In the middle of writing this, I was hit by load shedding, and have had to relocate to finish the story.

Settle in for the long haul, because this isn’t a hole that we’re climbing out any time soon.

Yesterday we crunched the numbers comparing Eskom in 2008 to Eskom in 2018, and it didn’t paint a pretty picture.

Then there were the experts who said that Eskom is “beyond redemption”, “kaput” and, my personal favourite, an “energy skunk on quicksand”.

You can read all about that here.

So yes, we are in this mess for a while, and at a press conference yesterday Pravin Gordhan outlined what has led us to this stage, and what comes next.

First up, via BusinessTech, here’s what’s snowballed to get us here:

• Planned power outages alongside breakdowns in the system meant that the power utility had not been able to meet national electricity demands;
• Another major issue has to do with the maintenance of the current system. This includes a failure to set aside enough money for repairs, possible sabotage and poor quality maintenance;
• The new Kusile and Medupi power stations are underperforming due to sub-standard work by the original equipment manufacturers;
• A decline in maintenance expenditure and the availability of parts.

Yeah, and State Capture and all that jazz, of course.

Perhaps this is the most damning part of what he had to say:

“(Eskom) became ‘famous’ for signing midnight contracts to obtain coal. Literally within a couple of hours a contract would be crafted.

“Now we are told it takes one year to contract – from one night to one year. This shows that there is something wrong in this kingdom,” Gordhan said.

With regards what happens from here on out, Pravin was somewhat cagey with the deets:

Gordhan said that while he was unable to give assurances, the goal is to try and cut down on stage 2 load shedding within the next week. “Our objective is that we don’t want load shedding level 2 by next week,” he said.

“This is the kind of (load shedding) that most irritates the citizens of this country and it is perfectly understandable  – we need to alleviate this.”

Gordhan said that from 15 December to 15 January there should be a lower demand for power because of the shutdown by industry over the festive period, “and there should be no load shedding during this period”.

All senior managers have been asked to cancel their leave and have been assigned to power stations, the minister said.

“When we come back to work in mid-January up until the end of March we ideally want to tell the public that there will be no level 2 load shedding,” Gordhan said.

OK, so best case scenario is stage one load shedding at least until March, but I feel like we’re in for more stage two than somebody is letting on.

He also pledged that “Eskom would be better at communicating load shedding schedules and which areas will be impacted”.

Their load shedding site is very hit and miss, so if you’re more into your apps, and notifications sent to your phone before disaster strikes, you’ll find some options here.

Hang in there, friends, and if you live in Cape Town and you’re a glass half full kind of person, you could always take the advice of Enver Duminy, CEO at Cape Town Tourism:

Cape Town is an outdoors, adventure destination. We also look at how we position, saying if there is load shedding there’s so many activities people can do in the interim because it’s normally only about 2 hours.

Go play outside and forget about it, man.

[source:bustech]