South Africa in the Dark | Alternative Energy | Forums

Holy crap, anyone hear about this?

South Africa is losing its power, literally: it’s a process called “load shedding” that will last for the foreseeable future. The state energy utility Eskom is careening out of control, begging for an emergency $4.5 billion bailout within the $120 billion national budget later this month.

The coming fork in the road provides three distinct directions. The poorly-lit one straight ahead suffers from potholes that force stop-start-reverse maneuvers.

Second, the most scary route away from this fork lacks streetlights and appears to be illuminated only by a brief, fiery meltdown – utter grid failure – at the end of the road. Then, no Eskom or municipal electricity supplies will be available for weeks, they say.

In a third direction, looking leftwards, a light flickers at the end of a dangerous tunnel, but to get there safely means slowing the vehicle to a manageable pace and tossing the greediest 1% of passengers out, thus allowing everyone else to at least enjoy basic-needs electricity.

When originally built, this vehicle had the capacity to run quickly – with 43 000 MegaWatts of installed peak power – but in coming months and probably years, only 70% is available for use because of delayed maintenance. As a result, travel on the status quo road will become ever more chaotic as competition rises for declining electricity supplies.

Making excuses for muddling through

Eskom chief executive officer Tshediso Matona attributes “the unreliability of our equipment” to his predecessors, who delayed maintenance due to populist electioneering by the ruling party and, as well, “the World Cup played a big role” because the lights had to stay on in mid-2010.

Within corporate South Africa, the 31-member Energy Intensive Users’ Group (EIUG) comprises most of the mining houses and smelters customers; the EIUG consumes 44% of the country’s electricity. It’s at the core of what academics term the ‘Minerals Energy Complex’; its leaders were the main authors of the state energy policy in 2010.

The ‘muddling through’ scenario entails Eskom bumbling along, as it has the past quarter century since major decisions were taken about what was then its overcapacity crisis. Instead of mothballing its climate-wrecking coal-fired power plants, Eskom attracted new smelters constructed by BHP Billiton and the Anglo American Corporation by offering massive rates discount, which still today mean huge firms get power at 1/8th what ordinary consumers pay.

Sometimes the mines and smelters agree to lower their demand. But the EIUG retains sufficient power that its former director Mike Roussow is now a top Eskom advisor.

When, for example, last November 2 Eskom’s Majuba coal silo crashed, “National Load Shedding [a term for brown-out] was implemented affecting municipal customers and Eskom residential customers” and not the mega-guzzlers, according to the EIUG. Much later, there was “curtailment from Key Industrial Customers on 12 November to assist Eskom in meeting demand requirements over the peak.”

They are able to maintain this power because of prevailing power relations in the society. Ironically, the most angry passengers in the back of Eskom’s chaotic fleet include furious trade unionists and township residents who are ANC members but who have been paying extreme price increases annually – more than 150% cumulatively since 2007 – while experiencing degenerating service.

One green passenger, Earthlife’s Dominique Doyle, blamed Eskom for emitting more CO2 than anyone else in Africa and hence contributing to more atmospheric moisture which causes more rain. That in turn made Eskom’s coal dust a useless soup last March, thus causing further emergency load-shedding. It’s a refreshingly valid argument in scientific terms, and unusual, in a society near the bottom of world rankings in climate awareness.

‘Meltdown’ emanating from excessive mining and smelting

As a result of such ingrained EIUG stubbornness, the doomsday scenario is not impossible: an out-of-control rolling black-out that prevents Eskom from turning its dozen main powerplants back on without the infamous ‘black start’ routine.

Last June, the firm’s spokesperson Andrew Etzinger assured that that scenario would result in only a fortnight-long crisis, but not to worry, a good supply of diesel makes the black-start restart feasible at most power plants.

Providing relief from Etzinger’s persistent unfounded optimism, Eskom sustainability manager Steve Lennon confessed in August, “We would have to rely on our own black-start plant to start the system from scratch. We are not ready for that at all.”

There is a terrifying fictional precedent in which an entire advanced economy and society is hit by an indefinite ‘lights off!’ The US television series ‘Revolution’ is based on the premise that nanotechnology nerds can be influenced by asinine politicians. In the series plot, nanobots are let loose on the world, sucking up electricity sufficient to cause a 15-year blackout and social mayhem.

If a full grid collapse occurs, mutual aid systems that have existed in so many South African migrant-labour export sites – such as ‘stokvel’ collective savings – will be vital. More likely in less civilised places (such as Johanesburg’s wealthy suburbs), there will be a rush for household petrol generators and a new wave of wall-building around those elite establishments which can muster off-grid power, as the rest of society’s food runs out and municipal water pumps are turned off.

More here http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/02/06/south-africa-in-the-dark/