Green Options » Eskom

South Africa Plans to Establish an Industry That Will Sell One Million Solar Water Heaters by 2014

Dave Harcourt — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 08:04:05 +0000

A renewed effort at increasing the uptake of domestic solar water heater (SWH) systems looks to replace 620 MW of electricity, to reduce carbon emissions by 2,7 million tons carbon dioxide and create jobs and develop skills and manufacturing capacity.

Personal Experience

After recently having a domestic hot water geyser fail and investigating the potential of replacing it with a solar unit, I definitely saw the need for something different to advance the penetration of solar water heating in South Africa. While replacing my electric geyser costs R 5,500, an equivalent solar installation costs around R 25,000. Eskom, the state electricity generator, provides a subsidy of around R 3,000 and indicates a payback period is 5 to 8 years.

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South Africa’s Move to Solar Power Threatened By Eskom’s Problems.

Dave Harcourt — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 12:10:37 +0000

Eskom, the South African state owned electricity generator, recently announced that it has budgeted a billion dollars over the next ten years for a demonstration and pilot concentrated solar power (CSP) plant. However, moving from budget to implementation is proving more difficult!

Why Concentrated Solar Power

Two of the widely used alternatives for collecting the suns energy are the concentrated solar power (CSP) plant where sunlight is focussed on a receiver in which a circulating working fluid is heated and used as the heating media for a conventional power station and the photo voltaic (PV) plant where sunlight is converted directly into electrical energy.

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Big Opportunity in Renewable Energy Identified in South Africa - Start of a Series of Posts

Dave Harcourt — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:25:34 +0000

Massive untapped solar radiation advantage of Africa - click for numbers

This positive report on the opportunities for Renewable Energy in South Africa is a starting point for a series of posts that will report on developments in and linked to the use of Renewable Energy in South Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Where is Renewable Energy Going in South Africa?

An almost ten fold growth in revenue from renewable energy is predicted by business research and consulting firm Frost and Sullivan’s. This emerges from their Southern African Renewable Energy Equipment Market analysis, which sees the current renewable industry in South Africa having revenues of only $28.4 million in 2008 but projects a growth to over $250 million by 2015.

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Baboons, Giant Sable, Renewable Energy in South Africa, Jatropha & Flamingos - Followup on Recent Posts

Dave Harcourt — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:20:05 +0000

This post consists of a few lines and a link to what’s happened since some of my recent posts where there has been significant action. Each item is identified and linked by the date and title of the original post.

July 2009 - Sable Antelope - One Sold for $ 385 000 and Giant Species Rediscovered in Angola.

Three more Giant Sable Antelopes, have been sighted in Angola. This brings to six the number of this rare species, which was feared to have become extinct, that have been sited in the last few weeks.

July 2009 - Mauling of Baboon by “Fighting Dogs”, Reopens the Cape Peninsular Baboon Debate

Two men were attacked by Pit Bulls in Ocean View ,the same Township in Ocean View this week, prompting a warning from welfare group TEARS.

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South Africa Starts its Renewable Energy Race

Dave Harcourt — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 13:44:04 +0000

For the first time the South African government has put in place realistic support that will begin the investment needed to reach our goal of sourcing 2% of our energy needs from renewable energy by 2013.

What Is the Challenge

In 2003 the Government set a target of 10,000 GWh of energy to be produced from renewable energy sources by 2013. At that time the strategy expected the energies to be biomass, wind, solar and small-scale hydro.

Very little progress has been made on reaching this goal although six of the 10 years have already passed.

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What Makes Solar Powered Robots Viable In South Africa?

Dave Harcourt — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 15:41:15 +0000

At the peak of the rolling blackouts in South Africa, one of the indirect consequences was an enormous snarl up in traffic flow as robots (traffic lights) went down. This significantly increased energy consumption and wasted productive time.

Yes we do call traffic lights robots in South Africa, presumably because its “A machine or device that operates automatically or by remote control”. The Department of Transport’s magazine was titled Robot until 1998 but they now seem to use Traffic Light in formal documentation.

The Central Energy Fund (CEF) of South Africa has announced a drive to install solar-powered traffic lights at critical intersections in South Africa’s major cities. The CEF foresaw an investment of R 100 million and installations at 400 intersections. This was justified by “Quantified in monetary terms, productivity losses, accidents at uncontrolled intersections, and exhaust emissions from stationary motor vehicles all have an adverse effect on the economy,”

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Electricity Emergency Response Plan - South African Industry’s Contribution

Dave Harcourt — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 12:20:25 +0000

A previous post, Rolling Blackouts to Benefit South Africa, hypothesised that the strong reaction to the rolling blackouts Eskom was forced to implement has resulted in urgent action which will in the medium term ensure South Africa has the energy systems it needs for its long term development.

In 2004 the three major users of electricity in South Africa were Industry (64.6%), Residential (17.4%) and Commerce (12.0%). It was therefore logical that once Eskom, with the “urging” of Government, faced the situation and took co-ordinated action it went to industry.

Discussions with industries and especially the large users in mining and manufacturing, were based on Eskom admitting that it was unable to guarantee supplies to industry, presenting a long term plan of action and requesting that industry manage itself to achieve an immediate 10% reduction in its consumption.

Industry supported the request although it lead to week long shut downs of a number of mines which were unable to immediately reduce their consumption without effecting the complete process.

This was termed Phase 1 of the National Emergency Response Plan and was mainly aimed at stabilising the system to avoid catastrophic shut downs that could result from instability induced by too small a margin between demand and supply.

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Rolling Blackouts to Benefit South Africa

Dave Harcourt — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 20:41:54 +0000

The rolling blackouts in South Africa have roused the country and no doubt damaged the economy. But could they also be putting South Africa on a road to a more sustainable and environmentally acceptable energy infrastructure, which should support long term growth?

In the 1980’s, South Africa invested strongly in coal-fired power stations for cheap electricity. The very low energy cost made alternate energy too expensive. The excess generating capacity lead Eskom (the national, government-owned electricity generator) to focus heavily on promoting electricity as the energy of choice. Its apparently strong position with coal energy meant Eskom did not encourage off grid or alternate energy supplies.

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PBMR Contract - 4th Generation Nuclear Power Plant by 2014

Rod Adams — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 08:46:22 +0000

PBMR (Pty) Ltd. has taken one more step in its careful journey to build a new type of nuclear power plant - one whose heat will be produced in a continuously refreshed bed of high temperature spheres made of heavy metal and graphite.

On August 22, 2008, the company announced that it had signed a contract for engineering, procurement, project and construction management (EPCM) services to build a 165 MWe commercial scale, emission free, demonstration plant near Cape Town, South Africa. The approximate value of the contract is a quarter of a billion US dollars.

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