National blackout

Magandroid

Magandroid

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Apparently Eskom has announced a national blackout from 8pm to 10:30 pm on the 6/12 and 7/12. Still trying to confirm this though.:cry:
 
Hoax. Cant find anything of that kind on eskom or poweralert's websites.

I started a thread for all hoaxes to be dumped into.
 
May be worth going into the hoax thread. If Eskom made such an announcement it wouldn't have gone to Alberton CPF exclusively and not the major news publishers...
 
In other news the word gullible is actually not listed in a standard oxford dictionary.
 
Yeah I think this is a hoax as they can't black out more than a certain % of the grid or else they won't be able to start it back up again... or well that is the theory. We just got out of our 4th loadshed of today. :sick:
 
bgotapen said:
Yeah I think this is a hoax as they can't black out more than a certain % of the grid or else they won't be able to start it back up again... or well that is the theory. We just got out of our 4th loadshed of today. :sick:
Click to expand...
Eina. Group 5 in PE hasn't been shed at all today. One would think they'd balance it out a bit better :(
 
bgotapen said:
Yeah I think this is a hoax as they can't black out more than a certain % of the grid or else they won't be able to start it back up again... or well that is the theory. We just got out of our 4th loadshed of today. :sick:
Click to expand...
I don't know about that but, considering the effort it would take to coordinate a national black out you have to wonder what they'd be hoping to achieve.
 
We have had it twice today 6 - 8 in the morning and 10 - 12. I am half expecting a third round of load shedding
 
If I read this hoax one more time today I am gonna **** myself
 
The Duvha Power Station Turbine incident happened in February 2011 - here is the News24 link to it, as well as further links to substantiate the incident.

http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/Politics/Eskom-makes-R3bn-boo-boo-20110327

Eskom makes R3bn boo-boo

A comedy of errors has cost Eskom R3bn and severely compromised South Africa’s supply of electricity.

This has emerged after last month’s massive explosion at the Duvha power station outside *Witbank, Mpumalanga.

The February 9 explosion ripped through one of the turbines at the power station, causing extensive damage to the station’s infrastructure and immediately removing 600MW from the country’s electricity supply. That amount can power a city the size of Bloemfontein during peak hours.

It has now emerged that human error or lack of personnel caused the explosion, as it happened *during a routine check.

Eskom is investigating whether the control room at the station was unmanned when all its safety mechanisms failed during a maintenance test on February 9.

The fiasco was caused by a faulty bolt which was supposed to have slowed down the turning speed of the *turbine once it started spinning 10% faster than it was designed to.

Out of control

This failed to happen and the *turbine spun out of control. The *shut-down mechanism in the maintenance room also did not work when maintenance engineer Piet Bester, who was conducting the tests at the time, tried to shut the turbine down.

It appears that there was nobody in the control room to activate the *emergency mechanism, which would have shut down the turbine immediately.

Four seconds later the turbine exploded, sending metal shrapnel tearing through the 30m-high roof of the turbine hall.

A witness said that absolute *chaos ensued. One man, who had been showering at the time, ran outside naked.

Amazingly, nobody was injured in the explosion, which took place after working hours.

None of the other six generator units in the same turbine hall of the power station was damaged.

“This incident has happened at the worst possible time,” said Mike Rossouw, chairperson of the *Energy Intensive Users’ Group (EIUG), a coalition of big *manufacturers.

He said Eskom had already *indicated that the power reserve margin was dangerously low and that there was little room to *conduct routine maintenance.

Reliability of national grid

Rossouw said the explosion could have an effect on the *reliability of the national grid, *because scheduled maintenance at other stations was being delayed now that 600MW of generational capacity had been lost.

“We are worried that such a thing could happen again,” said Dirk *Herman of trade union Solidarity.

This showed that Eskom’s *personnel network could not handle the immense pressure, he said.

“Eskom’s investigation into the incident must be broadened to *include an audit of the state of the network and the state of Eskom staff,” he said.

Eskom’s spokesperson, Hillary Joffe, said that the incident was a *timeous warning to all South Africans to *reduce their electricity *consumption.

Two weeks ago Eskom presented a plan to government on how to force consumers to save electricity and on the issuing of fines to those who transgressed, she said.

Other links:

http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showthread.php/322109-Eskom-makes-R3bn-boo-boo

http://nolstuijt.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/duvha-powerstation-turbine-blowup-sa/

http://www.moneyweb.co.za/moneyweb-industrials/what-is-going-on-at-eskoms-duvha-power-station
 
wabbit16 said:
Eina. Group 5 in PE hasn't been shed at all today. One would think they'd balance it out a bit better :(
Click to expand...

Tell me about it - I dragged myself out of bed early today to service the generator and run the extension cables to the house and nothing… wouldn't have minded so much if I didn't have a stomach bug. :o
 
The Eskom twitter feed said hours ago they are aware of this spreading on social media and it's a hoax. A forumite posted a screen shots of it here somewhere.
 
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