An interesting post by a bloger made me ……

In the 2003 White Paper on Renewable Energy, DME (I guess we should be skeptical of any figures quoted by DME) gives a table of Turnkey investment cost per kW for different renewable energy sources. Wind power is listed as costing $1100 to $1700 per kW.
The only price I have thusfar for a large wind turbine, is in an article in Farmer’s Weekly of Jan 25 2008, referring to a Scottish dairy farm using Vestas V52 850kW turbines, which cost £2.3M for 3. This equates to £901 per kW, or R14 000 per kW.
Eskom’s Medupi power station will cost at least R80 billion for 4 700MW. This equates to R17 020 per kW!!!
If a V52 wind turbine, which starts producing electricity with a windspeed of 16km/h,generates on average one third of its rated capacity, this would increase its effective cost to R42 000 per kW, or 2.5X that of Medupi. Medupi costs are rising all the time, and rumour has it that projected costs are already R84 billion.

Eskom is budgeting R700 billion for 20 000MW from Koeberg style nukes, to be built from around 2015 – 2025. This equates to R35 000 per kW, not much less than a giant wind turbine generating at one third of its capacity.
In fact, a tiny 2kW Savonius rotor wind turbine from HelixWind ( http://www.helixwind.com ) costs $8500 for a low wind version, which equates to R33 000 per kW. So economies of scale don’t seem to apply to wind generation. Wind generation, whether using a tiny 2kW turbine or a giant 1MW turbine costs roughly the same CAPEX per kW as a nuke. Apart from environmental concerns, nukes require foreign engineers to maintain. (Koeberg’s reactors are maintained by French engineers, not South Africans)
Unfortunately, the experts say there is not enough wind and solar energy potential to provide all South Africa’s energy needs.

About the lowest cost giant generation plant is the proposed Grand Inga on the mighty Congo river. $50 billion for 50 000 MW, or around half the cost per watt of Medupi.
Transmission costs will be high, but Eskom is reportedly already purchasing a small amount of electricity from Inga1/Inga2 which were built decades ago.

MagLev Wind Turbine Technologies based in Arzona, USA plans to build giant Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) which use Magnetic Levitation to reduce friction of the enormous rotor. Zhongke Hengyuan Energy Technology in China will be building small vesions of this VAWT. Capacities of as much as 1000MW for a single rotor are claimed to be possible. Details, including timecales to reach such large capacities, are unavailable at this stage. Its also unclear as to whether the idea of giant skyscraper sized VAWTs is actually technically feasible, or just pie in the sky.

We should already start developing renewable energy power sources (wind, solar, biogas,…), and constantly investigate the latest developments in this field. Entry barriers are relatively low, and there is scope for South African companies to develop and produce renewable energy generation plant.
While wind and solar energy farms may be impractical for supplying energy needs of large cities, they are practical for agriculture if there is sufficient wind or solar energy potential in the area. Dairy farmers alone are losing R100 million per month due to load shedding.
Eskom has let the country down with its inability to maintain coal stockpiles at its coal power stations, and to properly maintain its ageing power plants. There is no guarantee that we will not be let down again by Eskom.

Luckily, there are a few redeeming features in your essay. I, too, look forward to living in a country where integrity is valued above deception. Literary deception. Good day, ma’m.

Exactly what is ‘black outlook’? I also thought labels like ‘dark continent’ were deemed racist. I understand that the context is the Eskom power cuts, but the undertones here are offensive.

So, instead of privatising Eskom, I believe govt opted to allow private sector companies to provide the necessary extra power plants that SA needed. In addition, it was during this time that the idea of Regional Electricity Distributors (REDs) came to the fore (semi-private institutions), causing further confusion in the electricity market. And not many questioned this rationale for the electricity market at that time. With hindsight it is easy to say this decision was wrong, or that the conditions to allow the private sector to participate was not sufficient for them to do so. E.g. the price of electricity was simply too low (they could never have competed with Eskom), govt did not provide sufficient incentives to offset this (we had other priorities at that time with taxpayer monies), many investors were pull out of investing in emerging markets over the long term following the 1997-1998 economic crises in Asia, Russia and Brazil; not enough thought, consultation and planning went into the RED concept causing underinvestment and maintenance in distribution infrastructure. Etc Etc Etc

I simply believe it is a hard lesson for SA to have learned – we made a decision hoping, in our naitivity, that the private sector will fill the gap. Blame the govt, blame Eskom, blame the many consultants who advised govt at that time, blame the private companies that never invested, blame poor timing, blame municipalities for not investing,… the list goes on and on and on. There are many excellent reports by experts in the area written about this. By the time govt gave the go ahead to Eskom in 2003/4, it was accepted that we will not have enough capacity for a few years. Planning takes 18months to 2 years alone, construction another 4-7 years.

We are in this situation now and what are we doing about this? Many strategies have been developed or suggested by people with more knowledge and experience than me on how to go about this. All I can say is that it is easy to suggest remedies, but difficult to change the culture that will be needed to make them happen. Its cheapest and easiest to build coal power stations, and SA has massive amounts of coal reserves for this to be feasible. But environmental concerns about coal in this day and age makes it not the best long term solution. Similar arguments could be made for nuclear energy. Wind and solar power, though environmentally sound, are very expensive (5 to 10 times as much as grid electricity) and provides electricity only when the sun shines or wind blows. Globally, there is an energy shortage, so most countries are suddenly searching for energy. As a result, there is a global shortage of silicon for solar panels, so even if we want to provide solar panels, we will have to either pay high prices, or stand in the queue. Even if we could, providing enough solar panels for just the residential market in SA will take at least 10 years or more. Govt and Eskom should do more to promote these types of electricity generation, and I believe that will happen in the next year or two. Nevertheless, it will not fix the problem overnight.

SAns are highly electricity inefficient due to our cheap electricity policy of the past few years. We must become more efficient. But changing culture is one of the most difficult things to do. Buying more expensive lights, either getting equipment to regulate the geyser, remembering to switch it on/off everyday, or getting an expensive solar heater. The best way to force people to become more energy efficient is to make it expensive to be inefficient. Raising prices by 50% to a 100% may make this happen, but is not socially feasible. Just remember all the boohaahaa about Eskom raising prices 14%. Even then, we will remain one of the cheapest electricty providers in the world.

But why wait for govt – if you can afford it, start generating your own power: solar water heater to replace the standard geyser, solar panels for std electricty or get a small wind turbine (for an SA manufacturer, see http://www.kestrelwind.co.za), batteries and other necessary equipment. Alternatively, get the body corporate/owners of housing complexes/estates to build these and supply the residents with power.

So you’re emigrating then? Wise move…

Mind you, if Alec Erwin was stoopid enuff to blame the Koeberg bolt on sabotague (and then egg-dance that he hadn’t) what do you expect.

The good news is that Zuma does not seem as keen on Stupid White Men and animus-ridden women as Mbeki.

That’s easy: Just follow a policy to set the price of electricity low enough so that even poor people can afford it (which is definitely the right thing to do from the social perspective, BTW), but too low to allow any substantial investment into infrastructure after the theft of electricity has been accounted for (which will lead to disaster from a technological point of view).

Eskom is in a dilemma and the recent price hikes may probably be an economic necessity.