Sunday 12 July 2015

South Africa's action plan to keep the lights on

South Africa's so-called "energy war room", established to address the country's energy supply problems, was focused on implementing government's five-point plan, Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Tuesday.

The minister said this at a media briefing held by the Economic Sectors, Employment and Infrastructure Development Cluster at the Imbizo Centre in Cape Town, which he chairs.

The government has been hosting briefings on the implementation of government's programme of action following President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address on 12 February.

Nkwinti said the five-point plan entailed:
  • implementing Eskom's maintenance and capacity improvement programme;
  • introducing new generation capacity through coal;
  • entering into co-generation contracts with the private sector;
  • introducing gas-to-power; and
  • accelerating demand side management.

In December last year, Cabinet announced that a war room had been set up following the power outages which were impacting on the daily lives of South Africans. The war room is made up of the departments of Energy; Co-operative Governance and Traditional Affairs; Public Enterprises; Economic Development; Water and Sanitation; the Treasury and Eskom; as well as technical officials.

The Government will provide R23-billion to Eskom in the next fiscal year to improve its finances to minimise load-shedding, Nkwinti said.

One of government's objectives in the medium- to long-term included the diversification of the country's energy sources, he said, and state-owned companies were "undertaking programmes to accelerate the exploration for oil and gas".

A number of exploration wells would be drilled over the next 10 years in partnership with the private sector, and gas infrastructure would be expanded.

Efforts to diversify the energy supply would include importation of hydro-power and nuclear and renewable energy.

Revitalising agriculture


Nkwinti said the government had set aside R2-billion to establish agri-parks in 53 district municipalities. The 27 poorest of these would be prioritised during the 2015/16 financial year.

Read more: http://www.southafrica.info/news/energy-plan-260215.htm#ixzz3fi6PnybS

Thursday 2 July 2015

Solar energy

Solar energy is radiant light and heat from the sun harnessed using a range of ever-evolving technologies such as solar heating, photovoltaics, solar thermal energy, solar architecture and artificial photosynthesis.

It is an important source of renewable energy and its technologies are broadly characterized as either passive solar or active solar depending on the way they capture and distribute solar energy or convert it into solar power. Active solar techniques include the use of photovoltaic systems, concentrated solar power and solar water heating to harness the energy. Passive solar techniques include orienting a building to the Sun, selecting materials with favorable thermal mass or light dispersing properties, and designing spaces that naturally circulate air.

The large magnitude of solar energy available makes it a highly appealing source of electricity. The United Nations Development Programme in its 2000 World Energy Assessment found that the annual potential of solar energy was 1575 – 49387 EJ. This is larger than the total world energy consumption in 2012, which is the total energy consumed by the world within a year, and was 559.8.

In 2011, the International Energy Agency said that "the development of affordable, inexhaustible and clean solar energy technologies will have huge longer-term benefits. It will increase countries’ energy security through reliance on an indigenous, inexhaustible and mostly import-independent resource, enhance sustainability, reduce pollution, lower the costs of mitigating global warming, and keep fossil fuel prices lower than otherwise. These advantages are global. Hence the additional costs of the incentives for early deployment should be considered learning investments; they must be wisely spent and need to be widely shared"

Energy from the Sun
About half the incoming solar energy reaches the Earth's surface.
Average insolation. The theoretical area of the small black dots is sufficient to supply the world's total energy needs of 18 TW with solar power.
The Earth receives 174,000 terawatts (TW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere. Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses. The spectrum of solar light at the Earth's surface is mostly spread across the visible and near-infrared ranges with a small part in the near-ultraviolet. Most people around the world live in areas with insolation levels of 150 to 300 watt per square meter or 3.5 to 7.0 kWh/m2 per day.
Earth's land surface, oceans and atmosphere absorb solar radiation, and this raises their temperature. Warm air containing evaporated water from the oceans rises, causing atmospheric circulation or convection. When the air reaches a high altitude, where the temperature is low, water vapor condenses into clouds, which rain onto the Earth's surface, completing the water cycle. The latent heat of water condensation amplifies convection, producing atmospheric phenomena such as wind, cyclones and anti-cyclones. Sunlight absorbed by the oceans and land masses keeps the surface at an average temperature of 14 °C. By photosynthesis green plants convert solar energy into chemical energy, which produces food, wood and the biomass from which fossil fuels are derived.
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year. Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined,

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia