Unplanned outage: Is SA facing a
In the unlikely event of a total collapse, the economy would be brought to a standstill and there would be a high chance of social upheaval
Eskom’s plan to revive the grid after another collapse has come under increased scrutiny, raising the question of what the government will do in what the utility calls the unlikely event of a national blackout.
Eskom has allayed fears of a total blackout — which in the three to four weeks it takes to restore power would wipe out the economy and plunge South Africa into social collapse — with the utility’s spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha calling this scenario “highly unlikely”.
Meanwhile, the country is inching towards stage eight rolling power cuts, beyond which households could experience load-shedding for more than half of the day. Even higher stages of load-shedding would constitute a de facto blackout.
Eskom’s ageing power stations have crumbled after years of poor maintenance and a skills deficit now threatens efforts to revive the ailing utility. Seized with remedying the country’s load-shedding woes, the presidency would not directly comment on whether a plan exists if a blackout were to engulf South Africa.
“There’s no evidence to demonstrate that we are heading towards a national blackout,” President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said. “More importantly, the focus is on getting maintenance to be conducted properly and on time in order to stabilise the grid and provide a reliable energy supply.”
It is regrettable that this unplanned outage due to multiple trips of units has cast doubts on Ramaphosa’s energy plan, Magwenya added.
Though unprecedented and improbable, Eskom has a plan in the event that a blackout does occur. This plan involves its four blackstart facilities, which would be used to restore energy to a power station without relying on the external transmission network to recover from a shutdown.
An Eskom employee, who cannot be named, confirmed that the utility faces a challenge of skilled engineers who know how to run the systems.
“The same engineers run the blackstart system. Lack of experience is a serious challenge here because we have senior engineers that sign a contract that for the duration that they are hired for, they should transfer their knowledge and skills to younger engineers and operators. However, we are stuck with engineers that are not skilled because the transaction did not happen.”
The employee added that consequently, the utility is left with unskilled workers “who panic when the system fails because they do not have an idea what to do. That is why you see Eskom always getting new external engineers every time the crisis gets out of control”.
But according to Mantshantsha, Eskom’s black-start facilities are tested regularly. The last of these tests was successfully conducted in August, and conducted by suitably qualified staff, he said.
The Eskom spokesperson also addressed concerns regarding the utility’s skills deficit, which has been the subject of a number of public statements by its chief executive André de Ruyter. The utility, Mantshantsha said, “has been receiving great feedback and people making themselves available to assist in the critical skills. Eskom is in the process of placing these skilled individuals in the correct positions to assist with the recovery of plants”.
But another Eskom employee said the utility has been downplaying the extent of the crisis. He said although the utility announced that the country was in stage six load-shedding earlier this week, the total loss of megawatts indicated higher levels.
“[To avoid panic] the utility announced that it is placing the country on level six, but early this week and at the weekend, some places had reached stage eight and some stage seven. The system deteriorated so badly that we had moved beyond the stage six as announced, townships like Soweto, for example, felt the most impact,” he said.
Mantshantsha announced that Eskom shed close to 7 000MW, associated with stage seven, from the grid on Monday evening.
On Monday, the department of public enterprises noted that in the week prior, 18 seasoned energy specialists re-entered the Eskom system to assist with operations. The department did not comment on whether it had a plan in place in the event of a blackout. The departments of energy and of co-operative governance did not respond to queries about whether it had blackout plans or not.
Analysts who spoke to the Mail & Guardian agreed that a collapse of the grid is unlikely, given Eskom’s load-shedding efforts. The utility uses the measure to maintain the balance between power generated and demand. It is only when this careful balance is not maintained that the grid would collapse.
Energy expert David Walwyn added that Eskom’s data proves that a complete blackout would be impossible, as the utility still has capacity to keep the power stations running.
“Eskom has indicated that IPPS [independent power producers] that have different power sources will be able to help bring capacity back to the grid. They have diesel generators, they have pump storage and they have some backup systems. The chances of us having a complete blackout in the national grid is totally remote,” he said.
“In that unlikely scenario, one can expect total havoc,” energy
economist Lungile Mashele said. “Anything and everything that needs electricity will not work. No food, no travel, no fuel, no water, no information, no communication, no ATMS. Entire stores would have to waste their perishable items. Burials would have to happen on the same day. We also have criminal elements so we can expect a surge in crime, violence and so on.”
Energy analyst Ted Blom said although a grid collapse is unlikely, the country could face a de facto blackout.
“To put it in context, [a grid collapse] is the demon that everybody fears. It is a situation that everybody has got in their minds because that would be real hell,” Blom said.
“Given our configuration, I suspect that we are going to get close to a national blackout, but it is going to happen in stages and steps. There’ll be more and more load-shedding until eventually we will have a de facto national blackout.
“But I don’t see the system blowing up at this stage.”
There are two scenarios in the event of a grid collapse, Blom explained: A controlled blackout, in the case of which Eskom would have the capabilities to recover the grid and a catastrophic blackout — which, as the label suggests, would be far worse.
A catastrophic blackout, in which energy infrastructure is destroyed, would be like “putting a spanner into the spokes of a bicycle”, Blom said.
“[If] it’s catastrophic, it might take you 10 years, or you might never recover, given that this economy is not showing any signs of promise. Once you’ve had that meltdown, and it has been like that for a while, it would be too expensive to resuscitate the economy.”
In either scenario, there would be a collapse of law and order, Blom said. “Communication systems aren’t working. Electric fences and alarm systems aren’t working. Most people would then opt to stay at home and defend their properties. That includes Eskom workers.”
A 2019 study by the Water Research Commission had a more conservative estimate regarding the amount of time the country would take to recover from a blackout.
According to the study, in the event of a controlled blackout it could take two days to restore power to Gauteng and longer for the rest of the country.
If the black-start facilities are damaged, the country would be plunged into darkness for over a month.
Whatever the scenario, a blackout would come with a high cost to the economy. To put that cost into perspective, when parts of the economy shut down due to the Covid-19 pandemic — described then as a “black swan event” — South Africa’s
GDP plummeted by 6.4% in 2020 compared with 2019. According to Statistics South Africa, this marked the biggest annual fall in economic activity the country has seen since at least 1946.
The lockdown’s economic blow does not factor any mass social upheaval. Just one week of civil unrest in July 2021 wiped R50-billion off the South African economy.
This week Business Unity South Africa noted that estimations are that the current load-shedding situation is costing the country around R4-billion a day.