Eskom issues nationwide power alert

[gfmalan]

True. I work there. Look on Mmegi online news.

Not only Bots, but Zim and Malawi 2

 

[deweyzeph]

The list of things that would have been better is very long indeed.

Still...I feel people aren't cutting the guys on the ground enough slack. This shtty situation is the result of disastrous planning over multiple years at the highest levels, not because Eskom staff can't manage the day-to-day situation.

It's also because the government failed to privatise Eskom when it should have and instead Eskom has become just another honey jar for the ANC fatcats to dip their chubby fingers into, and of course a massive vehicle for cadre deployment. Until electricity generation is taken out of the hands of government and completely into the private sector we will never have a stable power supply.

 

[richjdavies]

There's a few things here really.
1. Lack of planning -- that's bad management - possibly 'higher ups'; but also because the plan changed when they decided to expand electricity across everyone in the nation and/or decided to give 10% of electricity to BHP. But there are good reasons behind that.
2. Lack of ability to execute on plan / make new capacity-- how many years behind plan is Medupi?! That is certainly poor day-to-day management as well as corruption or incompetence in middle and higher management.
3. Inability to focus on the problem --> the problem isn't overall capacity, it's peak capacity. And yet, we're still trying to build massive nuclear and coal plants... big chunky things that when they go off for maintenance or are delayed by a year (like any big project), then we're suddenly tight again.
4. Using soviet planning rather than modern approaches - the focus is always on big 5 year plans, all or nothing bets on massive projects. THIS DOES NOT WORK*. You need to put your eggs in multiple baskets and know that some of them will fail. South African shouldn't be betting on One Eskom, but should have 4 or 5 of them, so if one of them tries to build the worlds biggest coal plan and it's late and overbudget, it fails... but someone doing something easier that gets it done can succeed and get bigger.

* well, it doesn't work to solve the power problem, it certainly can be used to solve the 'my uncle needs some more money in his construction business' problem. But my ancestors always told me "never attribute to malice that which can be explained through incompetence"

 

[f2wohf]

4. Using soviet planning rather than modern approaches - the focus is always on big 5 year plans, all or nothing bets on massive projects. THIS DOES NOT WORK*. You need to put your eggs in multiple baskets and know that some of them will fail. South African shouldn't be betting on One Eskom, but should have 4 or 5 of them, so if one of them tries to build the worlds biggest coal plan and it's late and overbudget, it fails... but someone doing something easier that gets it done can succeed and get bigger.

* well, it doesn't work to solve the power problem, it certainly can be used to solve the 'my uncle needs some more money in his construction business' problem. But my ancestors always told me "never attribute to malice that which can be explained through incompetence"

This is in the pipeline, there will be most likely 3 to 4 coal IPP of 2500MW.

https://ipp-coal.co.za/

But as usual, it's the Department of Energy who's pushing while Eskom tries to delay it.

 

[MrG]

#Eskom_Power_alert. Load Shedding risk tomorrow from 8am until 10pm.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=982243021802442&id=652838731409541

 

[])ragon_\/oid]

Well then, more barking from Eskom. I'm predicting no load shedding today.

 

[f2wohf]

Well then, more barking from Eskom. I'm predicting no load shedding today.

The load shedding already started !