THE carpetbaggers are in town. You can spot them a mile off as they
trundle through customs pushing their new equivalent of briefcases so
stuffed full of whatever that it needs wheels, wearing slightly
dishevelled suits, with a cellphone in one hand and an HP calculator in
the other.
They are met by bright young men and women and
promptly whisked away. Where to, and why? They have arrived to sell us
goods no longer in demand at home; they are here to make the most of a
new market to persuade us, a largely unsuspecting public, that their
renewable energy contraptions are the answer to a maiden’s prayer.
The
vehicle is South Africa’s Renewable Energy Independent Power Producer
programme. This provides for 20-year contracts at a fixed price for
energy delivered to the grid, escalating at inflation over the entire
20-year period.Our most compact solar charger yet
fits easily in any bag. Risk? What risk? The government guarantees the
project owners against almost every eventuality. No wonder the
comparison with the end of the American Civil War (1865) is so
appropriate: here are the Northern bag men come to live well off their
Southern hosts. The aircraft are jammed with them.
The trouble
is renewable energy is under pressure everywhere. It is too expensive.
It is unreliable. Programmes are being shelved, subsidies are being cut
back, tariffs are being adjusted downwards and taxes are being
introduced to ease the pressure on energy consumers.
But,You must first understand the way a wind power generators works. my word,Much stricter controls on solvent emissions have ensured that all dry cleaning machine in the Western world are now fully enclosed. it has been a true marketing man’s picnic.A flatwork ironer with
unique features. They have used phrases like "grid parity", "free
energy from natural resources" and "green is good", and have thrown
these around to help hide the awful economics of renewable energy. Grid
Parity is the big theme. It is the Holy Grail. It holds that renewable
energy costs are the same as Eskom’s power price so Eskom should drop
all coal, nuclear and gas ambitions and switch to renewables.
So,
let’s look at grid parity, which holds within it a serious flaw in
logic. Renewable energy from wind and solar has a low capacity factor —
the amount of time per day that power is produced. It’s less than 30%
and can be as low as 15%. So, which 15%-30% of the time can power be
produced? When will the wind blow? When will the sun shine?
Let’s
have some fun. Let’s imagine the government orders taxi operators to
use those powered by renewable energy (a wind turbine on the roof).
Whenever the wind is blowing, he must use his wind-powered taxi. But
he’s a businessman. He has to get passengers from A to B, so he’s forced
to drive a petrol-powered taxi behind the renewable one so when the
wind doesn’t blow he can transfer his passengers. He has to do this all
day. Costs go up and carbon emissions remain the same.
This may sound ridiculous, but this is exactly what is being forced on Eskom.Choose your favorite street lamp paintings
from thousands of available designs. It must buy power from renewable
energy projects when it is delivered, but it cannot rely on delivery of
such power. So it has to have a backup plan. It may even assume that,
since renewable energy is so unreliable, it must continue to meet the
country’s full demand from fossil fuel stations.
The cost of
this exercise is being borne by the South African consumer. This comes
exactly when the cost of living is rising fast and the affordability of
basic requirements and services is getting beyond the reach of much of
the population.
South Africans are being exploited here, paying
subsidies to European renewable companies with a powerful and vocal
lobby conning government into thinking they have the answer to the
country’s power problem and to global warming.
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