November 20, 20241 yr 10 hours ago, Bobster. said: https://techcentral.co.za/south-africa-grid-scale-battery-projects/255548/ My battery is big enough to get the job done, however not sure about the battery in this article.
November 20, 20241 yr 10 hours ago, Bobster. said: https://techcentral.co.za/south-africa-grid-scale-battery-projects/255548/ OK, a bit skraal on the info, is this a battery or yet another CSP/Concentrated Solar Power plant, renamed to be a battery? Like Khi Solar One or Bokpoort where Phase 2 is busy being built at the moment, I believe . After all, unless they are building some liquid metal batteries that crave heat, I see no other reason why they'd be located here in the Northern Cape, cloudy & 32.7degC in the shade right now at 08:30, minimum temperature 25.4degC at 10 to 5 this morning... yesterday also mostly cloudy, yet, a 52.2degC peak in the shade at 5 past 3 in the afternoon. At least, I guess, the costs are not carried by the consumer, except by way of energy costs, I guess...
November 20, 20241 yr 1 hour ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: OK, a bit skraal on the info, is this a battery or yet another CSP/Concentrated Solar Power plant, renamed to be a battery? Like Khi Solar One or Bokpoort where Phase 2 is busy being built at the moment, I believe . After all, unless they are building some liquid metal batteries that crave heat, I see no other reason why they'd be located here in the Northern Cape, cloudy & 32.7degC in the shade right now at 08:30, minimum temperature 25.4degC at 10 to 5 this morning... yesterday also mostly cloudy, yet, a 52.2degC peak in the shade at 5 past 3 in the afternoon. At least, I guess, the costs are not carried by the consumer, except by way of energy costs, I guess... There are certain designated areas for renewable energy development zones (REDZ) in South Africa, they build everything there. https://www.csir.co.za/renewable-energy-development-zones
November 20, 20241 yr Author 1 hour ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: OK, a bit skraal on the info, is this a battery or yet another CSP/Concentrated Solar Power plant, renamed to be a battery? Like Khi Solar One or Bokpoort where Phase 2 is busy being built at the moment, I believe . After all, unless they are building some liquid metal batteries that crave heat, I see no other reason why they'd be located here in the Northern Cape, cloudy & 32.7degC in the shade right now at 08:30, minimum temperature 25.4degC at 10 to 5 this morning... yesterday also mostly cloudy, yet, a 52.2degC peak in the shade at 5 past 3 in the afternoon. At least, I guess, the costs are not carried by the consumer, except by way of energy costs, I guess... Part of the reason, at least for one of the "farms", would seem to be land ownership. They mention a community trust. Anyway, it looks to me like it's actual batteries. I followed one of the links in the article and got to here: https://www.mulilo.com/our-projects/ Scroll down to "Oasis".
November 20, 20241 yr Author 1 hour ago, HendrikBigChief said: There are certain designated areas for renewable energy development zones (REDZ) in South Africa, they build everything there. https://www.csir.co.za/renewable-energy-development-zones Thanks. That's interesting. Also it makes sense to do this stuff up in the NW part of the country because that is solar heaven. I'm guessing that locations further south are good for wind.
November 20, 20241 yr 3 hours ago, HendrikBigChief said: There are certain designated areas for renewable energy development zones (REDZ) in South Africa, they build everything there. Thanks, interesting, the driest portions in SA... also close to the hottest areas... 3 hours ago, Bobster. said: Anyway, it looks to me like it's actual batteries. I followed one of the links in the article and got to here: https://www.mulilo.com/our-projects/ Scroll down to "Oasis". Thanks @Bobster., now it all makes sense... these halfwhits put up some PV farms and instead of the true story coming out, namely Eishkom is probably not willing to pay as much per kWh as these dudes would like, since they are producing power at times, when, I'm guessing the demand is fairly low, so, in order to improve their earnings, they have to add battery capacity so they can time shift their energy sell period to a, more suitable time frame, like after sunset. The sodium smelters, like Bokpoort etc. don't have this problem, since their sodium reservoir is their battery and they can, I suppose produce and sell power at practically all hours... Still would be interesting to know what batteries the "Oasis" boys are cobbling together, since if it is LiFePO4's or so, they'll be spending lots of the energy produced to run aircons to keep the batteries happy, this part of the world is good for solar power production, PV & CSP, but not so great for chemical batteries,only liquid metal ones... and actually not perfect for PV either, due to the temperatures, will try and put some temperature sensors on a few of my panels one of these days, but at over 40degC in the shade for most of the day, I'm guessing the panels are probably closer to 60degC, obviously not in the shade 🙂
November 20, 20241 yr Author I know that some of the PV farms are not for supplying the likes of you and me. Their output is wheeled over the grid to some big smelter somewhere. But this doesn't look like that to me. It just looks like a way of storing power generated when demand is low and then releasing it when demand is high. Even if it's ultimately sent to some smelt house, it is still load that Eskom's generators don't have to service and so, I suppose, indirectly benefits the likes of you and me. I have seen the decoupling of generation and storage before. I remember a report on Sky news that showed a new battery farm in the UK. It was just fields full of batteries, and it stored surplus generation during times of low demand so that it could be released in times of high demand. But, to address your point, the average temperature there would be a bit lower (though there was lots of AC on display as well). The idea of using IPPs - or part of the idea - is that they have the skills and know how to do the job. I'm not convinced this is true in every case, but that's part of the assumption. Government cannot have all expertise in everything, but it can partner with people who do have a particular expertise. Municipalities should have these. Then they can implement TOU tariffs for consuming and for reselling, and they can do something with all that PV they get in the middle of the day when they don't need it. Edited November 20, 20241 yr by Bobster. Punctuation
November 21, 20241 yr 20 hours ago, Bobster. said: Their output is wheeled over the grid to some big smelter somewhere. I don't think so, since the distribution infrastructure is owned by Eishkom... I do think, though, that some of the messing about, charging high fees for the connection to the grid etc. may well be the precursor to a split between Eishkom distribution and Eishkom generation, I doubt the distribution will be privatised, since then Eishkom would not be able to control the energy cost, if loads of IPPs climb onto the grid, selling to whomever they want, which should then be possible, I guess, so expect to have Eiskom in Stereo, in the future... I hope not, but hey, "best b.... practices" and all...
November 21, 20241 yr My understanding was that in the Northern Cape only has a small transmission line that is already saturated with PV. Even if you could fill the Karoo with panels you couldn't really power the mines and smelters on it without massive investment in the grid. But that would leave room still for battery storage to supply through the three-quarters of the day, night and evening and morning, when the sun's power is either low or absent.
November 21, 20241 yr 1 hour ago, GreenFields said: Northern Cape only has a small transmission line Eishkom put in 2 X 130-odd kV lines, either side of the Orange River, by this I mean, probably 10 to 20km away from the river, feeding the solar power produced here, eastwards to join the rest of the grid... these lines have been in place, now for probably 4-odd years, in fact, longer, actually, I'll try and find out, but they are acting more as radiators of RF, than transmission lines, which should be perfectly quiet, ICASA may have to get involved, this is the problem with Eishkom, maintenance, we don't need no stinking maintenance...
November 21, 20241 yr 27 minutes ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: Eishkom put in 2 X 130-odd kV lines, either side of the Orange River, by this I mean, probably 10 to 20km away from the river, feeding the solar power produced here, eastwards to join the rest of the grid... these lines have been in place, now for probably 4-odd years, in fact, longer, actually, I'll try and find out, but they are acting more as radiators of RF, than transmission lines, which should be perfectly quiet, ICASA may have to get involved, this is the problem with Eishkom, maintenance, we don't need no stinking maintenance... Those lines are probably for REDZ7 and REDZ8, they will be used in future: Actual power lines: The pink ones are 400kV and the light blue ones are 765kV so there is plenty of infrastructure to get power from the REDZ to where it will be used. Special note for the electricity nerds, the purple lines are DC lines running up to the Cahora Bassa Hydroelectric dam. Edited November 21, 20241 yr by HendrikBigChief
November 21, 20241 yr These provinces has Generation Connection Capacity as assessed by Eskom Generation Connection Capacity Assessment 2025 Connection Capacity for IPP Generators. Below copied from the GCCA report. The report is available on the internet: Generation Connection Capacity Assessment-GCCA-2025 Edited November 21, 20241 yr by Derek3
November 21, 20241 yr Author 5 hours ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: I don't think so, since the distribution infrastructure is owned by Eishkom... Well that's what I thought wheeling is: Moving electricity over the national grid for use by an individual business. Some company somewhere (Anton Rupert's name gets checked around a lot) has bought a certain percent of Eskom's grid capacity so that they can move electricity between non-Eskom generators and their own customers. IE wheeling. I don't know if this is in operation yet, and there may not be as much interest now, but it seems to allow the creation of a two layer grid: One layer for those able and willing to pay a certain price. One for the rest of us. 5 hours ago, Kalahari Meerkat said: I do think, though, that some of the messing about, charging high fees for the connection to the grid etc. may well be the precursor to a split between Eishkom distribution and Eishkom generation, I doubt the distribution will be privatised, since then Eishkom would not be able to control the energy cost, if loads of IPPs climb onto the grid, selling to whomever they want, which should then be possible, I guess, so expect to have Eiskom in Stereo, in the future... I hope not, but hey, "best b.... practices" and all... Possibly. I hadn't thought of it in that light. But the laws allowing Eskom to be split in two, or at least a clear distinction between generation and transmission are in place. In which case we will pay a supplier for the electricity we consume, and we will pay a fixed fee for actually having the connection, having a meter read and etc. Which is what we have long had in Johannesburg anyway, unless you turned to pre-paid (which I did many years ago, and it's saved me a good amount of money) and now they are closing that door.
November 21, 20241 yr 2 hours ago, HendrikBigChief said: Those lines are probably for REDZ7 and REDZ8, they will be used in future: they are in use now and causing a lot of noise from, probably low HF all the way into the VHF spectrum... drive with your car near one of them with the radio on a FM station and hear the signal getting swamped with noise...
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