Eskom is in a death spiral. The power stations are crumbling from years of neglect. It will take 100’s of Billions in ZAR to fix them, and Trillions to stop loadshedding altogether. Money that will come from where we ask? Non-payment is rising fast. The culture of non-payment plus the cost of living crisis is making a turn-around in this trend almost impossible. Eskom and SA are insolvent!
HYBRID-OFF-GRID: Members need to shift most of their power consumption to daytime hours.
The Power Shift intervention aims to help our members to shift night-time power consumption by 5 GWh to the day-time time-slot. This is equivalent to an average of around 5 kWh per household per day. Night-time power consumption should not exceed optimal battery capacity. How? (1) By switching off all non-essential power usage from 10 pm to 4 am time-slot. (2) By only using a 12 volt lighting system in the 11 pm to 5 am night-time-slot. Power Down tackles the high power consuming activities.
HYBRID-OFF-GRID: Members need to decrease their electricity consumption substantially.
Members will need to reduce the total amount of electricity they consume by over 50% in most cases. The first step is to stop wasteful energy use. There are many ways to do this. Switching off appliances, lights, etc. that are not needed is the first step. A top power saving action is installing a heat pump which reduces the amount of electricity it takes to heat water — saving you 66% of the electricity currently used. See the #PowerCAN Heat Pump Initiative
HYBRID-OFF-GRID: Members will need to install a Solar PV System that can generate at least 120% of their reduced power demand.
The Solar Power intervention promotes the installation of 2 GWp of solar systems. At an average of 5 GWh per 12 hours (6 am to 6 pm), approximately 10 GWh of power will be generated per day from 2 GWp. The installation of 2 GWp of solar PV will cost our members a total of +/- R30B — R30,000 per member on average.
Possible in South Africa? YES! In South Africa, by the end of August 2023, solar panels capable of generating 4.5GW have been installed, that is 2.5GW more than a year ago.
HYBRID-OFF-GRID: Members need to include burning biomass for heat or for generating electricity.
An entirely new Biomass Energy System will need to be established using regenerative development principles. The 10 GWh of Biomass Energy used by our members per day includes: Gas from Biogas Digesters, Heat from Combustion, CCHP + Biofuels + Biochar from Pyrolysis, etc. The energy value of most of the biomass we envision society will use for energy is on average approximately 21-23.5 MJ per kg — about 6 kWh. The average calorific value of biogas is about 21-23.5 MJ per m³ — which is equal to 0.5-0.6 l diesel fuel — about 6 kWh.
HYBRID-OFF-GRID: Members need to install batteries and / or an air-compressor to balance your demand.
The Power Storage intervention is focused on adding 1 GWh of household and microgrid scale battery storage. The 1 GWh of battery storage will be used power essential services. At R12,000 per kWh the installation of 5 GWh of battery storage will cost +/- R60B. Around R60,000 per member!
During an Eskom Media briefing held on Tuesday, 12 April 2022, Eskom’s National Control Manager, Gavin Hurford, indicated that South Africa could see up to 100 days of rotational power cuts over the winter period in the worst-case scenario. (and VOILA! we are living the worst-case scenario.)
Load-shedding can be stopped altogether if an additional new capacity of between 4,000 MW and 6,000 MW is added to the grid. — Eskom
YES 6,000 MW of additional generating capacity would surely help, however, there are too many high risk factors that make this ‘band-aid’ solution a temporary fix! We believe that communities should rather build localised grid-connected microgrids to replace at least 50% and up to 100% their reliance on Eskom. Cape Town is leading the change!
Supporting Info & Media Articles
The Eskom Station Build Up graph is a good example of how low insolation — the amount of solar radiation reaching a given area — decreases PV power generation on cloudy days — especially evident on the 9 and 10 of April 2022. The Solar IPPs (via Eskom grid) and non-Eskom Solar Systems (which not shown on the graph) create a noticeable solar trough on sunnier days! The Eskom System Hourly Demand graph shows how actual demand changes over the same period. Notice how much the non-Eskom Solar Systems must be exacerbating the IPP solar troughs.
Karpowership is trying to exploit load-shedding to tie SA into a long-term contract that would be a financial and climate albatross around the country’s neck
READ: Karpowership projects risk being another Medupi
Business Day 11-08-2022
The day has arrived for a big energy policy shift. We mostly agree with this assessment.
READ: SA needs R4-trillion to transition away from coal, and the PIC should contribute, study says
fin24 26-05-2022
Cape Town shows that we CAN end loadshedding if we have the will to do so.
READ: Cape Town launches renewable energy tenders to make it SA’s first ‘load shedding-free city’
fin24 16-02-2022
Energy-efficient appliances and behaviours can reduce incidents of load shedding
READ: Load shedding: Why the energy efficiency of your fridge matters
fin24 14-03-2022
South Africans are seeking (demanding) a JUST Transition
READ: ‘It’s our sun’: Rural South Africans seek greater gains from clean energy
fin24 28-03-2022
To transition to a low carbon economy, South Africa needs a rapid expansion of renewables
READ: SA’s just transition may require a capital investment of R4.4 trillion over 30 years
fin24 15-10-2021
The Malachite Mews microgrid is comprised of 500kW of rooftop solar PV capacity and …
READ: Blockchain renewable energy microgrids to be deployed in South Africa
Smart Energy 03-03-2021
Wheeling is increasingly being viewed as a feasible, scalable solution to the energy shortfalls in SA
READ: ‘Wheeling’: A promising solution to South Africa’s energy woes
TECHCENTRAL 22-11-2021
Eskom has revealed that several municipalities in the Free State owe the power utility R16 billion.
READ: Free State municipalities rack up R16 billion debt with Eskom
MyBroadband 30-03-2022
South Africa’s 18 million households use 60 TWh of power from Eskom per year — approximately 25% of the power generated by Eskom & the IPPs. Notably. households are the core reason that energy demand peaks in the morning and evenings.
Why? Early morning and late afternoon / early evenings are busy family times that consume a lot of energy. And, understandably, this is a very difficult time for families to adjust their power consumption. Ultimately, the easiest way to make a big difference is to switch off your geyser during these peak periods. See the #ShaveThePeak4SA Campaign.
The #PowerCAN Geyser Timer Initiative is the most cost effective way to automate your time-of-use intervention and save money! And, if you need more hot water heated during the peak demand period, then you should consider installing a Heat Pump.
The transition to renewables will require that we adjust our power use patterns. Why? Adding more solar power to the grid becomes problematic because it raises the early morning & early evening peaks relative to base power production. Time-of-use tariffs will soon become ubiquitous. This is a good reason for you to adjust your consumption now!
In conclusion, you must do what you can when you can! In other words, reduce & shift power consumption by as much as you can, try use some biomass energy and if possible, generate some solar power. Start with a few small changes and add more as you go … and join a local circle!
BELOW: Average targets for 1 household of 6 million households @ 50% of all intervention targets for South Africa. The other 50% is the responsibility of businesses, schools, municipalities, etc.
The example above shows that when averaged the targets are fairly realistic and somewhat low. Especially when one considers that they are calculated for only 1/3 of all households in South Africa being active participants.
Geyser Timer Initiative
With a payback time of between 3 to 6 months, installing a Geyser Timer is a really good investment — and you will save money and help South Africa keep the lights on!
Heat Pump Initiative
Save 66% on your water heating bill. The cost of installing a Heat Pump has payback period of less than 3 years — and it saves you a lot of money for many more years!
We all know that Eskom expects to be battling to keep the lights on for years to come. That is bad enough. However, the recent relentless surge in energy prices has rocked the foundations of our everyday lives. This threat — amongst many — is our cue. Citizens of South Africa should seize this opportunity to transition away from Eskom.
Shifting a net of 20 GWh of power consumption from peak demand periods to lower demand periods is our first priority. We intend to achieve our target of shifting a total of 24 GWh with the Geyser Timer Initiative. Notably, many households already have Geyser Timers installed by Eskom et al — unfortunately, many have been disabled. We need to ‘fix’ this!
Heating a 200 litre geyser from 30°C to 60°C uses +/- 7 kWh of electricity. Calculation: It takes 1.167 Wh (4,200 J = 1.166667 Wh) to heat one liter of water by one degree centigrade. 200 litres x 30°C x 1.167 Wh = 7,002 Wh = +/- 7 kWh.
Therefore, 4 million households with geyser timers should shift at least a net of 20 GWh from the morning and evening peaks to low demand time-periods. Calculation: 7 kWh x 4,000,000 = 28 GWh. So, even with a conservative figure of 7 kWh per household per day we should easily achieve a massive 28 GWh shift in power consumption.
NOTE 1: On average, a geyser timer will save you over R100 per month on a geyser that is older than 4 years — so, after paying a total of R300, you will have extra money in your pocket in less than 3 months! NOTE 2: From the 15 September 2018 only geysers bearing the “B Energy” label can be installed in SA — nonetheless, you will still save over R50 per month.
Local Facilitators are the interface between the #PowerCAN Initiative, communities and their residents. The Geyser Timer Initiative will be managed by Local Facilitators. Much of this facilitation is done via the capabilities of the RESCUE Exchange
Reducing the amount of non-essential energy we consume is a big step that we all need to take. To stabilise the national grid we need to remove +/- 30 GWh of power use per day. Heat pumps are one of many ways we can achieve this.
Stage 2 loadshedding is most common and it reduces load (demand) by 2 GW. Thus, in 24-hours, 48 GWh (2 GW x 24 hours) of electricity are supposedly not consumed. However, many household devices will simply consume the same amount of electricity when power comes back on — such as geyser for example. The 30 GWh is thus a good equilibrium point!
We intend to achieve most of our target of removing 30 GWh of power consumption with the Heat Pump Initiative.
Local Facilitators are the interface between the #PowerCAN Initiative, communities and their residents. The Geyser Timer Initiative will be managed by Local Facilitators. Much of this facilitation is done via the capabilities of the RESCUE Exchange
An analysis of the Power Storage Intervention in the context of economically viable scalability.
The Power Storage Intervention is primarily used for flexible on-demand peak shaving and for the balancing of intermittent surges in power demand, or drops in power generation at a nanogrid (household), microgrid & minigrid scale. Battery storage should be dynamically integrated into community based microgrids and minigrids.
For example: The Tesla Megapack can store energy from excess solar power for balancing microgrid & minigrid power supply, thereby eliminating the need for excessive generator capacity, etc. Each unit can store over 3 MWh of energy. As you can see from the accompanying image, units are based outdoors.
One Megapack unit will effectively shift 3 kWh of consumption from peak to off-peak for 1,000 households twice a day — 6 kWh per household per day. Recharging is done in the off-peak time periods when power is more abundant and cheaper!
Excess solar capacity is most often wasted and it should be used to generate energy for energy storage, including battery storage. Furthermore, in the near future, the Eskom macrogrid will continue to offer very cheap 11 pm to 4 am electricity — this opportunity should be used.
Installing 600 MWh of minigrid battery storage will require 200 Megapacks and they will cost around R6B to install. R6B is only R6,000 per household. N.B. The net benefit of the intervention is up to 1.2 GWh per day.
The Power Storage intervention includes 400 MWh of household level battery storage. Consequently, for PowerCAN households, the Power Storage intervention alone could end all loadshedding immediately.
A goal of #PowerCAN is that the 1 million households support 100,000 SOLhelp households with loans for installing Solar PV Systems and support energy transition type work to pay off the loans. This is a crowdfunding styled finance strategy with each #PowerCAN household purchasing 1 tonnes (5,000 kWh) of firewood over two years.
SOLhelp members pay their SOLhelp loan installments using SOL tokens which they earn from e.g. working on SOLhelp projects that are cutting, packaging & selling firewood to #PowerCAN members. Wood is sold at 30 SOL (R30) per 10kg or R3,000 per ton.
With a 3 year payback time, the 1.8 kWp grid-tied Solar PV Systems with 1 kWh of battery storage will cost around R30,000 and generate around 9 kWh per day.
Local SOLhelp chapters use the local RegenCAN exchanges for transactions.
Very big changes can be achieved from millions of small steps. It will take 365 Days to stop loadshedding and a total of 5 years to transition our energy system to one with more renewables and power storage. Up to 50% the intervention targets can be reached (achieved) in the first year, and the balance will likely take four more years!
Note that half of all the intervention comes from only 6 million of the 18 million households in South Africa. The other half of the intervention, comes from community based organisations (e.g. SOLhelp), businesses, government departments (e.g. schools), municipalities, etc. — bigger steps from fewer participants.
SOLhelp — a business : community partnership — will be using a co-operative ownership model to make sure that another 6 million households will have an equitable (tangible) stake in the future of energy in South Africa. SOLhelp and RegenCAN are working together with society to help eradicate poverty.
In total, all the interventions add up to about 60 TWh of reduced power demand from Eskom & IPPs per year. The 60 TWh is 25% of the 240 TWh that Eskom & IPPs generate per year. For comparison, the Shoprite Group (incl. Checkers) uses around 1 TWh of electricity per year!
Can we safely reduce Eskom’s power generation by that much? YES we can do it and thrive! Look at the 5 Core ‘Generation’ Assumptions and you’ll realise that the writing was already on the wall long before Covid-19 and the latest surge in fossil fuel prices.
The national-grid can realistically only be managed by a single entity. Transmission will thus soon become Eskom’s primary role. With another 10 GW being decommissioned or being in maintenance & repair, Eskom’s available generation and power storage capacity will over next decade fall to below 25 GW.
Financially, Eskom will be better off because they will not need to generate power from OCGT at a loss (+R5 per kWh) and they will be able to sell baseload power 24/7. Notably, the 60 TWh in power demand reduction is equivalent to +/- 10 GW of power generation capacity.
That may seem like a lot, however, Eskom CEO André de Ruyter, estimates that 68 GW of renewable energy needs to be added by 2035 to replace the 22 GW of coal-powered electricity that Eskom will be decommissioning by then.
For perspective, Eskom’s Generation Division has 15 coal-fired power stations with an installed capacity of 44,602 MW and Koeberg with capacity of 1,934 MW — a base load generation capacity of 46,536 MW with and average availability factor of less than 60%.
Municipalities will make more money from electricity sales because their customers will not be consuming expensive Peak Tariff electricity from Eskom.
The Shoprite Group (incl. Checkers) spends close to R2.5bn per year on electricity — around 1 TWh of power consumption per year. No wonder the Shoprite Group aims to power 25% of its operations with renewable energy over the next five years!
The Shoprite Group added 22 new solar PV (photovoltaic) sites between February and September 2021, more than doubling its solar capacity from 12,300 MWh to 29,280 MWh — a 138% increase in just 7 months. When there is a will there is a way!
Checkers Sitari and the entire Sitari Village Mall located close to Somerset West, Cape Town have become South Africa’s first premium supermarket and shopping centre to run entirely off renewable energy from wind and solar sources.
Enabling Checkers Sitari to run entirely off renewable energy is the result of a 635 kWp rooftop solar PV installation and an agreement with Eskom’s Renewable Energy Tariff (RET) programme, which allows customers to source up to 100% of their electricity from renewable resources.
Eskom urgently needs to carry out additional repairs and maintenance. There is a major backlog from decades of poor maintenance. The additional maintenance of 2 GW of power generation equates to 24 TWh per year that will be unavailable to the national grid.
Many of Eskom’s old power plants need to be shut down permanently. Eskom is planing to do so but can’t due to lack of additional capacity. Now they can. This will remove +/- 23 TWh per year from the generation capacity.
When power generation from coal and pumped-storage is insufficient, then Open Cycle Gas Turbines (OCGT) are used to keep the lights on. Many millions of litres of expensive diesel are burnt. We can reduce OCGT by 1 TWh per year.
NO Nuclear Power! Shutting down the Koeberg Nuclear Power Plant will result in the loss off around 12 TWh per year. We as a country can NOT legitimately consider extending the life of Koeberg without endangering millions of lives.
NO more new Coal Plants! South Africa has one of the highest GHG footprints because of our existing coal power plants. The reality is that global markets are very anti-coal — so any new coal plants will cost us dearly in reduced international trade!
