The truth about load-shedding in South Africa

InfidelGastro said:
Depends on your generation.
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Ok, but for you specifically, when was this?

I'm referencing you statement that SA was once a lovely country, I just want to know to which time you refer.
 
A while back. It's irrelevant now, because I am outta this backwater banana republic very soon.
 
They said there will not be load shedding until around January 13th. I do like their ability to pinpoint a date for starting load-shedding....no pre-meditation there..
 
recre8 said:
Governments own fault for not introducing some kind of competition. In the UK at least they seperated the distribution (“National Grid”) and generation into distinct entities. The way Eskom is structured as a monolithic all powerful orgazation organization won’t work while state-funded and guaranteed by law to have no competition.
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At least part of the problem is that they tried - there was a moratorium on Eskom developing new power stations etc for nearly 10 years because the ANC tried VERY hard to get outside investors to come in and set up competitive telecommunications and power suppliers etc. but there were no takers. (Don't ask me to prove this, because it is damn near impossible to find old articles and so on these days on Google.) I'm open to correction but I think it was only around the time of the problems with Koeberg that they caught a wake up and realised how deep in the dooh dooh they were. Anyway this is partly why we now have such aging infrastructure with no development to replace it.
 
Zoomzoom said:
At least part of the problem is that they tried - there was a moratorium on Eskom developing new power stations etc for nearly 10 years because the ANC tried VERY hard to get outside investors to come in and set up competitive telecommunications and power suppliers etc. but there were no takers. (Don't ask me to prove this, because it is damn near impossible to find old articles and so on these days on Google.) I'm open to correction but I think it was only around the time of the problems with Koeberg that they caught a wake up and realised how deep in the dooh dooh they were. Anyway this is partly why we now have such aging infrastructure with no development to replace it.
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Kusile and Medupi should deliver lots of power, but so way behind schedule and badly built.
 
supersunbird said:
Kusile and Medupi should deliver lots of power, but so way behind schedule and badly built.
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yes but even that wouldn't have been such an issue if they had been allowed to do all the development they needed to from the start. You can't just halt everything for so many years without consequences.
 
supersunbird said:
Kusile and Medupi should deliver lots of power, but so way behind schedule and badly built.
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The irony is that Kusile and Medupi would still not be enough if we had a growing economy.
 
Swa said:
The irony is that Kusile and Medupi would still not be enough if we had a growing economy.
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The article by Dirk De Vos that I posted yesterday has plenty to say about this:

There is a fork in the road and it is time for big decisions to be made. It comes down to this: either pretend it’s still 1970 and recapitalise Eskom starting with a massive bailout and then have taxpayers fund the additional R140-billion to develop coal mines and coal infrastructure followed by a rebuilding of coal-fired stations; or change course completely and do what the Integrated Resource Plan says is the least cost route – a build-out of a system based largely on renewable energy.
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Engineer just joined Eskom at one of their power stations AMA

4 of the 6 turbines at the current power station that i'm working at are seized up. The piping that is supposed to transfer steam to the turbines from the boilers has ruptured due to the wrong grade of coal being used in the past that contains rocks that have exploded. From what we have been told 50% of the generating capacity of Eskoms main coal power stations (excluding Kusile and Medupi) are not working and can't be brought fully back online for at least 3 years. So pretty bad, much worse than 2014-2015
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Compton_effect said:
4 of the 6 turbines at the current power station that i'm working at are seized up. The piping that is supposed to transfer steam to the turbines from the boilers has ruptured due to the wrong grade of coal being used in the past that contains rocks that have exploded. From what we have been told 50% of the generating capacity of Eskoms main coal power stations (excluding Kusile and Medupi) are not working and can't be brought fully back online for at least 3 years. So pretty bad, much worse than 2014-2015
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Compton_effect said:
Unfortunately not as the bearings have been badly damage from the lack of oil and maintenance and have to be replaced. Since the bearings can no loner be purchased off the shelf as the design is from the the late 1950's they have to be custom made and imported which will take a while.
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The details are interesting, but the overall situation is not new: https://city-press.news24.com/News/inside-the-eskom-crisis-why-the-lights-keep-on-going-out-20181210

Last week, [a generator at] every single one of South Africa’s 12 largest and most important power stations broke down, according to an internal Eskom document obtained by City Press’ sister publication, Rapport.

Eskom’s plant breakdowns at old stations are reaching catastrophic levels, with a record-breaking 17 371MW – or 38% of Eskom’s total generating capacity – offline.

Twelve coal station units, which provided 2 149MW of power to the grid, are now on “reserve storage” – which effectively means they are mothballed.

Nine were shut down for “economic reasons” and two had to be shut after failures that cannot be fixed right now, Eskom said.

The last time nearly this much Eskom capacity was down was in February 2015, when 15 500MW was offline and a national “electricity emergency” was declared.
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P.S. Please fix the tag or close quote in your link...
 
InfidelGastro said:
Quite frankly, it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
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"Slow clap"....

This is a discussion forum sunshine, if you air a certain view I have the right to question that. You anyway don't need to answer, you've already answered it unknowingly.
 
Cr419 said:
"Slow clap"....

This is a discussion forum sunshine, if you air a certain view I have the right to question that. You anyway don't need to answer, you've already answered it unknowingly.
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So we're good then :thumbsup:
 
Gordon_R said:
The article by Dirk De Vos that I posted yesterday has plenty to say about this:
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I'm with you on that. The trouble though is as usual trade unions threatening to strike if we don't use overpriced coal. Then we also can't seem to stand together and agree that renewables are the way to go. The irony is that nuclear would be completely unfeasible for our situation and requires storage as well so we might as well go with renewables.
 
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