US Government warns SA stakeholders to start making plans for Eskom grid collapse, even if unlikely

Jan

Jan

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US Government warning about Eskom — time to think about total grid collapse

The United States Government has advised its stakeholders in South Africa to start thinking about disaster management plans for a total collapse of Eskom’s power grid.

Although a blackout remains unlikely, the risk has increased due to how unreliable Eskom’s coal fleet has become. This is evident by the higher levels of load-shedding South Africa is experiencing.
 
Itsa Trap said:
Well, they got the invasion of Ukraine right, just out by a couple of weeks / months etc., so sit tight. NostradamUS might still get it right.

Cataclysms are just buffering at the moment.

Another upshot is at least now we have a timeline.
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It is difficult for me to see that timeline as an upside, they state that there is a real possibility of it never coming back online again. This should be scaring the living crap out of us:

"South Africa’s grid topology makes a “black start” like this challenging because it’s so spread out, and because Eskom is in a power island.

“There are a few feeder lines from other countries, but not enough to help with a black start situation,” the US Government official said.

“To start one unit at Medupi would require a 60-megawatt generator. It’s a massive amount of power just to get a Medupi unit started.” "
 
It's a recommendation to ensure a disaster plan for a worst-case scenario, just good corporate governance actually, and should probably already be in a filing cabinet somewhere.

It's not the US Govt's fault it got turned into clickbait.
 
Jan said:
We prefer "legitbait".

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If you follow the trend of outages over the past 24 months, "thinking about disaster management" should have been started around 12 months ago, actually, because the ANC, the people responsible for this mess, sure as **** isn't going to.

Biggest issue is water, that alone can turn everything on its head.
 
Certainly so far with the extended Stage 6 we have seen some water reservoirs requiring generators, and even water tankers having to be deployed. Even without a grid collapse Stages 7 or 8 for some days or a week, is going to cause way more water, sewerage, traffic light, etc problems. So far Stage 6 has been the edge everyone could just manage to hang on with, and I don't think planning has gone as far as extended Stage 7 or 8 yet anywhere. The trend seems to indicate we will be touching Stage 7 by Winter this year, as no reversal of the availability downward trends have happened yet.
 
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