re posted from IOL
Staying with the techno-economic costs of renewables, it’s important to highlight the fact that increased penetration of renewables reduces the stability and reliability of the grid. In extreme cases, this leads to grid collapse.
The true cost of renewables in SA
Eskom and the Office of the Minister of Electricity recently announced that the power utility will be spending an estimated R210 billion to build transmission lines, which will connect the remote power generating solar plants and wind farms located in parts of the Northern and Western Cape. Photo: Supplied
by Mthunzi A Luthuli, the CEO of Economic Interventions Forum of South Africa (EIFSA).
28 June 2023
Eskom and the Office of the Minister of Electricity recently announced that the power utility would be spending an estimated R210 billion to build transmission lines, which will connect the remote power-generating solar plants and wind farms located in parts of the Northern and Western Cape. This is a huge cost simply to connect renewables.The price tag is not to generate electricity, which highlights the real cost of renewables to the South African economy.
At the outset, I have to mention that I, together with many of my colleagues who share the opinions contained herein, are not climate denialists. Neither are we anti-renewables. On the contrary, we always welcome the use of new viable technologies because we are engineers. We are trained to think this way. We are also technology neutral.
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