making a plan I assumed as much, rather tell me what your plan is.
Chalk and cheese between his announcement and the CoCT mayor announcement yesterday, his was just hot air, where with the mayor’s announcement you could sense, ok this will be happening.
He of course put together a task team to investigate and coordinate.
The police will investigate all the crime, fraud and corruption surrounding Eskom.
They will accelerate all the plans already in the pipeline.
and so on and so forth, seeing is believing.
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Must say, you called it there … “deeply suspicious”.
Nothing Rama said gave me any hint of any form of assurances as every single point he spoke of SHOULD have been done already like the police helping Eskom more actively, not creating a “new” department in the police to deal with that NOW.
And Eskom Ver 2 kept popping up in my mind the whole time he spoke … all this being NOW probably being put in place to “protect” Eskom Ver 2 probably if anything.
Every single thing he touched on was supposed to have been done in the last wot, 10 years(?).
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Putting together a task team so the different departments can keep each other up to date more regularly.
Please remind me, how old is the telephone, how old is the fax (yes some government departments still use those), how old is email?
Haha. On that topic, I want to tell you about my reaction to news from Gqeberha earlier this month, about their water crisis. The mayor apparently said that “ingryping” was about to happen, in English, there was going to be an intervention. I like the Afrikaans/Dutch word so much more, it literally means sticking your hands into the situation and grabbing onto it.
So what was this intervention going to be? Well, they are going to fix the 3000 known leaks, as well as the 3000 additional ones reported by residents.
I could hardly contain my laughter. That’s an intervention? The stuff you are supposed to do already!?
Hey, this is getting bad now, eish! We might actually have to intervene and fix these leaks ourselves! I don’t know what is up with this stuff, but it just won’t go away on it’s own!
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It is actually … no, I have no words to describe it all anymore that has not been used ad nuasium already.
The problem starts, nothing is done, the problem gets worse, nothing is done, the problem gets really bad, nothing is done and then, the problem gets so bad the Shiite is just just about to hit the fan, then the “word play starts” … and nothing is done,
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Well, I’m doing that thing again where I ask myself: Is there another way of looking at this?
Well, yes there is. Let’s say I have a team who is in charge of fixing water pipes. And they don’t do their job, or the job is more than they can handle, or whatever. Then maybe my OTHER team (who would normally have to do something else) may have to drop what they are doing, get involved, and help fix the more pressing problem. That would fit the definition of “intervene”. So if I want to be generous, and generally I try to be, maybe that is what is happening here, and maybe I should not laugh so hard.
But then, even if I concede that, it is still the case that this is something that should not have been allowed to get this bad in the first place.
Again, returning from a trip to Kimberley three weeks ago. This is a place where you begin to suffer from Trypophobia, which thankfully stops after a while as it all merges into one. My father (a Namibian) remarked about their excellent efficiency, using any open plot or even the pavement for the storage of trash instead of wastefully transporting it to the dump.
You forgot about probably the biggest elephant in this government of ours.
If that person meant to fix the pipe can’t do it because he is unqualified to do it, then fire him and get someone else, or 3 steps back, he shouldn’t have been hired in the first place.
If someone is qualified to make tea, sure hire them, but hire them to make tea with a salary to match.
Last night part of the presidents promises was getting back skilled and qualified former Eskom workers, engineers and plant managers, people who’s willing to help out. But there was no word spoken about cutting out, firing dead wood.
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Really, at this point I’m just waiting for a couple of people to google Trypophobia and navigate to the images tab… cause seriously, I just cannot make it to page 2
Ok, let’s see…
Is there anyone with PV panels for Africa in this region that has had to throttle feed in to meet the net consumer rule? Time to open the taps and ‘gooi mielies’
I think systems have mostly been designed to not over-feed since that would be a net loss (no pun intended).
Allowing net export frees the designer up to overspec more easily, since overproducing isn’t (as big) a loss.
If this comes through for residences, I would consider selling my 260w panels in the garage and putting up the max I can find, since the installation cost and labour is fixed to the number of panels, not the wattage. (See how that creeps in everywhere?)
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From Geordin Hill-Lewis:
I’m cautiously optimistic about some of the steps announced by President Ramaphosa last night.
Doubling down on Eskom as the solution to the power crisis (when it is, in fact, a cause) is a risk.
Many of the steps announced by the President are in line with what has been proposed by energy experts and economists and included in the 10-point plan to end load-shedding, that I proposed to him two weeks ago.
I am, however, concerned that the President’s plan continues to double down on Eskom as the primary solution to the nation’s power crisis, when it is in fact the cause.
The fundamental and systemic problems at Eskom will not be solved overnight. The years of corruption, mismanagement, and decline in skills and expertise at Eskom (in addition to ill-considered national government policy) are responsible for the country’s power crisis.
Even with its current strong leadership and the President’s plan, the changes required to dramatically improve Eskom’s efficiency and reliability will take years to come into effect. Further, the state’s incapacity to stop the ongoing criminal sabotage of Eskom’s assets and infrastructure raises concerns about whether the utility could ever again be up to the task of powering the nation.
This underscores the need for the City of Cape Town to continue its programme of reducing our reliance on Eskom over time, so that we can achieve energy security independently of the defective utility.
Notably, the President’s plan does not acknowledge that municipalities like Cape Town are best positioned (Constitutionally and operationally) to get new power onto the grid and into people’s homes. It is regrettable that the President has not announced any specific measures to facilitate the procurement of power by municipalities, which face mountains of delay-inducing red tape.
At the same time, the risks are too immense for us not to seek greater independence of Eskom, especially not until we see concrete evidence of turnaround at the utility financially and operationally. The City will continue to do whatever it can to decrease Cape Town’s reliance on Eskom and achieve complete energy security in this decade.
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