City preventing mayor's power dream from becoming reality. David Lipschitz letter to the Cape Times published Wed 20 Apr 2016

At the City of Cape Town Energy Efficiency Quarterly Forum on Wednesday. March 16, Mayor Patricia de Lille said her dream was that every house should be a power station generating electricity for the grid. And another part of her dream is that Tesla and other electric vehicle suppliers come to town and we have electric cars and electric busses for the MyCiti system.

This is a dream I also have.

But the city is doing everything it can to prevent the mayor and my dream from becoming a reality.

Why? Because the city is scared of losing electricity revenue.

So they are sitting on their hands fiddling with electricity tariffs and service fees while their customers go elsewhere.

Some of these customers are talking about going "off grid", i.e. separating themselves from the grid. We heard at the forum that this will be economically viable within five years, using solar panels, batteries and inverters.

But the mayor's and my dream is that houses should be power stations. In order for this to happen, houses must remain connected to the grid. And for this to happen, the people who could have gone off grid will need to be incentivised to stay on the grid.

The first incentive: no service fee. At the moment, the city is instituting service or connection fees for all its clients. See the new "home user" tariff in the City's draft tariff announcement. Their reasoning is that people will need the grid from time to time to charge their batteries or to run high power loads, and that this grid infrastructure needs to be maintained.

What the city has forgotten is that it too needs electricity for its buildings, for its infrastructure, for its business clients, and soon for its electric buses. And in a few years' time for its new pumped storage systems that it will build as part of its rollout of new dams to prevent water shortages in future. These pumped storage systems are massive and efficient batteries. The City will need the cheap electricity generated by rooftop electric systems during the day to pump water from the lower dam to the higher dam and it can then sell this electricity at night or on rainy days to its users at higher prices.

Additionally surplus electricity generated during the day can be used for desalination, thus averting our water crisis and at the same time providing water for the dams.

And whist Eskom say that there will be a surplus of electricity in five years' time, who knows what it will cost. There is a massive shortage of electricity at the moment, and in five years' time thousands, or perhaps millions, of homeowners and business owners will have "defected" from the electricity grid and will be producing their own electricity for their own consumption, and will have physically disconnected themselves from the grid in order not to pay the service fees.

At the same time as this, with solar-electric prices coming down every year, within five years, solar-electric electricity will be cheaper than Eskom's selling prices to the municipalities.

Wouldn't the City rather buy cheaper, clean electricity from its own inhabitants than buy expensive, dirty electricity from Eskom?

Wouldn't it be much better to allow a free connection, but to tell home-based power stations that they must supply the grid when there is a shortage of electricity, i.e. when electricity is expensive and buy from the grid when electricity is cheap?

This is entirely feasible with modern Smart Meters, Time of Use Tariffs, Net Metering, Demand Response and existing battery technology.

[left out in the newspaper:

Net Metering means that one buys and sells electricity at the same price. I would recommend that CNEM be introduced, i.e. City of Cape Town Net Metering. In CNEM, electricity sold to the grid by home owners and other "embedded generators" is sold at 80 percent of the current buying price.

Time of Use Tariffs means that the tariff changes depending on demand and supply. And Smart Meters means that the City will know exactly how much homeowners are producing, how much they are capable of exporting to the grid, and how much they are buying or selling from or to the grid at any particular time.

Demand response means that the City can disconnect or reduce its local electricity users electricity consumption with short notice, that saving on expensive electricity from Eskom, and at the same time making the local Western Cape grid more reliable, resilient, and it's electricity cheaper than elsewhere in the world.]

The mayor and my dream can become a reality. But it needs the mayor and her committee to talk to their citizens instead of producing reports which tell the world how fantastic they are, whilst they ignore their citizens, and whilst they ignore their future.

[Also left out in the newspaper:

There is a lot of research in strategic circles of over-reliance on experts, and under-reliance on grassroots research and citizen scientists' knowledge. Experts want the status quo to stay as it is - then they can keep their jobs!! But it is time for the City to act on this research!

And once everyone is a power station, then everyone will be contributing to a healthy environment where everyone has jobs and the city remains the world's best, cleanest and healthiest city in which to live.]

Life or Death Matter. David Lipschitz letter to the Cape Times published Tue 8 Mar 2016

According to the City of Cape Town web site, dam levels are at 38.7 percent and last week they were at 40.5 percent. In 2014 they were at 81.2 percent. Theoretically Cape Town has 21 months of water left, assuming no rain, but with dams silting up, who knows how much water we really have?

See http://www.capetown.gov.za/en/water/pages/weeklydamlevels.aspx

Cape Town's dramatic population increase over the past 20 years, together with hardly any increase in dams, combined with the drought over the past two years, and lack of imagination in the City of Cape Town council and at provincial level, had led to the problem.

Some people are calling for "Level 3" water savings. If the City implements Level 3 water savings, there will be an even more dramatic reduction in income for the City.

Many people have already installed pool covers and with a reduction in watering allowances on gardens, people are seeing a 50 percent-plus drop in water consumption, with an associated decrease in income going to the City, even with the massive price increases for large, home based water users.

At Level 3, people might find ways to stop buying City water altogether! People and organisations are already finding ways not to buy electricity due to the massive price increases, together with less Eskom and municipality electricity being available. Cape Town's lack of water is a big problem, made much worse by decades of bad planning, and bad thinking! Desalination could solve our problem, but government isn't thinking about that - yet.

If people were allowed to install rooftop solar electric systems on their houses, and if we were allowed to feed our excess electricity into the grid at a reasonable price, the excess electricity could be used to desalinate water. This is much cheaper than building new dams, and dams take years to build and need rain and mountain water - and we just don't have this time, nor, with climate change, can we expect the needed rain to materialise anytime soon.

If the City runs out of water, we'll all be dead within four days, so perhaps allowing rooftop electricity is truly the answer to many of our problems! Many people have planned their retirement, but isn't it better to plan to be alive next week?

Why no load shedding recently in South Africa?

We aren't having load shedding because tens of thousands of people are installing embedded generation.

Embedded generation means generation at the point of use, or generation that is embedded inside the grid, rather than Eskom power stations which are at the source generation points on the grid.

Embedded generation including:

• solar-electric photovoltaic (PV) systems
• wind turbine systems
• generators: petrol, diesel
• gas-engines (gas generators)

Even without load shedding, electricity prices are incredibly high in South Africa, and the threat of load shedding looms for at least the next 3 years, according to Eskom, and many more years according to me and the IRP (Integrated Resource Plan).

1st April 2015: Announcement from President Jacob Zuma

"Realising that sustainable GDP growth is paramount and that taxation revenues can far exceed electricity revenues, President Jacob Zuma endorses Eskom and the Department of Energy's proposal to allow Embedded Generation using Net Metering and Time of Use Tariffs for Homeowners, without a service fee and with the same buy and sell electricity prices. Furthermore, homeowners will be treated like business owners and will be able to buy their systems before VAT and before Tax, thus levelling the playing fields with IPP's (Independent Power Producers).

"Homeowners who commit to not using the grid at peak times, ie between 7 and 10am and 6 and 8pm, will furthermore receive a 30% tax rebate on their installation costs for the battery components of the system.

"In order to ensure that the poor do not lose out, Eskom commits to not building 'Coal 3' and to use this R125 billion to give the same resources to 2.5 million households."

Yes, its April Fools, but wouldn't this headline be amazing if it were true!

"Power stations should be embedded in the system and owned by ratepayers". Insight article by David Lipschitz in the Cape Times on Friday March 13th 2015

Dear all

Article in Friday's Cape Times Insight Page. They called it "Power stations should be embedded in the system and owned by ratepayers".

Dear Editor

Ian Neilsen's announcement, in yesterday's Cape Times, that the City of Cape Town will get into the gas power station business - "Power cuts are costing Cape Town R1 billion a month" - is interesting and on the surface seems as if it should be applauded.

Neilsen said, at the Energy Efficiency Workshop at Old Mutual on March 10, that Angola is flaring its gas, and that this gas could be brought to South Africa.

Flaring is a process that has happened for decades where miners mine the oil, and burn the gas, which they see as a valueless by-product!

At a gas conference in Johannesburg on February 20, I learnt that South Africa will probably be able to directly import gas from the off-shore gas fields off the North West Coast of South Africa and offshore Namibia. In the short term, this might also be shipped to Saldanha Bay as a port of entry into South Africa. The short term in the energy business is five years!

I asked what about the new Mozambican gas fields and was told that all this gas is already sold to Asian countries who are prepared to pay more for this gas than the "market price", and more than we South Africans are prepared to pay.

I also learnt that building a gas pipeline from Saldanha Bay will take at least two years and the technology to take very high pressure gas off ships and decompress it to land​-based working pressures is incredibly expensive. Neilsen said that there are ships that can decompress the gas themselves. But how expensive are these floating decompression ships, and how much demand is there for them worldwide?

So even if the City of Cape Town goes full steam ahead with its new gas strategy, the gas is at least two years away from getting to Eskom's Ankerlig power station, near Atlantis, which currently runs using diesel. And if the City starts building a gas power station in its own territory today, how long will that take, and what of EIA's, building permits, etc? How far is the City down the road of actually working out how to implement their gas strategy?

Therefore it seems to me that Ian Neilsen is being irresponsible by promising the Western Cape that our saviour is imported gas, which is at least two years away from actually helping us with any kind of energy generation.

Businesses that are already looking at alternatives might delay their purchase decision while waiting for the City's new power stations to come on stream, and might actually be much worse off, as opposed to taking action now.

We already know that South Africa's load shedding will continue for at least another five years and probably longer. Some weeks it will not be there, but sometimes it will be daily.

What we really need is for the Western Cape government and the City of Cape Town to allow the local economy to dramatically grow by allowing embedded generation (EG) on peoples' and businesses' rooftops, gardens and fields.

Statistics from utilities in the US show that "avoided costs" in the transmission and distribution system are more than the cost of allowing net metering and EG.
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Job growth in cities which allow EG are 10 times faster than the economy as a whole and that 75% of installation jobs are local and cannot be exported.

Furthermore, the levy, a tax that every electricity user in this land has paid since 2009, should be used for the purpose it was designed! At this moment this levy is 3.5 cents a kWh and the recent budget wants to push this up to 5.5 cents a kWh!

The City should immediately take the government to the Constitutional Court to get this money for proper net metering, and if the government is not prepared to allow this, then the tax should be declared illegal and the money should be repaid to all electricity users.

I look forward to the City communicating the reality of the electricity situation in the Western Cape, and while I would like the City to have power stations, I believe that these power stations should be embedded in the system, owned by the City's shareholders, that is, its ratepayers, rather than the City itself. This system is far more efficient and less prone to corruption and time consuming delays.

Yours faithfully,

David Lipschitz

Portfolio Head Energy GCTCA ExCo

Ph 021 813 9895

Vital Solution Ignored. Letter in Cape Times on 11th March 2015

NERSA has published a request for comment on their web site regarding "net metering" and embedded generation (EG).

In South Africa, peak demand typically happens between 7am and 10am in the morning, and 6pm and 8pm in the evening.

The document assumes that EG cannot help with peak demand and ignores battery-based systems, fuel cells, biodigestors running on farms at peak times, sewerage-mining and so on.

This fundamental assumption causes the document to, again, ignore the huge potential of homeowners and rooftop owners to completely remove their peak demand and thus effectively supply the grid with electricity at peak time. Meaning South Africa's peaking power stations will not be needed, and the economy will expand.

Note that here is my full email to NERSA, based on this document:

Dear NERSA

I have read the latest discussion document dated 25th February 2015 as well as the draft discussion document dated 10th December 2014 and I have the following comments and observations:

1) The new document excludes the PV installation list from around the country. This is unfortunate as your readers will not have an idea of the scale of existing systems already being installed. Of-course this list ignores systems less than 1 MW, but nevertheless it is an interesting list.

2) The list of concerns has also been left out. One of the many reasons for the poor adoption of Embedded Generation in South Africa is because government misunderstands how important electricity generation is for the economy, and instead focuses on potential lost generation and compensation.

3) It is unfortunate that the System Profile Impact graphs have been ignored in the latest version. These graphs show how Renewable Energy will impact on the load profile of the grid. Having this information means that installers and users of EG can make proposals to move their loads to when the sun is shining.

4) Both documents assume that EG cannot help with peak demand and ignore battery based systems, fuel cells, biodigestors running on farms at peak times, sewerage-mining, etc. This fundamental assumption causes the document to again ignore the huge potential of homeowners and roof top owners to completely remove their peak demand and thus effectively supply the grid with up to 17 GW of electricity at peak time, meaning that South Africa's peaking power stations will not be needed, the economy will expand, etc.

Please acknowledge receipt of this email and add me to your communication database for the Public Hearings, etc.

Yours faithfully,
David Lipschitz

More people need to put in place embedded and micro power generation

Insight Article in the Cape Times today: "More people need to put in place embedded and micro power generation".

Dear all

Many people have been asking me "what happens if there is a blackout" and I've been replying to you and also saying, please wait a week, as I've written to the Cape Times and if they publish I'll send out the email and if they haven't published within 2 weeks, then i'll also send out the email.

I pray that you enjoy reading this email and that it allays your fears of a complete breakdown "blackout" of the South African national grid. As more and more people take responsibility for all or part of their electricity and water needs, so the risk of a complete meltdown gets less and less. At the same time as this, as Eskom does more and more of the Planned Maintenance it MUST do on its power stations and the national grid, the less chance there is of catastrophe.

Best regards, and thank you for all your support. There is no way I could continue with this endeavour without the support and encouragement I receive from you all.

David

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Dear Editor

More and more people, including MP's interviewed after President Jacob Zuma's State of the Nation Address, are asking about the chance of a nationwide electricity blackout. Such a blackout would be a catastrophe because of no water pumped, no fuel, no transport, fridges and freezers stopping to work, and after a few hours or perhaps two days, riots and civil war as people look for water and food.

The national electricity grid is about R100 billion behind on maintenance, so that means that the chance of sections of the grid going down are relatively big, as compared with there being no grid maintenance backlog.

The chance of all the power stations going down at the same time gets bigger and bigger as Eskom does less and less maintenance.

But recently, it has realised that it has to initiate load shedding so that it can do maintenance work.

I just pray that it is taking down enough of the power stations for long enough to do the required maintenance. I'd rather have four hours of load shedding a day and no chance of a blackout than 2.5 hours of load shedding a day and the chance of dying in two days time.

But there is a silver lining to the crisis.

People are installing generators, whether they are petrol, diesel, gas or renewable energy. As people and companies become self-reliant, the grid becomes more stable and the chance of a mass blackout gets less. As this is happening, more people are installing pool covers and water tanks, which also protect the need for water.

Meanwhile, Eskom has finally come to the party and asked businesses with private generators to register themselves on an Eskom database. It pays for these businesses to be part of its system, and sometimes asks these businesses to turn their generators on to prevent load shedding. In this case, Eskom pays for all or part of the cost of running the generators. But Eskom still don't want these businesses to reverse-feed the grid, so an opportunity is still being missed.

Resilience is built into the system. If only the government (ANC and DA) would allow reverse-feed, homeowners and shopping centres and other people installing generators (of any kind) could provide excess electricity into the grid, stabilising it even more.

Eskom has said for decades that embedded generators destabilise the grid, but this is plainly untrue. Turkey has confirmed the country's wind turbines have stabilised the grid. The US is installing more embedded generators, because this provides resilience and stabilises the grid and, therefore, the economy.

So the more people, businesses, shopping centres, industry and mines take responsibility for micro and embedded generation, the better for all South Africans poor and rich.

And if Eskom puts up electricity by 24% in July, private homeowners who install battery based systems might actually be able to save money on their electricity needs.

And, of-course, these homeowners aren't effected by load-shedding, except perhaps for cooking and heating elements, but even those might be economically powered come July.

From a City of Cape Town point of view, imagine if the DA had followed through and allowed Feed In Tariffs in 2009 and Net Metering in 2011. Cape Town would not be affected by load shedding, we would have the head offices of businesses based in Johannesburg moving to Cape Town, and the Western Cape would be booming, sustainably.

Yours faithfully,

David Lipschitz

Portfolio Head of Energy on the Greater Cape Town Civic Alliance Exco.

Cape Times Letter: 22nd December 2014: Make A Difference

I refer to my letter on November 6 in the Cape Times: "Delivery of power solution needed, but not at huge cost and long waiting period".

Many people disbelieve what I am saying, that it is possible for millions of homeowners and small business owners to work together in groups called embedded microgrids, to create baseload electricity for the grid in the 21st Century.

Well, here is one of the word's biggest companies, Alstom, saying the same thing:

http://microgridknowledge.com/a-constellation-of-microgrids/

It's time for the general public to believe that we can make a difference and perhaps next year we will start powering the South African electricity grid and helping Eskom and the Department of Energy with the massive task they have to kick-start the South African economy.

My Power Station - Embedded Generation

Dear all

Many people have disbelieved my writings over the past few years. Well here's one of the word's biggest energy companies, Alstom, saying the same thing!

http://microgridknowledge.com/a-constellation-of-microgrids/

I've been writing about Embedded Micro-grids for some time and renamed my company My Power Station a few years ago. Here is an example of a recent article that appeared in our local Cape Times newspaper in Cape Town: http://mypowerstation-sa.blogspot.com/2014/12/delivery-of-power-solution-needed-but.html

Regards

David