Power crisis Q & A

Lindsay lectures at the University of the Western Cape's physics department. He welcomes any comments on this article.

So what are the alternatives for generating more power?

There are several options for new power generation, but not easy answers to what is the best. All have their good points and bad points. Issues such as the relative importance of global warming versus electricity costs loom large in all discussions.

Coal

Coal is still plentiful in SA and is certainly part of the answer. Whether burning it for the generation of electricity and the production of liquid fuels (Sasol) is a smart thing to do, is a debatable question, but I think light of the present energy problems, this is not an issue.

What is an issue is the cost of coal. After the "good old days" of having a coal power station on the pithead of a cheap coal mine, the picture has changed. Some of the cheap coal has run out. Hence the problems of transporting huge quantities of coal by road to the existing power stations.

Eskom is already building a new coal power station on close to the Botswana border. Unfortunately, these monsters are not built overnight. There is also a good chance of a coal powered power station in Botswana which will be aimed at the South African market.

So coal is certainly part of the answer, even though there are many detractors who worry about global warming. South Africa is a surprisingly large contributor to greenhouse gases.

Furthermore, coal is not very good for the Cape and other areas far from the coal fields.

Nuclear

Eskom has decided to make nuclear a major part of its future generation, especially for the coastal regions away from coal, despite the extremely controversial nature of the technology.

This seems to be one of those things where there is no middle ground. It is either seen as the best things since sliced bread or somewhere on par with paedophiles and drug lords. It is a proven technology that provides electrical power at a competitive rate, as shown by electricity costs in high nuclear use countries, such as France where costs are below average in the EU.

This can be refuted by arguing about the cost of storing the waste, cleaning up the power stations at the end of their life and cleaning up the uranium mines back to greenfield status.

However, this would be like including the effects of ash heaps, medicine for throat infections etc. that are the by-products of the coal industry.

Solar

Solar power has a definite role to play in the future. Eskom has traditionally been very sceptical of solar, mainly because they are psychologically disposed towards large base load plants.

There is no doubt that solar heaters on the roof of every house would be a "good" thing for the country. For a long time, Eskom did not really want us to have these, since that would have made their over supply worse (I am sure they never said so).

Supplying electricity to people with low demand, such as people in informal settlements, would have been much cheaper by putting solar panels on their roof, compared to the cost of putting in power lines to each shack. This would have advantages to the owner. There would be no need to pay Eskom over and over again.

Solar is still not economic when compared to big coal or nuclear stations to provide large "base load" power. However, there are many places where it makes sense, and the present increase in the costs will only make it more attractive in future for small users far from the grid.

Unfortunately this is hard to coordinate. To ask Eskom to do this, would be a bit like asking Ernie Els to design a Putt-Putt course. He may be one of the top golfers in the world, but he might not be the ideal choice.

Wind

Wind power is another proven technology, which is big in Germany and Denmark. It depends on the wind blowing and it is not as cheap as coal in South Africa.

Eskom tried it a Klipheuwel, but it was not clear that their hearts were in it. An independent developer has started a wind farm at Darling, despite many difficulties. Eskom had to be convinced to buy the power and there were delays due to objections by bird lovers who worry about the number of birds killed by the turbine blades. Whether this will solve our base load problems is strongly doubted by most observers.

Gas and diesel

Eskom became so desperate that they built two "gas turbine" power stations. These can be built quickly and they can get fired up in no time during peak load periods. However, the cost of the fuel was high. Now that oil has reached over $130 a barrel, you don't want to know-how expensive it is.

Hydro-electricity

Unfortunately, South Africa has pretty much used up all the options for hydro in South Africa. We don't have enough water at altitude to get much more out of it.

So where is the good news?

The world is at present in a very real bind due to the high oil price. This hits South Africa hard. We have no oil. Our balance of payments is moving further and further into the red. Luckily we do not use much oil for electricity generation as the Americans do.

So energy is a problem on all fronts. However, we do have coal and we do have uranium. It may just be that if we do go the uranium route for much of our electricity and if Sasol builds another coal to liquid plant, we could import less oil, produce much less greenhouse gases and only sit with high level nuclear waste.

But for the time being - plan more candle lit dinners.

- Fin24.com