The electricity conspiracy

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nocilah

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i was thinking last night about the suddenness of these load shedding experiences. It wasn't something that crept in. It was like BAM!

Now i am not sure how many of you know how MUCH power a mine uses, but i was told by someone who has worked in such environment that even those HUGE motors that carry lifts up and down a mindshaft use a vast amounts of power. Not sure of the figure, hence it makes sense that Eskom cut power to these mines.

However, looking at www.poweralert.co.za you get a great idea of how much power the country is pulling and i find it odd that even with these mines shutdown on friday (as they were reported to be) there was still a lot of power consumption yesterday.

Leads me to believe several thoughts:

1 - The power crisis is bigger and badder then Eskom and Government have reported
2 - Eskom have almost lost control of the situation if they are prepared to shutdown one of our most important industries
3 - The suddenness, and surprise power cuts with little to no real explanation is going to do one thing, make a complacent society of this country question current leadership.

Lets face it we are all angry. And i am throwing a theory into this forum. Zuma gets elected ANC president, power struggle within the ANC (pun intended), country faces the worst power crisis in it's history, ALL eyes are on government. It is a rife breeding ground for revolution.

Is the ANC being targeted (which is kinda of cool). If so by whom and why?

Would appreciate some thoughts and oppinions
 
The mines use something like 6 - 10% of all the power this country produces... I saw the figure somewhere recently, can't remember where.

This crisis is MUCH bigger than anyone in guavamint is letting on atm.
I think they're just flayling in the dark now since they have absolutely NO idea how to fix this.

If I was to be a conspiracy theorist and think its all part of some bigger plan, my guess is some of the high and mighty ex-ANC industry leaders could be involved.
 
The crisis was exacerbated by Koeberg switching one generator off. Once again all the crap about "we have planned for this" etc etc have proved to be just that. Soft and Warm.

It's quite obvious that no government department or parastatal controlled by the government, is capable of planning a pissup at a beer festival.
 
Does anyone know where one could find a breakdown of electricity usage of our country.

I have heard that residential electricity usuage takes up only 12% of our electricity. Would be nice to see a document or website that can shed some light on our usage (heh - xcuse the pun).
 
ToxicBunny said:
The mines use something like 6 - 10% of all the power this country produces... I saw the figure somewhere recently, can't remember where.

This crisis is MUCH bigger than anyone in guavamint is letting on atm.
I think they're just flayling in the dark now since they have absolutely NO idea how to fix this.

If I was to be a conspiracy theorist and think its all part of some bigger plan, my guess is some of the high and mighty ex-ANC industry leaders could be involved.
Click to expand...

IOL quoted 36% yesterday, hard to know what the true figure is, everything's contradictory, which is suspicious in itself. My conspiracy theory that I posted yesterday was that some people could've made a lot of money by betting on the surging gold price before this happened, nothing would surprise me anymore.
 
I received it by email but have not seen it here

By: Terence Creamer
Published: 24 Jan 08 - 11:24
Many South Africans must be pondering why it was possible for the country’s lights and heating to continue uninterrupted during the winter of 2007, when demand actually peaked in July at a record 36 513 MW, while we are now facing daily load shedding even though demand is only peaking at around 33 000 MW – it is also well off the forecast winter peak for July 2008 of over 38 000 MW.

The simple answer is that we have an energy rather than a capacity shortage, arising from a deleterious mix of planned, but more crucially, unplanned maintenance and maintenance slippages. This combination means that something like 20% of our generation capacity is currently out of service.

Engineering News Online has confirmed that there is something like 3 000 MW of capacity out for planned maintenance, and a whopping 5 000 MW down for unplanned maintenance. This is resulting in a daily shortfall of between 2 500 MW and 3 000 MW below average and peak demand.

In other words, of the 42 000 MW of nominal capacity and what appears to be an actual capacity of around 37 000 MW in the Eskom system, between 8 000 MW and 9 000 MW is currently unavailable. That means that the utility is only producing around 29 000 MW against a demand of between 31 000 MW and 33 000 MW. The result is ongoing load shedding.

It also means that Eskom is far from operating at its previously stated generation aspiration of ‘90-7-3’, or 90% plant availability, 7% planned outages, and 3% unplanned. In fact, had it been operating at such levels there would have been no need for load shedding at all.

For this reason, a lot of urgent attention is currently being given to the issue of unplanned cuts, given that the ‘planned’ maintenance peak of around 5 000 MW actually took place before Christmas and the load-shedding crisis being faced in January is, thus, being massively deepened by the unplanned or extended maintenance.

The unplanned events range from a turbine fire at Matla, through to load losses associated with wet coal, coal shortages, poor quality coal and poor mill performance across just about every power station from Arnot to Tutuka.

“What we are experiencing at the moment, therefore, is a an energy shortage rather than a capacity shortage,” demand-side management GM Andrew Etzinger told Engineering News Online, adding that the capacity could be recovered, but that to ensure it is brought back on a sustainable basis some “breathing space” was required.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Arko2 said:
By: Terence Creamer
Published: 24 Jan 08 - 11:24
Many South Africans must be pondering why it was possible for the country’s lights and heating to continue uninterrupted during the winter of 2007, when demand actually peaked in July at a record 36 513 MW, while we are now facing daily load shedding even though demand is only peaking at around 33 000 MW – it is also well off the forecast winter peak for July 2008 of over 38 000 MW.

The simple answer is that we have an energy rather than a capacity shortage, arising from a deleterious mix of planned, but more crucially, unplanned maintenance and maintenance slippages. This combination means that something like 20% of our generation capacity is currently out of service.

Engineering News Online has confirmed that there is something like 3 000 MW of capacity out for planned maintenance, and a whopping 5 000 MW down for unplanned maintenance. This is resulting in a daily shortfall of between 2 500 MW and 3 000 MW below average and peak demand.

In other words, of the 42 000 MW of nominal capacity and what appears to be an actual capacity of around 37 000 MW in the Eskom system, between 8 000 MW and 9 000 MW is currently unavailable. That means that the utility is only producing around 29 000 MW against a demand of between 31 000 MW and 33 000 MW. The result is ongoing load shedding.

It also means that Eskom is far from operating at its previously stated generation aspiration of ‘90-7-3’, or 90% plant availability, 7% planned outages, and 3% unplanned. In fact, had it been operating at such levels there would have been no need for load shedding at all.

For this reason, a lot of urgent attention is currently being given to the issue of unplanned cuts, given that the ‘planned’ maintenance peak of around 5 000 MW actually took place before Christmas and the load-shedding crisis being faced in January is, thus, being massively deepened by the unplanned or extended maintenance.

The unplanned events range from a turbine fire at Matla, through to load losses associated with wet coal, coal shortages, poor quality coal and poor mill performance across just about every power station from Arnot to Tutuka.

“What we are experiencing at the moment, therefore, is a an energy shortage rather than a capacity shortage,” demand-side management GM Andrew Etzinger told Engineering News Online, adding that the capacity could be recovered, but that to ensure it is brought back on a sustainable basis some “breathing space” was required.





--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Click to expand...

so in other words, badly maintained infrastructure. makes sense.

darn there goes my conspiracy theory. thanks for the post.
 
Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
 
you want a conspiracy theory how about this...government does not want to spend money on building power stations and are looking for foreighn investment, but because of low elec prices foreighn investors are not interested so eskom puts the price up by 14%...?

Heres another...one of zuma's cousins has started a solar panel / wind turbine business but business is very slow, the entire ANC has invested in it and want returns so they create a market.....

personaly i say greed and stupidity are the main factors involved here..
 
As Chiskop has said:
Do not attribute to malice that which can be explained by incompetence.


It is frightening that they "did routine maintenance", and then things fail.
Its as if the "technicians" are so grossly incompetent that they broke whatever it is they touched.

Sort of like the **** version of King Midas.
 
I remember visiting a Eskom power station back in 1984 as a student. The engineers at the station were boasting that they were successfully burning the worst coal in the world - an ash content of more than 40% (If I remember correctly).

The coal was of such a low grade, that it could not be lit in a normal furnace, never mind an open hearth at home.

The boiler hat to be pre-heated with diesel before the coal (milled to a very fine powder) could be blasted into the furnace.

They managed this while keeping fly-ash and sulphur emmisions in check.

An UK-engineer later joked that SA was the only country where "real estate" was called coal - refering to the high ash content.

Such a world leading type of power station would obviously need the best of the best people to be operated in a professional way ensuring design availability. We know that the main quality for getting an Eskom position is a non-white skin.

Now I read that Alec Erwin blames the coal miners for feeding the power stations with bad quality coal, and that this causes the high unplanned maintenance problems.

These stations were designed to burn the worst of coal available. It is most probably again a question of Mr AA who was appointed based on skin colour and not capabilities who has failed.

Even a mill to grind down lumps of coal down to a consistency finer than face powder requires expert management - even if it seems to be only a rotating drum (a few meters in diameter) with balls or rods inside. If the coal is not correctly milled, it will not ignite properly, and ash handling might suffer (if the furnace does not shut down). If ash handling fails, no coal could be fed to the furnace, as there will not be space (If your stomach gets congested, you first have to empty it before you could eat more!)

During 1994 there was a lot of talk that the white power station operators (quite often right wingers) should have sabotaged the power network - which they could have done easily -but did not do.

The fact that we had good electricity until recently speaks volumes for them not having done that.

Thabo Mbeki and his policies have done a very effective job - and he won't go to jail for sabotaging the countries power network.
 
Nice post kaspaas.

I went to a better school though - we went to Koeberg! :D.

I remember being moerse impressed - I would not go withing 100kms of that place now.
 
Oom Kaspaas, jy's so reg. :)

In the old days SA was known for "'n Boer maak 'n plan" ... and using sub-standard coal was such a plan ... and it worked. Now there is no more Boer to make a plan.
 
Moederloos said:
Nice post kaspaas.

I went to a better school though - we went to Koeberg! :D.

I remember being moerse impressed - I would not go withing 100kms of that place now.
Click to expand...

Agreed - I don't have any confidence that Koeberg is operated in a safe manner. Safety starts with the MD of any company, and if there are obvious management failures in any aspect of a company's operations, absence of body is more important than presence of mind - unless one wants to suffer a severe industrial accident.

It is a matter of time before Eskom will suffer a catastrophic incident - being it a boiler explosion on a coal fired station, or a major nuclear release at Koeberg.

The stress they must be placing on the equipment at the moment has to be at design levels, if not beyond.
 
halicon said:
so in other words, badly maintained infrastructure. makes sense.
Click to expand...

Not only badly maintained, but bad planning and very poor foresight.

The ANC took over an existing infrastructure, that dealt mainly with industry, and a small urbanised portion of the population, since then very little has been done to upgrade the support infrastructure, everything from roads to industry to electricity supply, and in the last 15 years we have seen a growth explosion in urbanisation and industry, too the point where the infrastructure that dealt easily with a small portion, has to now maintain and carry 3 maybe 4 times the load of what it was capable of 15 years ago, with very little upgrade.
Things will break down.
 
alf101 said:
Share analyst's have been including Eskom load shedding as part of their valuations of companies for a while now.
As have economist's.

They also take water shortages into account.
Coming back soon...

Diesel, gas and Generator prices are been looked at closer than before.
Click to expand...

Yeah true but the gold price was on a general downward trend before the last couple of days. Platinum as well, look at how it spikes up.

http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/au0030lnb_.html

http://www.kitco.com/charts/popup/pt0030lnb_.html
 
Trafeye said:
Oom Kaspaas, jy's so reg. :)

In the old days SA was known for "'n Boer maak 'n plan" ... and using sub-standard coal was such a plan ... and it worked. Now there is no more Boer to make a plan.
Click to expand...

They all left for Europe... :eek:
I know quite a few electrical engineers (ex college buddies and colleagues) now working in European countries - still in the same (power) industry!
 
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