Some good news at last?
THE excellent article by Susan Comrie – Sasol, CEF to open “gas bridge” to Mozambique, published on 20 July 2022 by amaBhungane (www.amabhungane.org/stories/220720-sasol-cef-to-open-gas-bridge-to-mozambique/) throws light on the potential of gas to combat not only our current chronic power situation, but indicates the role of gas as an essential part of future generation planning and how this might be achieved – and plans, it would appear, are well advanced.
At first sight, and without the benefit of Comrie’s in-depth article, it seemed to many that holding together the Tripartite Alliance is more important to the President and his DMRE Minister Gwede Mantashe than coming up with a plan to solve the 14 year old problem of loadshedding, which it has been reported at Stage 4 level, is costing the economy R1-billion/day. The statement that establishing Eskom2 will be all that is required to solve our energy woes has been roundly condemned as lunacy except by the Communist Party, for whom the statement was clearly intended, made by the President at the Communist Party’s annual get together recently.
Professor Mark Swilling, chair of DBSA and commissioner of the National Planning Commission, said recently that unless the country could be supplied with an additional 10 000MW within 2 years, the country would never be able to rid itself of Stage 4 – 6 loadshedding.
Comrie’s report will not come as good news to the renewables brigade who have been punting wind and solar as the panacea to solve our energy shortfall. Simple mathematics should tell you why it cannot.
The largest solar farm in the Northern Cape is Jasper, near Kimberly which generates +/-100MW. To fulfil our energy shortfall would take the construction of 10 000 / 100 = 100 Jaspers and realistically take up to five years to build, in the current regulatory framework.
Similarly, the largest wind turbine – not yet commercially available – is 7MW (see article in this edition – WEG to launch a 7 MW wind turbine) but the largest output installed here is 3MW, but for this argument let’s say that 5MW will be the norm. That means we’ll need +2 000 turbines to meet the 10 000MW shortfall! It’s taken 15 years to commission the +/-1 000 that we have operating at present.
Are we OK with wallpapering the countryside with windfarms and solar panels? And the logistics of connecting all these to the national grid? Is it feasible – better consult the Wind Map!
An increasingly more sensible option is surely Combined Cycle Gas Turbines (CCGT), which quickly can comfortably produce up to 3 000MW of base line power, from diesel or preferably, natural gas. The same maths means that at worst we’d only need three CCGT plants which could be located on the Mpumalanga and Free State gas fields and only take less than 18 months to deliver full capacity thereby meeting Swilling’s deadline.
If Comrie’s predictions are correct there will be sufficient gas available from the ROMPCO / Lilly pipeline as confirmation to up the output from Mozambique is already a done deal. This might just be an interim measure as the massive finds at the Kinetiko/African Energy and Renergen sites must surely make us self-sufficient for gas to power generation projects and the offtake for Sasol who want to switch from coal to gas as a feedstock.
The gas naysayers – the solar and wind interests – are already shouting ‘stranded assets’, but I don’t think so. If by some miracle we get to a point somewhere in the future where coal, nuclear and renewables (including gas) satisfy our current and projected demand for electricity, then simply sell the CCGT plants to countries that need them – there will always be a demand.
As an immediate power saving measure, why is it not mandatory that every household and commercial geyser be fitted with ‘ripple control’ – a radio / Wi-Fi controlled switch where municipalities can switch off the 5,4 million geysers during peak demand that would save us at least 10 800MW during the morning and afternoon peak. At a national cost of about R16-bn and the number of jobs it would create, it seems like a no-brainer!
Eish.
