{"id":46184,"date":"2016-11-20T06:55:15","date_gmt":"2016-11-20T11:55:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetsave.com\/?p=46184"},"modified":"2016-11-20T06:55:15","modified_gmt":"2016-11-20T11:55:15","slug":"solar-wind-versus-nuclear-baseload-obsolete","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/articles\/solar-wind-versus-nuclear-baseload-obsolete\/","title":{"rendered":"Solar And Wind Versus Nuclear: Is Baseload Power Obsolete?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The future of electrical energy is playing out in South Africa, where 80% of all electricity is generated by burning coal. The government is anxious to shutter all those coal fired plants but is caught in a crossfire between advocates for nuclear power and those who favor renewable solutions like solar and wind energy.<\/p>\n

\"Solar<\/p>\n

South Africa is the most advanced economy in sub-Saharan Africa. Until 2008, its electrical power came from coal fired generating stations and one nuclear power plant. Starting in 2008, the country ran short of electricity due to poor infrastructure planning, That’s when crippling rolling blackouts began. Desperate for more electrical capacity, the government started a campaign to lure investment in wind and solar power. By June of this year, 102 renewable energy projects worth $14.4 billion had been completed.<\/p>\n

Renewable Strategy Successful<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe program has been very successful, clear of any corruption and very well run,\u201d said Wikus van Niekerk, the director of the Center for Renewable and Sustainable Energy Studies at Stellenbosch University. \u201cIt\u2019s been seen by many people in the rest of the world as one of the most successful procurement programs for renewable energy. It\u2019s something that the South African government and public should be proud about.\u201d<\/p>\n

Several of those projects are concentrated solar facilities located near Upington in the central part of the country. That area has some of the most abundant daily sunshine of any place on earth. But those facilities use technology that is now almost obsolete. They use mirrors to concentrate sunlight to boil water to make steam.<\/p>\n

After the sun goes down, they can continue to make electricity from the steam on hand for a few hours. After that, they have to wait for the sun to reappear the next day. Newer concentrated solar plants use the sun’s rays to heat molten salt<\/a>, which can be kept in storage for up to 10 hours after the sun sets and used to keep the steam turbines spinning. Researchers in Spain say using molten silicon<\/a>\u00a0can store up to ten times as much energy as molten salt.<\/p>\n

What About Nuclear?<\/h3>\n

That intermittent nature of renewable energy has left the door open for another option — nuclear power. The country’s primary utility company, Eksom, strongly favors building massive new nuclear facilities.\u00a0At 7 p.m., when demand peaks, \u201cthe wind may not be moving, and the sun has\u00a0set,\u201d said Brian Molefe, Eskom\u2019s chief executive. He added that further expansion of renewable energy should \u201cgo slow\u201d until cheap and efficient storage technology for renewables is developed.<\/p>\n

In fact, the technology for storing electricity is improving at a furious pace right now. In the past few weeks, Tesla has announced that it has doubled the energy storage capacity<\/a> of its grid scale storage batteries in just one year since they were first introduced. That prompts critics of nuclear power to ask, why invest billions in nuclear facilities now? Nukes have a useful life of 60 years or more. Going the nuclear route would delay the advent of zero emissions power by decades.<\/p>\n

Is Baseload Power An Outmoded Concept?<\/h3>\n

\u201cThe concept of baseload is actually an outdated concept,\u201d said Harald Winkler, the director of the Energy Research Center at the University of Cape Town. \u201cEskom was built around big coal and to a lesser extent big nuclear \u2014 big chunks of base\u00a0load power. It\u2019s really myopic in terms of where the future of the grid is going to go. We\u2019re going to see in South Africa and the rest of the world much more decentralized grids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Distributed Vs. Centralized Power<\/h3>\n

Ahhh, there is in a nutshell. The same fears that drive established utility companies in the United States. Europe, and Australia apply in South Africa. Utility companies think in terms of centralized grids. Renewables coupled with efficient, cost effective energy storage make grids virtually obsolete. Utility companies are petrified they may become irrelevant and the trillions of dollars invested in building grids throughout the world will stop producing income.<\/p>\n

Businesses in South African cities are increasingly installing solar panels and going off the grid. Elsewhere in Africa, it is now\u00a0common to see villagers connecting cellphones to single solar panels outside mud\u00ad brick homes.<\/p>\n

Opposition to South Africa\u2019s nuclear plans is also coming from the government\u2019s main research agency, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research. It says an expansion of solar and wind energy, in addition to natural gas, could meet South Africa\u2019s future energy needs for less money.\u00a0\u201cNo new coal, no new nuclear,\u201d said Tobias Bischof\u00adNiemz, who leads the
\ncouncil\u2019s research on energy. \u201cSouth Africa is in a very fortunate situation where we can decarbonize our energy system at negative cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Countries Are Watching<\/h3>\n

How South Africa decides to move forward could impact other African countries that are trying to provide electrical power to their citizens and lower their carbon footprint in accordance with pledges made at the COP21 global conference on climate change in Paris last December.<\/p>\n

Many of them want to leapfrog over older and dirtier sources of energy like coal and oil. Renewable\u00a0energy could also bring diversification to nations that are dangerously dependent on a single source of electricity. Both Malawi\u00a0and Zambia have experienced crippling blackouts because severe droughts related to climate change have lowered water levels. That in turn has led to less availability of hydroelectric power.<\/p>\n

Nuclear power relies completely on a centralized grid. Building grid infrastructure — transmission lines and substations — costs as much or more as a building generating facilities themselves. That’s why localized renewable power provides the most amount of electricity per dollar invested.<\/p>\n

Source: New York Times<\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0Photo Credit: Quora<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa is facing a crossroads for electric power generation. Should it go with renewables or nuclear power? The decision could affect other contries on the continent. 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Should it go with renewables or nuclear power? The decision could affect other contries on the continent.","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46184"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/184"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46184\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetsave.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}