POWER DISASTER LOOMS
No food, no water, no security and the likelihood of civil unrest should network collapse
ESKOM’S acute power generation crisis is stretching food, home water, financial, security and communication networks to breaking point.
And it could get worse, with some suggesting civil unrest if the electricity network suffered a total collapse.
Despite earlier promises that load shedding would be downgraded, Eskom yesterday said diesel constraints meant that it might not be able to do so, and that higher stages of load shedding may have to be implemented.
It comes as the effects of nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts start to ripple through the economy.
Farmers warned that continued power cuts were putting South Africa’s food security at risk because it affected their irrigation schedule, which runs off electricity.
Abattoirs, processing plants, dairy farms that used electricity for milking, and cold storage facilities were all also affected, while equipment like compressors were also damaged by power surges, explained Agri SA executive director Christo van der Rheede.
“You can easily lose a lot of your perishable products if there is not sufficient cold storage to keep it in.”
He said if load shedding persisted, all the problems would increase, while a total grid collapse would result in a toxic mix.
“It means all sectors in the country will come to a standstill, food production will come to a standstill. To what extent that will lead to social instability remains to be seen, because if you have a situation like that it will be a massive disaster for food security and the country,” said Van der Rheede.
Higher stages of load shedding also have an impact on water services.
Water expert Professor Anthony Turton issued an ominous warning, saying South Africans should “think the unthinkable” should load shedding go beyond stages seven and eight.
“Without a doubt there will be a catastrophic collapse of water services across the country. It’s not even specuation. It’s a fact.”
Turton said he was part of a group of former intelligence professionals who had been assembled by a private consultancy company at the start of load shedding “to do some serious modelling” that identified triggers that unlocked latent circumstances and looked at their effects. “One of them was water.”
He pointed out that very few cities in South Africa had kept pace with infrastructure demand since 1994.
“They now have less than 48 hours of buffer capacity. Once we are past stage six, your off-time is so great, you can’t replenish your reservoirs in the time available.”
Turton also warned that advanced stages of load shedding would have serious implications on the digital world, because the integrity of cellphone towers and networks would be compromised.
A digital system failure would have implications for banking, at Home Affairs and Deeds offices, and could see ATMs running out of cash.
The Banking Association of South Africa (Basa), however, said they were ready to deal with power cuts.
“Banks have contingency plans in place for operations during load shedding, and endeavour to continue to service their customers the best they can in the circumstances,” said Basa.
Network operator Vodacom said it was working hard to keep its customers connected during protracted periods of national power outages, through the use of generators and batteries. Vodacom admitted that protracted power outages had impacted their ability to recharge their batteries fully.
Security companies are calling on their customers to invest in alternative power sources and link them to their home alarm systems.
Another industry that has been negatively affected by load shedding is the funeral industry. The Unification Task Team of the Funeral Industry of South Africa said load shedding was killing their business.
Spokesman Muzi Hlengwa said the power cuts led to delays in the payment of burial policies, issuing of death certificates and it was expensive to keep generators running all day.
“So people demand that we give them the bodies without us receiving payment. How do we know they will return to pay us? We can’t run a business on Ubuntu,” said Hlengwa.
And it is all likely to get worse, with energy experts warning that it will take years before things improve.
“If we start aligning our observations with appropriate decisions and effective actions, the next decade will be our recovery period toward prosperity. But we need to act now,” explained Des Muller, the spokesperson for the SA Nuclear Build Platform and director for NuEnergy Developments.
“When you break your base-load foundation, you are in the long haul to recover from that, as we are experiencing.”
Energy economist Lungile Mashele agrees. “Things can and will get worse,” said Mashele.
“Stage 6 is simply 6GW of demand being suppressed to make up for a shortfall in supply. Should more units fail, there will be a need to request higher levels of load shedding. It’s important to remember that when these load shedding stages were developed in 2007/8, it was envisaged that the addition of Medupi and Kusile would solve our issues forever.
“This is not the case. More stages can still be developed – we can still go to ‘stage 20’ if required.”
Mashele added that now more than ever transparency was required by the power utility.
“People will fill in the gaps when there is no leadership or transparency. There are problems with skills, fault detection systems, worker morale, lax leadership, procurement, money and project management. All this will invariably affect the fleet.”
Mashele also said that while a total blackout in South Africa was possible, it was unlikely.
It could take weeks before electricity is restored after a national blackout event. Load shedding is a measure to prevent such a catastrophe, added Mashele.
Eskom’s Senior Manager Market Operator, Keith Bowen yesterday said: “We are hoping to finalise the first energy from the Independent Power Producers under our short term programmes within the week.”
Professor Hartmut Winkler, from the department of physics at the University of Johannesburg, agrees that a total
blackout was unlikely to occur.
“There has always been a possibility, and when load shedding reaches stage 6, the danger increases. I do, however, think that the chances of total blackouts happening are still relatively unlikely.”
However, Winkler expects load shedding to continue for the foreseeable future.
“While the expectation is that Eskom will gradually fix many of the currently broken units in the coming few days, there is always the danger that some of those still functioning will break down. Breakdowns are a semi-random process – if you are lucky the number will be low, whereas if you are unlucky the number can be high.
“If working units break down at a rate higher than Eskom is able to fix broken ones, then load shedding has to be stepped up further. Thus, load shedding stages 7 or 8 are not impossible, although I think that the chances of that happening in the next few days are less than 50%.
“As when we went through bad load shedding patches in the past, the level of load shedding eventually goes down and eventually stops altogether. But I do expect several more stage 6 load shedding periods in the coming few years. This is one of the most acute crises that Eskom has faced, but intensive load shedding episodes have happened many times before. It is pretty bad right now though.”
Muller expects the situation to get worse in the coming months.
“If we start aligning our observations with appropriate decisions and effective actions, the next decade could be a recovery period. But we must act now. When you break your base-load foundation, you are faced with a long haul to recover, as we are currently experiencing.
“We last had a total blackout in South Africa in December 1975, caused by transients on a then vulnerable grid. Camden managed to survive and got us back on load almost a week later. Today, our grid is more robust, but with the destructive chaos happening in Eskom, we could well shut down the grid or experience a prolonged stage 8 while this status quo remains.
“Eskom’s restructuring process may help, but Eskom needs to get back in control of the organisation and run a tight ship, as it did till recently. Power stations used to be run like a battleship at sea, with navy ranks in place when Eskom took over control from the Victoria Falls Power Company in 1948.”
PROMISES have been made and broken.
New promises have been made, with no intention of being kept.
It is now 2022, 15 years since the infamous term “load shedding” first entered our lexicon – and the situation is getting worse.
There is no plan because, as many experts have pointed out, there is no political will.
The utility is overstaffed and overpaid, yet underperforms appallingly.
The numbers of staff should be cut, but the government cannot do this in a country where unemployment is already at an alltime high.
It cannot allow the executives who run this state-owned enterprise (SOE) to appoint expert service providers, once again because of political imperatives that have little to do with efficiency and everything to do with support for the ANC.
The same argument holds true for the government’s continued insistence on coal-generated power – even though this is a massive contributor to climate change.
It is why any attempt to meaningfully allow independent power producers to feed into the grid is continually frustrated.
Eskom is a mess. No one is being held to account because the president can’t really afford to be too robust for fear of losing the fragile grip on power he holds within the party.
South Africa is being held to ransom by a party that is one in name only, and voted for by an ever-diminishing number of voters – and yet the country is impotent.
The ANC knows this, which is why there is so little direct action on the crises it actually acknowledges do affect us, whether it be Eskom, service delivery or corruption.
We all know what to do, President Cyril Ramaphosa does most of all, but it is easier to describe the problem than act.
We are fast running out of time – the increasing frequency and severity of these blackouts tell us that, even if no one in government wants to listen.