{"id":5912,"date":"2015-07-29T20:37:13","date_gmt":"2015-07-29T19:37:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5912"},"modified":"2015-07-29T20:37:13","modified_gmt":"2015-07-29T19:37:13","slug":"south-african-energy-crisis-and-a-strange-new-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5912","title":{"rendered":"South African energy crisis and a strange new solution?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Klipheuwel_wind_farm_2008\"<\/a>Last weeks “Crossing Continents” on BBC radio 4 was all about the South African energy crisis.\u00a0 South African energy crisis?\u00a0 I know- I’d not heard of it either.\u00a0 The UK is very outward facing as far as its news, but I’d not heard of this at all.\u00a0 There is however a serious problem with the South African electricity supply.\u00a0 Up unto the end of apartheid in 1994 electricity was largely for white people.\u00a0 The new government rightly promised the black majority development such as electricity and clean water and to a very large degree has delivered on these promises.\u00a0 This has meant millions more people having access to electricity.\u00a0 Another cause of the current problem is that South African energy built largely on coal, was very cheap.\u00a0 This attracted in energy intensive industries.\u00a0 So there was a huge increase in demand, but no or little increase in supply.\u00a0 South Africa messed around with the idea of building a 4th generation “pebble bed” reactor but this was abandoned before construction started after protests and enormous cost increases.\u00a0 The ANC government is building two huge coal fired power stations and more pumped storage hydro but all are years behind schedule.\u00a0 There has been a huge increase<\/a> in PV and wind on the South African grid in 2014, but these are from very low levels.\u00a0 South African electricity is no longer so cheap with very large increases in prices every year.\u00a0 This year a 25% increase was mooted.\u00a0 In the meanwhile there is no spare capacity and so all plant is run without any planned maintenance, making a bad situation worse.<\/p>\n

The current South African energy crisis is not good, there are hours of blackouts most days<\/a>, a lot of social unrest and many people stealing power.\u00a0 Whilst to most people blackouts are inconvenient to some people they are lethal.\u00a0 They make crime worse and prevent development.<\/p>\n

The South African energy crisis is not going to be solved in the short term by coal (or possibly even in the medium term given the speed of construction).\u00a0 In any case we need to stop using coal due to climate change.\u00a0 It will only be solved by stopping people stealing power, increasing energy efficiency, a switch to renewables which as we have seen in so many places can be very fast and more energy storage.\u00a0 Lithium batteries could soon be a viable proposition and faster than building more dams.\u00a0 Has one South African come up with what is not a total solution to the South African energy crisis but an interesting idea?\u00a0 This is something for the next post.<\/p>\n

Neil<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weeks “Crossing Continents” on BBC radio 4 was all about the South African energy crisis.\u00a0 South African energy crisis?\u00a0 I know- I’d not heard of it either.\u00a0 The UK is very outward facing as far as its news, but … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,29,25,4],"tags":[275,49,63],"class_list":["post-5912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climate-change","category-energy-costs","category-nuclear","category-renewables","tag-coal","tag-nuclear-power","tag-renewables-2"],"yoast_head":"\nSouth African energy crisis and a strange new solution? - The oil lamp - shining God's light on peak oil<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5912\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5912\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.theoillamp.co.uk\/?p=5912\",\"name\":\"South African energy crisis and a strange new solution? 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