Eskom wants to implement power cuts in Durban

[Polymathic]

If we get stage 6 loadshedding again then we're going to be without water.

 

[AlphaJohn]

Yep - its crunch time.

I have noticed that my old neighbourhood which never used to get load shedding is now all of a sudden going dark.. we are scraping the barrel now. This is an area that was excluded from load shedding for 10 years +, feels like we are running out of load to shed.

Well we can start shedding big industry, but seeing that they the only ones that pay Eskom very weary on touching them.

 

[wingnut771]

Well we can start shedding big industry, but seeing that they the only ones that pay Eskom very weary on touching them.

Yeah, they can just switch off 2 smelters and we will have no loadshedding, but no, lets destroy the whole country instead of 2 companies.

 

[dualmeister]

Bye bye Durban

 

[wingnut771]

Bye bye Durban

Pretty much.

 

[Mike Hoxbig]

I've heard similar stories. Mates of mine used to live in a similar area in Cape Town. On the same supply as 2 hospitals so they were never cut. Last year was the first time they experienced loadshedding.

I get the logic behind it if the hospital isn't geared to handle loadshedding then people could die... still irritating to hear that you're sacrificing while others just coast happily along.

That's all out the window now, even hospitals aren't being spared. My kid was in the local Netcare this weekend, and every time the power went out, there was like a 10 second delay until the generators kicked in. Some poor bastids on ventilators will have to hold their breath for those 10 seconds.

But it's cool, screw the hospitals. What matters is being sympathetic to an event that happened to a city 3 months ago, which didn't affect the majority of its residents...

 

[porchrat]

That's all out the window now, even hospitals aren't being spared. My kid was in the local Netcare this weekend, and every time the power went out, there was like a 10 second delay until the generators kicked in. Some poor bastids on ventilators will have to hold their breath for those 10 seconds.

But it's cool, screw the hospitals. What matters is being sympathetic to an event that happened to a city 3 months ago, which didn't affect the majority of its residents...

Surely they have ventilators on a UPS or something?

I can understand struggling to power something like an MRI. You'd need a massive power supply to keep that whole setup cooled and functioning.

 

[killerbyte]

Surely they have ventilators on a UPS or something?

I can understand struggling to power something like an MRI. You'd need a massive power supply to keep that whole setup cooled and functioning.

As a person who was in ICU on a non-invasive ventalator I can confirm they do have battery backup for the ventilators. If they didnt then I would have seen many people die, rather than just the one person.

 

[BEB]

@wingnut771 <sarcasm>Shame man. While reading all the angry posts above it sounds like you are THE person in SA that is responsible for deciding which cities are getting load shedded. It sounds like it can be a difficult job. I wish you good luck.</sarcasm>

 

[ShaunSA]

Fight Fight Fight!

/grabs popcorn and beers

 

[dualmeister]

Fight Fight Fight!

/grabs popcorn and beers

 

[RedViking]

Sounds fair.

We all suffer together.

 

[mr_norris]

For some of us, the real suffering is watching friends suffer

 

[Razer0]

wingnut speaks in the past tense of the floods.

He is compassionate for those who have lost electricity and water altogether.

In the spirit of "load shedding" he sees the lost 800MW in infrastructure damage to be a valid cause for exempting other areas of KZN (flooding) to contribute to current load shedding.

Currently this is not the case as has been stated in other articles, stage 6 was not chosen lightly.

Flood damaged areas still currently without power are exempt and are to be treated exceptional as one cannot shed what one doesn't have.

On the other hand, I was wondering the other day how KZN (Durban) gets its electricity, and I wonder if load shedding areas currently unaffected by the flooding will have some kind of technical impact of the "main transformer" where the imported energy lands if we were to begin load shedding?

I've felt sorry for you okes with stage 6 and have been grateful to have lights and computer on every night as if load shedding didn't exist.

 

[Kosmik]

That's all out the window now, even hospitals aren't being spared. My kid was in the local Netcare this weekend, and every time the power went out, there was like a 10 second delay until the generators kicked in. Some poor bastids on ventilators will have to hold their breath for those 10 seconds.

But it's cool, screw the hospitals. What matters is being sympathetic to an event that happened to a city 3 months ago, which didn't affect the majority of its residents...

Well, I'm on the border of pinetown and we are still rough. Water issues, random power losses due to damages, roads still badly damaged and many homes yet to be repaired.

The government had done nothing. Local repairs are all being done by volunteers and the community, it's a f***** joke.

With the existing damages, pretty sure loadshedding will blow our local infrastructure and pop the pumps that are struggling as is.

Is not something 3 months ago, a lot of us are still living it.

 

[FNfal]

Yesterday our area was off for 11 hours the day before was 5 hours , the network is poked here .

 

[porchrat]

Well, I'm on the border of pinetown and we are still rough. Water issues, random power losses due to damages, roads still badly damaged and many homes yet to be repaired.

The government had done nothing. Local repairs are all being done by volunteers and the community, it's a f***** joke.

With the existing damages, pretty sure loadshedding will blow our local infrastructure and pop the pumps that are struggling as is.

Is not something 3 months ago, a lot of us are still living it.

These sorts of areas where infrastructure has been damaged to the point where loadshedding isn't possible should be exempt until repairs can be performed to allow for loadshedding. That to me includes both places currently without power and areas with infrastructure so badly damaged that switching it off for loadshedding means it won't come back up.

wingnut's idea that that somehow exempts areas that have functional infrastructure however? Nah I can't support that.

 

[Kosmik]

These sorts of areas where infrastructure has been damaged to the point where loadshedding isn't possible should be exempt until repairs can be performed to allow for loadshedding. That to me includes both places currently without power and areas with infrastructure so badly damaged that switching it off for loadshedding means it won't come back up.

wingnut's idea that that somehow exempts areas that have functional infrastructure however? Nah I can't support that.

Problem is, those supposedly unimpacted areas tie into impacted ones on the grid. The flood didn't respect ward boundaries or segments of the city, you can have segments of a ward that were badly damaged and others are pristine. The fear with the muni, is random and cascade failures because they don't know where and what **** breaks or what is under strain currently.

Wingnuts point is that if the city is allocated x power from the grid, and the damage is already causing the reduction of x/3, then the saving to the grid is already in place. You don't store national grid power, it's based on the draw at the time for which it is provisioned and maybe some small possible storage via fly wheels etc. His point is that the muni is already NOT drawing in the capacity allocated due to the flood damages and trying to ensure stability to its own grid and protect its distribution infrastructure from failure.

Is a valid point, same as Capetown can choose to only shed @ lvl 1 when eskom at lvl2, because they are NOT drawing the full allocation from the national grid. Same with any other muni that reduces their national draw.

 

[maumau]

^
Well said

 

[RedViking]

Problem is, those supposedly unimpacted areas tie into impacted ones on the grid. The flood didn't respect ward boundaries or segments of the city, you can have segments of a ward that were badly damaged and others are pristine. The fear with the muni, is random and cascade failures because they don't know where and what **** breaks or what is under strain currently.

Wingnuts point is that if the city is allocated x power from the grid, and the damage is already causing the reduction of x/3, then the saving to the grid is already in place. You don't store national grid power, it's based on the draw at the time for which it is provisioned and maybe some small possible storage via fly wheels etc. His point is that the muni is already NOT drawing in the capacity allocated due to the flood damages and trying to ensure stability to its own grid and protect its distribution infrastructure from failure.

Is a valid point, same as Capetown can choose to only shed @ lvl 1 when eskom at lvl2, because they are NOT drawing the full allocation from the national grid. Same with any other muni that reduces their national draw.

Yeah, Stinky Richards Bay we only ever get 2 hours. We don't even have a schedule for anything past stage 4, they just switch off the industrial areas then.