Renewable energy’s dreadful costs and awful electricity
Unreliable capacity and excessively high costs make renewable energy nothing more than a ‘green’ idealogue’s dream
SA is stumbling towards energy disaster. On top of Eskom’s failures comes the calamitous Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) 2018, a plan for ruinously expensive electricity. (The IRP 2018, drawn up by the department of energy, plans SA’s electricity supply.) The IRP is mad, based not on the real world but on a fantasy world of computer models. The IRP’s “least-cost option” is in fact the most expensive option possible, which has seen electricity costs soaring wherever it has been tried. This is a combination of wind, solar and imported gas. It was drawn up by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and supported by the IRP. It is a recipe for calamity. It seems strange that SA should forsake its own huge resources of reliable energy and depend on foreign sources. Worse is its reliance on unreliable solar and wind. South Australia actually did implement something like the CSIR’s “least-cost option”. It closed coal stations, built wind turbines and some solar plants, and...
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