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Solving Eskom’s problems

19th June 2015

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy

  

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Journalists often write about the power crisis. A result is the ‘I read it in the newspaper’ syndrome, and people go around believing that what they have read is true. Most often, it is not.

I am not going to get into how the current situation developed. I will get into how it can be solved. Here it is. If we believe that load-shedding is the answer to controlling the power system, then we must look to the load that is shed in Eskom’s stage 1, 2 and 3 load-shedding. Simply put, for staged load-shedding, Eskom wants to reduce the load by 1 000 MW during Stage 1, by 2 000 MW during Stage 2 and by 3 000 MW during Stage 3.

In the area around where I live, there are four suburbs in total that draw about 40 MW. Thus, to achieve the Stage 1 target, municipalities are instructed by Eskom to find 25 such areas and switch them off at the time of load peak. For Stage 2, more areas more often. And so on.

Let us now consider what happens when an area is switched off – some people light candles or gas lamps. But very many factories, hotels and complexes rely on standby diesel generators that they have installed as backup against power failure. Thus, these generators start and supply the factories, hotels et cetera.

Now, consider if the owner of a standby diesel generator did not want to be switched off in an arbitrary fashion. What the owner could do would be to arrange the connection of a special box that worked like this: when the owner knew that load-shedding was about to occur (from an published schedule), the owner would push a button and the standby generator would start and synchronise with the mains power supply.

After a few seconds, the connection to the mains would be interrupted and the generator would continue to supply the load. When the owner learnt that the mains was back, the button would be pushed again and the process would be reversed.

From the point of view of an observer the following has happened: the generator has started, the mains has been interrupted, the generator has consumed fuel and supplied power, the mains has been restored and the generator stopped. If the owner just relied on the generator to start automatically, then the observer would see the following: the mains has been interrupted, the generator has started, the generator has consumed fuel and supplied power, the mains has been restored and the generator stopped.

Essentially, these two processes are the same, the only difference being that, when the owner anticipates the power failure, there is no power interruption as far as the owner is concerned. Now, it would be possible to fit to the thousands of standby generators in South Africa a special box of the type I have just described. And instead of a button, a remote control through GPRS can be used so that a municipality could push a button and thus cause thousands of generators to start, synchronise and then carry load and disconnect the mains. At each location, the mains would then be interrupted for a period and, after a while, the process reversed. The result would be the same as the present system.

Further, if Eskom was to pay for each special box and the GPRS connection, it would probably cost about R50 000 for each generator. If we limit the system to generators of 500 kW and above, then Eskom would be paying at most R100 for each available kilowatt. If Eskom was to agree to pay consumers who bought into the scheme, say, R5/kW, then consumers would be only too keen to take advantage of this.

This idea is a very good one, since it is easily implemented, will not be too costly in the scheme of things and is infinitely extendable. Most importantly, it will effectively shed load by passing that load onto consumers’ generators and cause no interruptions to the power supply. I have suggested this idea to municipalities and Eskom. Neither was impressed. Why? I have written about this idea with no response. Why? It is beyond me.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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