My answer to "Engineering News How Can Embedded Generators Help Close South Africa's supply gap?"

Chart from the Engineering News article, not attributed

https://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/how-can-embedded-generators-help-close-sas-power-supply-gap-2019-04-19-1


I agree with Tobias, except that I think that the PV design needs to change. Whilst it is obvious that north facing PV is the most optimal from a production point of view, if the PV is not being used at mid-day, then it is a waste of time. The efficiency at mid day is high, but the effectiveness is low. And therefore East and West facing roofs and Ground mounted PV arrays should be included in the system. This will lengthen the Solar Day and lower the mid-day production peak. So assuming that of the 6 kW system in the diagram, what if 2 kW was West facing, 2 kW Eeat facing and 2 kW North facing. What would that do to production? Can Tobias produce a new graph that maps this change? One more point. Large scale batteries have declined by 35% in price (https://reneweconomy.com.au/more-stunning-falls-in-solar-and-battery-storage-costs-put-fossil-fuels-on-notice-31119/) in the past year. Over the past few years large scale batteries have been declining by 20% per annum. The 35% decline in the past year means that pricing decreases might be speeding up, possibly because of the introduction of Gigafactories. South Australia have already seen massive advantages in the use of Tesla Large Scale batteries, and this means that one could relatively easily and quickly get to a point where Small Scale Prosumers could be involved in electricity "production" from 6am till 10pm, and consumption from 10pm till 6am. I believe that load shifting is essential to the problems South Africa faces. I also believe that one needs to look at the bigger picture. It's not about how much money the electricity sector can make, but how much money the entire country can make because of the electricity sector. PS: One should also read https://reneweconomy.com.au/how-the-tesla-big-battery-kept-the-lights-on-in-south-australia-20393/ to get an understanding of how big batteries stabilise the grid and don't only work as peaking power stations.