Hi Juan, This is true but it wasn’t electrical power they were really short of. Back when they decided to close down their nuclear power plants (when they got the skriks from Fukushima) Merkyl was on good terms with Putin and thought that Russian gas supply would never be cut off…
So it made sense then but now they regret that move. (There are nuclear plants that are still running and now their life will be extended for sure!)
But just watch how Germany will make a plan to deal with this all by themselves…(no help from the IMF or whoever!)
This winter will be tough. The bad trinity is about to happen. What may this bad trinity be? Well, war, already happening in parts, famine, about to start in those same parts and soon in more parts and then pandemic’s. Those are the three musketeers, they always travel together. One start, the others follow like night follows day.
Look at energy in the EU. Not able to keep warm, not able to have light, not able to farm and grow food. So you die from hunger in the dark or die from cold. Look at energy prices and availability, oh fertiliser is also energy.
Then ask the most efficient farmers, in the World what they striking about. Why their own government in Holland wants to stop them forming. How does that make sense?
Groetnis
Aaah yes, the Four horsemen, of which the last three is topical here. Red (war), black (famine), Pale (pestilence, death). The more things change, the more they stay the same, mhhh?
In software, when faced with a difficult choice, we’ll sometimes say: Pick one, and in 6 months you’ll wish you picked the other one.
Sometimes it is a good thing to employ some humility, consider what the options on the table was at the time, and to admit that if you were again faced with the same situation and the same options, you would probably make the same decision again. Hindsight is 20/20 after all.
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Interesting …
Meanwhile in Germany …
This is why I’m fascinated by history. Until you have an understanding of the context at the time you’ll never fully grasp the situation.
A classic example for me is WW2. As a kid my perception (as well as for most people?) was that the Germans were the bad guys. But as you delve a bit deeper you discover that many of the causes of WW2 go back to WW1. Ok, so the French believed then that Germany had to pay ‘reparations’ because they needed to be taught a lesson! The fact that these reparations were so punitive that it would precipitate another war was beyond their comprehension. (France lost a lot of credibility subsequently)
Getting back to the present we’re faced with the prospect of inflicting a massive ‘defeat’ on Russia. But no time to rejoice because no sooner this has happened Russia will need to be put back on its feet again…
In school I could not care less about history. It was a necessary evil, and we only learned the local history which was all about Jan Jonker Afrikaner, Hosea Kutako, the war of national resistance (1902 to 1904… see I still remember), Von Trotha and the Hereros (man, that Von Trotha was a bastard… when the German authorities heard even they were appalled!), etc etc. All very good to know, but in the larger scheme of things, not nearly as important as the history around WW2. But as much as I didn’t care, I actually remembered the broad strokes.
Let me tell you one example where it comes in. Zimbabwe. 2005. Operation Murambatsvina. Basically an copy of 10 December 1959 in Windhoek, a day which is now Namibian Human Rights day. You’d think Mugabe would have known about that? Or one of his advisors did? Apparently not… if they had known their history, and cared about it, maybe that would not have happened?
For me there is also another side to this. CS Lewis called it “Chronological Snobbery”, and GK Chesterton wrote several sarcastic pieces about people who are terribly proud of being modern, possibly because they have little else to be proud of, people who think today is better for the sole reason that it isn’t yesterday.
Those evil Germans? They were normal people, much like us. How do these things happen? Much more easily than we hope, or are careful of.
One of the least successful moral arguments is the “It’s 2022, not the 1950s!” rebuttal. The calendar makes a poor argument my friend 
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For South Africa the South West Africa campaign was a pivotal moment before WW1: The Boer war was over and SA (not any more English than before) was now part of the British empire. The Germans had a powerful transmitter in Windhoek capable of communicating with Germany so this needed to be dealt with…
So a posse was sent out to do the business… If I recall it was the classic Smuts & Botha team that led this campaign.
You have to hand it to Germany: A year later and all is quiet wrt energy supplies. Yes they have secured their energy supplies and yes they now pay a whole lot more for energy but the matter with Russian oil and gas has been dealt with!
Somehow I don’t think so - imports are way up (even if RE has increased).
and
Yeah, that article I posted on the Eskom thread re Mantashes questions … base load, where does it come from?
Sa must look at Europe, and Germany … learn from them.
We can NOT… we have no real import options (from RE sources) - unless Nambia or Bots gets going and uses the opportunity to supply us (Plonk - good money to be made).
Yes, imports of you name it energy etc. but no talk of Russian imports.
A year ago Germany was almost dependent on Russian gas. Amazing how they just get on with it and it isn’t even newsworthy!
Namibia, along with some UN funding, and Power Africa (part of USAID) is actually looking at this. Already going on a very small scale.
They plan on being 70% self-sufficient by 2030. Ambitious!
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Learn from Germany … keep the coal stations running where possible.
(Fixed.)
Not what I have read. They delayed the shutting down of the ones that were due to be decommissioned. (And also imported their power from nuke plants in France 
)
There is a problem - or the sound of pennies dropping - all over Europe (I include the UK in “Europe” for this discussion).
Everybody agrees that heat pumps instead of boilers is a good thing (though not everybody is happy to pay for the pumps). Everybody agrees that EVs are a good thing. And etc.
For this to happen means shifting from gas and petroleum to electricity, and unless the electricity is from renewables then these changes don’t really amount to any real change at all.
So it’s easy to get to a point where we say yes to electrically heating our homes, yes to using electricity to get around, yes to electric trains (it surprised me that this isn’t more of a thing already, but it seems there is still a lot of diesel/electric in use), and yes to all that lovely green energy.
Problem: Grids. They don’t have the reach and they don’t have the capacity. A recent study in the UK shows that if they are going to meet the targets their government has set, they need a four fold increase in grid capacity, and they need lots of storage on the grid.
Already there are train lines that would like to go purely electric, but somehow the grid has got to get to the places where their lines are. People want to buy EVs, but that means there is a need for a huge number of charging points, with the grid having to deliver the electricity they use.
Already there is a problem in the UK with not being able to shift renewable power - especially wind - from where it’s generated to where it’s needed because of pre-existing but until now fairly trivial bottlenecks at various points on the grid.
There is a report of one wind project that was completed and is ready to go and can generate, but everybody assumed that the necessary interfaces with the grid would be there - they’re not.
I saw a report on Sky about a similar problem in China. It is true that China is implementing solar at a very high rate. But they have grid constraints too, and a lot of their manufacturing hubs don’t get much renewable power right now and won’t for the next few years. The solution is… build more coal-fired stations. China is building lots of those too.
I suppose one response to this is to incentivise home systems, because then the electricity is generated right where it’s needed. But that’s not really electricity that is yours (government’s / utility’s) to control and to move around as you wish. So it’s not ideal.
Another scenario is playing out in the UK (maybe other places) right now. Everybody agrees that more cables are necessary. But sorry, you can’t run them through those fields. Those fields have been green and pleasant for generations, and I retired here because I like the view. Now there’s going to be pylons all over the place. Sorry! I won’t support that. You find some other way.
The proposed “some other way” is an undersea grid running around the coast. Apparently this is possible, but also expensive. It also doesn’t seem to me to entirely solve the problem. It may be a good way to get (EG) a whole lot of wind power from the North down to the South, but only to the South COAST. You still need to get into London, or Bath, or Chelmsford. So there will still have to be cables running through some field somewhere spoiling somebody’s view and the view that their grandfather had and that his grandfather before him had. Also there will be cables coming out of the sea at popular bathing spots (since no way will this be allowed on any piece of the Coast owned by the Crown or by the National Trust).
This is the sort of stuff that brings governments down. It might also scare off erstwhile governments. I can’t for the life of me see why Starmer wants to be Prime Minister.
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Read yesterday, briefly skimmed actually, that in China as in the US of A, they have/can put up massive huge enormous renewables in deserts, wind and solar panels.
But guess what!?
… yeah, the cabling to get the power where it is needed, is simply not there!!!
Seems it is an international challenge, not just in SA or in Europe.
True… but I prefer to look at this in terms of potential. It may not amount to much change right now, but it has the potential to do so, and it is at least no worse than we have right now. In fact, a lot of research suggests that running an EV from coal-generated power is actually a tiny tiny amount cleaner. Can we say the same thing (about potential) about the current way we are doing things? Coal plants and internal combustion engines are essentially as good as they will ever be.
When you tackle a large project – let’s say constructing a building – it is customary to do several tasks simultaneously. A sparky could be downstairs wiring things while a roofer is still finishing the fixing of facia boards. Similary, we’re probably going to run a lot of energy-efficient things from dirty power for a while, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile to start doing those things.
What I do have sympathy for, is that I think consumers feel like they are expected to pick up the tab. YOU have to spend money on that heat pump, or that EV, and give up some of your autonomy in terms of range of travel… while your government is dragging its feet? I get it.
What is kind of funny, is that when governments subsidise or otherwise incentivise such new tech, the detractors point to that and say: SEE! These things only work when you apply subsidies!
Well… yeah. Duhhh… for now.
This is true. There was the issue of Top Gear in which Clarkson traces an imaginary cable from an EV all the way back to the source of the power. I’m sure he made sure to use the smokiest power station in Britain as the end point.
But there’s an argument that power stations actually generate less pollutants per horse power than the engine in your car (as you say, not by a lot, but still less) because they run at a constant speed (except for Eskom’s, which are starting and stopping all the time). So if Clarkson is saying that an EV isn’t just magically green for ever and ever then he’s right, but if he’s saying there’s no difference then he needs to dig a bit deeper.
You are right. I did not mean to say that there’s no point or no real savings. If I believed that then I wouldn’t be trying to cut back my water use and I wouldn’t be separating at source and then going to the recycling points.
But being the happy, optimistic chap that I am, I do see a long, hard slog ahead of us (against a background of hot weather and massive storms).
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Context … I once asked my FIL, who is a retired engineer, why did the engineers 20-30 years ago not anticipate future growth? Build it once and build it right?
We were stuck in traffic waiting to go over a bridge being enlarged at the time.
His answer: Each generation must pay their own way.
So yeah, we have to pick up the tab. Just like our kids will in 20-30 years pick up that tab then.