I was driving home the other night and noticed that all our street lights were out. At first I thought the power must be out, but then noticed that the houses on the street had electricity. So the next morning I talked to our guard and inquired how long the street lights were out. According to him, they were out for as long as he could remember. Now, I'm assuming that this is a electricity conservation method used by the local city council, which, if it is quite foolish. Dark streets provide a wonderful opportunity for crime, anywhere in the world.
So I got to thinking. SA has a electricity issue, in that there is not enough to go around. Hence the rolling black/brown outs, aka load shedding. The 40,000 megawatts currently being generated by the coal and nuclear plants is just not cutting it for this fast developing country. I've read that Eskom is building another power plant, at the cost of R30 billion in Limpopo. However, this is a coal powered plant. Since coal is not a renewable resource, in a couple years we're going to be back were we started- not enough power to go around. So what are the alternatives?
Lets start with the issue that got this thought process going. The street lights being out can be solved by solar powered street lights. A Canadian company called Hybridyne Power Systems has developed a technology where the lights can be powered by the sun (via a solar panel on top) or by the wind (via a vertical wind turbine). Furthermore, the lights can be placed anywhere, as there is no need to dig up the street to lay cable to power them.
Also,instead of spending billions on fossil fuel based plants, how about wind power or wave powered plants? SA has some amazing waves, just ask the surfers in Durban. I've heard of wave powered plants popping up in Europe, (see Ocean Power Delivery in Scotland) and a while back I read that there was a test project proposed for Mossel Bay, which is a step in the right direction.
South Africa is an amazing country and it would be wonderful to see this nation at the forefront of alternative power technologies.
2 comments:
In 1991 I turned in a paper that asked why, when Limpopo has so much sun, no one has designed a solar powered tractor to farm with? I proposed then as I insist now that it does not accord with the prevailing power of capital. This reminds me of the fight between Pepsi and Coke in this country: as soon as Coke learned of Pepsi's impending arrival in SA; Coke went around "giving" away Coke fridges to the small traders and corner cafes. All the traders had to do in return was to ensure that only coke products and coke approved products may be placed in the "free" fridges. As a result, Pepsi never took off in this country and the whole saga was blamed on the fact that it was a black run enterprise and you know how uselsess those folks can be. No one mentioned the near impossible distribution situation created by "clever" coke. Now imagine what fossil fuel friendly companies are doing right now to impede distribution? The same things that were done throughout Africa that led farmers to stop growing food in favour of cash crops like coffee and coacoa? This of course is no excuse by those in charge of these projects. Understandably some of them are now fighting for their survival on the large political chess games.
Don't you just love the socio-politico games?
As understand it, the problem with solar is that it can just never provide enough power to be the major contributor in our energy grid. Especially to power industry.
So we can use it to heat water and maybe power a significant proportion of our households. And for streetlights and that sort of thing.
But industry needs large scale power. And at the moment, that can only be provided by coal or nuclear. Or hydropower I think, if you have the right geography.
Wind power is similar to solar I think, in the sense that it can only provide a relatively small amount of power.
But these alternative forms of energy are always worth adding to the grid to lessen the amount of coal/nuclear energy we use. And to help individual people be less dependant on Eskom - by having solar power for their houses and so forth.
And I'm sure we must be able to find innovative ways to use solar power for things like farming?
I suppose (I hope??) a lot of research is going into renewable energy use at the moment. But maybe it will take a few years before we see the results of this research.
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