[imagesource: Reuters / Siphiwe Sibeko /File Photo]
This weekend was perhaps the breaking point for many South Africans.
It’s one thing to experience stage six load shedding during the week. It’s quite another to have your weekend plans upended by four-and-a-half hour periods without power.
Jokes soon turned to venting, venting turned to anger, and the word ‘po*s’ trended on Twitter.
South Africa has now dropped to stage five, having teetered on the edge of stage seven yesterday. Fun fact – stage five means 5 000 MW will be shed from the grid, stage six means 6 000 MW shed from the grid, and so on.
Yesterday we shed 6 770 MW, so we were nudging stage seven. As of this morning, more than half of Eskom’s electricity generation capacity was offline.
As we carry on down this path, it’s perhaps worth considering what a ‘total blackout’ would look like. Here’s BusinessTech:
Eskom says that a total collapse of the national grid would be an unforeseen event, and its system operator would not be able to provide advanced warning should it occur.
In the event that the grid collapses, this would result in a total blackout – which would leave the entire country without any power for “a few weeks” as it recovers.
A few weeks without power and things really turn into Lord of the Flies.
Should stage eight not be sufficient to keep the grid stable, the power (f)utility will instruct municipalities to cut a specific number of megawatts. We would then be looking at load shedding in excess of 12 hours per day.
Eskom CEO Andre de Ruyter said on Sunday that there was no immediate threat of a total blackout occurring. However, Eskom still runs “black start” tests to prepare for such an event.
“A black start test is basically when you test various pieces of [power] plants to look at their adequacy, should we have an unfortunate situation when we black out the whole system,” [Eskom] said.
According to Fin24, Eskom tests all its power stations once every three years “to see whether they would be able to restore their operations following a blackout, without relying on the national grid”.
The last black start test was carried out on some power stations on August 23.
Remember this?
“Load shedding has become a thing of the past and the usage of diesel has also [been] reduced significantly, with monthly budget reduced from almost R1bn per month to R40m per month.” Lynne Brown, 6 April 2016
— ANC Quotes (@QuotesAnc) January 10, 2020
And this?
“So there is a far brighter energy outlook for the country – supply is sufficient until 2021/2022. Load shedding is a thing of the past.” Matshela Koko, 11 October 2016 [Eskom’s Group Executive: Generation, briefing the parliamentary portfolio committee]
— ANC Quotes (@QuotesAnc) January 10, 2020
Oh, this too?
“No, we don’t have an energy crisis in SA … There is no crisis here. We in SA are the only people that seem to always be inventing a crisis where none exists.” Zola Tsotsi, 11 March 2014 [The Eskom Chair on SA’s electricity supply]
— ANC Quotes (@QuotesAnc) January 6, 2020
You were saying, President Ramaphosa?
“Stage 4 was bad, we need to make sure it never happens again in South Africa. It was bad … bad for the economy and our livelihoods. Of course we should have known, but it shouldn’t happen again.” Cyril Ramaphosa, 5 April 2019 [In December 2019 Eskom went to Stage 6]
— ANC Quotes (@QuotesAnc) December 11, 2019
Speaking to CapeTalk, independent energy consultant Desmund Bernado didn’t mince his words when saying, “Get used to load shedding, and prepare for it to get worse.”
He also said that the moment we generate less than 20 000 MW, the possibility of a blackout becomes 50/50.
