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Once the highly infrastructure developed economic powerhouse of Africa, South Africans these days are more interested in the outlook for rolling blackouts. The country’s most-downloaded app provides schedules, alerts and forecasts for power outages.
Eskom, the state power monopoly, is struggling to generate enough electricity to meet needs, and has re-introduced a byzantine system of rotating outages known as “load-shedding.” On February 11th a whopping 4,000 megawatts of power, enough to power some 3m households, was cut from the national grid to prevent it from collapsing. Some businesses have bought generators and battery systems; others close during outages. In big cities, there is chaos at rush hour as traffic lights go dark. The blackouts suit copper-cable thieves, who can steal without fear of electrocution. And when the electricity is switched backed on, substations sometimes explode, resulting in secondary outages.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2019/02/21/why-the-lights-keep-going-out-in-south-africa
[paywall: you can see the whole article in 'anonymous view' through startpage.com]
More on the situation:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/267263-south-africas-electricity-system-is-falling-apart-and-it-is-much-bigger-than-just-eskom.html
How to bring back the lights in South Africa?
(Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday April 24 2019, @03:48AM (1 child)
This didn't have to happen, folks. They ran out of beautiful Coal. And they're trying the Renewable, which doesn't work. Kills all your Birds & gives you Cancer. Nobody told them, they can buy Clean Coal from America. As much as they want, as much as they need. As much, as they can afford. Where was Cheatin' Obama? He came to our Country from Africa. And when Africa was having a big problem, he could have solved it very easily for them. With 4 little words, Buy American Clean Coal. He monkeyed it up, he didn't say the magic words. And Nambia is having Black Outs all over the place. When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing, their whole country turns black. No TV, no Lights, can you imagine? Talk to me Nambia, I'll get you a GREAT DEAL!!!!
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 24 2019, @12:41PM
A good implementation of renewable do work, just check:
https://www.electricitymap.org/?page=country&solar=false&remote=true&wind=false&countryCode=PT [electricitymap.org]
And Portugal is still very late for solar energy, but for wind energy, it works great.
Of course, when there is no wind, we have to turn on gas powered generators, increase the hydro output, but in the end, from several years already, my electric bill shows that more than half of the electricity comes from renewable, being the wind almost 50% (and sometimes more then 50%) of the total
Portugal already had several days where it produced more wind electricity than it could use. Also notice that excess (or cheap) eletricity is used to pump water back to higher dams, so it could be converted later again back to electricity when needed. Basically renewable energy storage.