Green Powered Buildings & Training?????

[insulin]

I have seen on television a building that was fitted with 3 wind turbines that was able to generate its own power for the everyone inside the building. The 3 turbines are fitted high enough for constant airflow. Also I have seen the future of sun farms and thought of a few deserts we have around us. So my question is: what is Eskom doing? All these technologies is about 15 years old now and it does deliver good amounts of power overall but yet we are staring coal power in the eye. I feel that Eskom is not committing to green power projects on a large usable scale. Considering that Eskom it the largest money pump there is in South Africa one would think that they will take the green power projects a bit more seriously. I do feel it is time that we strip Eskom from its power-god title and give a few companies the same budget and see what they can come up with. Also is Eskom training people? I cannot find a single Eskom sponsored training facility in my aria. I thought that Eskom will get behind people and help with skills development. They don’t! It is absolutely unacceptable! The N qualification system is being removed come end of this year and there is no institution that will take people in to educate them. All the institutions I know of only take people in that is already working! What do you think?

[Dave A]

It's actually not Eskom that's the problem. It's the policy demi-gods in government, particularly cabinet that have been the roadblock.

[duncan drennan]

Unfortunately the government has ploughed all its energy investment money into the pebble bed modular reactors (nuclear) which seem to have many (many) issues.

Good news is that Eskom is planning a base load solar thermal pilot plant. Only 100MW, but base load from solar thermal is an exciting opportunity. It works by melting salt with solar energy, and the salt stays molten for some time (not sure how long, maybe all night) after the sun goes down. The molten salt is used to create steam to drive a conventional generator.

Best thing that could be done for renewable energy in the country is to create a reasonable feed-in tariff.

[insulin]

I am negative thus I will say I see a lot of trouble if we do not invest in alternative power within the next 5 years. I did the numbers and it is going to be impossible to sustain industry if we don’t develop renewable sustainable power-plants. I stand to be corrected but I was told that we have enough coal for just another 10 years in my aria and that is with current stations using coal. If we add more power stations this number will drop and we will have even less.

[AndyD]

Eskom is focusing on using 'renewable energy' power plants. Sounds great, the word renewable has a green ring to it and conjures up pictures of wind turbines and solar systems............ until you scrutinize a little closer and find it refers to the six nuclear power stations they are contemplating.
Artical;

http://www.fin24.com/Business/Six-nuclear-power-stations-planned-20100908

[wynn]

Government are not interested in solving our energy crises, all they want is a project big enough to siphon off huge amounts of money from and that will do.