19 ms·

South Africa's national electricity crisis to worsen

164 points by herodoturtle 4y ago

herodoturtle 4y ago
> At the briefing last week, Eskom provided a statistical forecast of load shedding over the next 10 months. The forecast showed that until August 2023, SA would experience stage 3 load shedding on most days of the month, provided that diesel was burned to make up for the shortfall. The diesel required to keep the system at Stage 3 varied from R3 billion to more than R7 billion a month. As burning this amount of diesel is physically and logistically impossible, the implication was that load shedding would in fact, be several stages above stage 4.
inglor_cz 4y ago
It is wild what rampant corruption (that voters are willing to tolerate, possibly for tribal reasons) will do to a fairly educated nation with enormous natural riches.
- FredPret 4y ago
  It's not just corruption. It's a rejection of the values of the Enlightenment (reason, evidence, progress, etc), because those ideas came from colonial powers. Those are also the ideas that work, whether they are applied in Europe or in Africa.
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    I don't think that African dictators are rejecting reason and evidence in the course of administrating their corruption, although they might reject evidence of corruption in public.
    - inglor_cz 4y ago
      Some South African politicians are heavily into AIDS denial.
      - whatshisface 4y ago
        Using certain types of denial that western politicians have a history of as a reference, are they doing that because that's what the voters want to hear?
        zx76 4y ago
        Interestingly I wouldn't say it seemed so. AIDS devastated the political base of the politician in question and people who fought for the right to treatment were also politically popular. I think it may have just been a strange ideological bent in a specific set of political circle. Thankfully these ideas and policies have been pretty much entirely consigned to history now. The consequences were terrible though, nearly a million children were orphaned because of both parents dying of AIDS. I can't find a specific source to cite a specific number, they all reference much higher numbers across the whole Southern African region.
      - buyx 4y ago
        Thabo Mbeki was an AIDS denialist, he's been out of power since 2008 and largely discredited. Jacob Zuma came to power partially because he wasn't an AIDS denialist, and one of the few things Zuma can claim credit for was widespread availability of anti-AIDS drugs, and the resultant recovery in South Africa's life expectancy. AIDS denialism is pretty-much dead in South Africa....it only ever was a pique of Thabo Mbeki, and because of his power as head of the ANC, the rest of the leadership had to be sycophantic.
        inglor_cz 4y ago
        The legacy is over a quarter million unnecessary deaths, of mostly young people, though. Which means that as far as loss of human life goes, Thabo Mbeki belongs to the same category as Vladimir Putin with his war of conquest against Ukraine. Only the process wasn't as overtly violent, so the world didn't particularly care.
    - FredPret 4y ago
      The real problem is that most of the people there (black, white, and others) reject the mental frameworks that have been proven to work elsewhere, perhaps due to distrusting the West, or for whatever other reason. In my mind this mental framework features capitalism, democracy, and a style of thinking that emphasizes - or at least accommodates - kindness, openness, progress, thinking in nuances. Basically, humanism. From my experience there, some population groups will reject ideas they see as white, which includes capitalism (origin: probably Europe?) but not communism (origin: Germany!). Others, including white folks, might feel inclined to embrace those "white" ideas specifically, but will reject other parts of the Enlightenment framework. Many think problems should be solved by force instead of careful and nuanced consideration, which is seen as effeminate. Corruption is more of a symptom than a cause.
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      > I don't think that African dictators are rejecting reason and evidence in the course of administrating their corruption, although they might reject evidence of corruption in public. South Africa isn't a dictatorship, but the voters still vote along tribal lines, with a concerning minority (+-10%?) voting along race-hate lines.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    They worked beautifully in East Asia too. It was the other imports (Communism, Prussian-like militarism) that would be better discarded.
boeingUH60 4y ago
Typical African country. I've always wondered what's wrong with my continent. You can't literally point to a single African country that's developed and successful...corruption and incompetence rules every sector here...so horrible. Sorry for my rant :(
- tomjen3 4y ago
  >You can't literally point to a single African country that's developed and successful /me lifts hand and point finger to Botswanna.
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    yep. It's a small country but it's the oldest democracy on the continent, ranks quite highly internationally (30th on the democracy index, ahead of Italy), and has a gdp per capita only slightly lower than the baltics (20k). By most accounts a pretty tremendous success.
    - jl6 4y ago
      Any obvious reasons why it has enjoyed this success while its southern neighbour hasn’t?
      - quink 4y ago
        Competent forward-looking leadership. There's plenty of factors that helped, I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head, but the one that made a crucial difference is in my opinion really the above. Basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seretse_Khama#Presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seretse_Khama#Presidency
        buyx 4y ago
        And this: https://www.tralac.org/news/article/6931-surge-in-botswana-share-of-sacu-revenues.html https://www.tralac.org/news/article/6931-surge-in-botswana-s...
marcusverus 4y ago
> ...the implication was that load shedding would in fact, be several stages above stage 4. For the uninitiated, "load shedding" is a euphemism for "rolling blackouts". According to the wiki, Stage 4 load shedding leaves 25% of grid users without power. Assuming "several stages above stage 4" means Stage 7, that would mean that, at any given point, ~45% of grid users would be without power. [0] Yikes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis#Loadshedding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis#Lo...
- zx76 4y ago
  This is correct. Due to how long these power cuts have persisted a lot of businesses, industry and the middle class & up have almost habituated to the levels up to 4. Shopping centers have generators, business parks have full solar and retail stores have battery backup. For instance a local clothing chain (Foschini) installed 300+ Tesla powerwall setups so that all their locations can be totally uninterrupted even with 2.5/5/7.5 hours per day of power cuts. Cell towers, fiber infrastructure, hospitals, even traffic lights at busy intersections all have battery backup these days. The reason this announcement is making the news is because levels above 4, like the two weeks or so of stage 6 we recently had are much more problematic. You start to run into issues where cell tower batteries can only charge like 80% back up with the number of hours powered per day - and so after a few days they no longer have enough charge to keep up with the interruptions and go offline, disrupting communications & internet access. Additionally the provisions heavy industry has made over the years to deal with this become insufficient and you start to lose shifts and thus there's a lot of evidence the economy is very materially affected at these levels of cuts. Of course the real weight of this crisis lands massively on the poor and disrupts job growth when it's desperately needed, curtails foreign and local investment etc. To discuss how parts of society can easily function with the lower stages of power cuts is not to miss how insane this all is... A society of 60 million people has largely stood by while this has happened for approx. 15 years now. And it's not like this is a matter of a poor nation without the ability to invest - approximately $40 billion USD has been spent by the power utility just in capex alone in this period - and afterwards they are producing less power than at the start... Quote from a local article: "It means that Eskom destroyed 46 GWh of power generation per R1 billion spent on increasing its power generation." [1] [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/465641-eskom-blew-r680-billion-on-power-plants-now-it-generates-less-electricity.html https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/465641-eskom-blew-r...
cagenut 4y ago
One of the reasons renewables will have an easier time replacing fossil fuels than people who worry about intermittency/baseload think is that for most people, in most places, the grid simply isn't that reliable anyway. Cheaper and 'good enough' is a relative variable on both axis.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Very much so. Those who can afford it are going to go solar and batteries as soon as they can, and those who can't will be exposed to this low level of electrical service until solar and battery cost declines meet them at their socioeconomic level. The resulting system will be more resilient end state, but the process is going to suck to get there. The average house in South Africa uses 967 kWh of electricity per month. That's roughly a 5kw-6kw system, or 12-15 400W solar panels + inverters. Payback period at current prices is ~6-7 years. https://www.myggsa.co.za/how-much-electricity-does-a-household-use-in-south-africa/ https://www.myggsa.co.za/how-much-electricity-does-a-househo... https://www.handymanhomes.co.za/energy-saving/how-much-will-it-cost-to-install-solar-panels-in-south-africa/ https://www.handymanhomes.co.za/energy-saving/how-much-will-...
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    > The average house in South Africa uses 967 kWh of electricity per month. That's roughly a 5kw-6kw system, or 12-15 solar panels + inverters. ... what? That's 11.000 kWh a year. Even in Germany, with water heating by electricity (which is rare because it's just so inefficient), homes rarely hit 6.000 kWh. [1] https://www.energie.web.de/ratgeber/verbrauch/stromverbrauch-einfamilienhaus/ https://www.energie.web.de/ratgeber/verbrauch/stromverbrauch...
    - Semaphor 4y ago
      For a whole house that sounds reasonable? I’m at 4200 kWh a year with only 2 people in a 60 m² apartment. Durchlauferhitzer, but still. The link you posted even mentions a range of 14,000 - 28,000 kWh for houses not built for efficiency.
    - deleted 4y ago
vt85 4y ago
[dead]
damagednoob 4y ago
Usually I like BBC's More or Less but their episode[1] on this situation really rubbed me the wrong way. They dismissed one elderly white couple's concerns with implied racism and didn't look at the trendline of per capita output from Eskom. Any South African currently living there is completely unsurprised by this latest news. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07jm2zy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07jm2zy
Semaphor 4y ago
Ouch. We are planning to visit my mother-in-law for the first time since covid in December. Maybe this isn’t a great time, but then when will it be.
pixelpoet 4y ago
As someone who grew up and went to uni in SA, then later emigrated to NZ (and later Europe) in 2007, this is completely expected. My understanding is that what happened is, in 1994 when the Apartheid government handed over power to the ANC, basically everything the government had in the pipeline was scrapped; of course it was in many ways an evil government, but it was also a surprisingly competent one, the only government to produce nuclear weapons and decide on their own to dismantle them or something? So anyway, all their plans for much-needed energy infrastructure upgrades were scrapped in 1994, and never considered again until the rolling blackouts started, by which time it was far too late. Since then the nearly universal corruption within the ANC and overall state capture meant things rapidly got worse, not better. I distinctly remember writing code to do periodic saves of a long running computation's state, because the power would just randomly go out, and at one point the power went out while saving the state, so I switched to saving A/B alternating state files. Most of my family is still hanging out in SA and things just get worse and worse... don't even get me started on the crime...
- karp773 4y ago
  Have they ever tried to emigrate? And if yes, why are they still there?
  - pixelpoet 4y ago
    The harsh reality is that the programming half of the family got great job offers and stayed in NZ, the other didn't :(
    - karp773 4y ago
      So it's purely paperwork/legal barriers that hold them back? Otherwise they would have left?
      - pixelpoet 4y ago
        Yeah they came with and were not successful in their job searching, had to go back.
knaekhoved 4y ago
- oblak 4y ago
  This guy's history in this thread alone is crazy. Racist is an understatement
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    Simpatico with a lot of the other content in this thread, but more direct. At least he isn't talking about angry blacks with a chip on their shoulder rejecting the white wisdom of the west. All of the Idiocracy mentions aren't very far away from this guy in essence, though.
    - userbinator 4y ago
      It's unfortunate that people don't want to talk about the elephant in the room because it's too politically incorrect to.
  - n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  - jojobas 4y ago
    The real question would be "what if he's right". Imagine there was an island discovered with some sort of transitional, Homo Erectus style people. Let's say they can't, for organic reasons, exceed IQ 50 - can speak, wildly efficient in hunting and foraging, can't figure out 3rd grade maths, can't learn letters, can't understand how seeds work. What would be a reasonable policy towards such people?
    - curuxious 4y ago
      If you find out the answer, let Australia know.
  - aaron695 4y ago
liampulles 4y ago
Eish, glad I bought an inverter that can withstand a 4h loadshedding block instead of a 2h one, but the economic and societal implications of this are pretty horrifying. Curious if there any SA expats here that can comment on their experience of emigrating? I have looked a bit but not very seriously. I should mention I do have a Netherlands passport (via my father).
- throwawaaaylkt 4y ago
  I emigrated to Australia from Johannesburg (northern suburbs). It's safe, the economy is strong with low unemployment and high wages, there's good healthcare (similar to the NHI that's planned for SA) and education, and it's easy enough to fit in culturally. But it's NOT a "cleaner and safer version of South Africa" - it's definitely a foreign country, which is why Pick n Pay and Woolworths SA have come to grief for that reason when expanding here. The downside is that there is a severe housing crisis, and labour is in seriously short supply. I'm in Brisbane, and you can't eat out here after 8PM because everything is closed. Shops close early. Our car was smashed by a reckless driver in early November....it's going to be January before they even start fixing it...doing any kind of renovation or home repair is a traumatic experience because of a shortage of people (you can't do your own plumbing or electrical BTW). I would not live in Sydney or Melbourne because of the high cost of housing, especially Sydney, since I'd probably live in some unpleasant, boiling hot suburb far west of the city to get anything I could afford. No domestic workers is another pain point, although you adapt. I'd say that if you have children, it might be worth emigrating from SA for their sakes, but if you don't have kids, and since you have an EU passport, it's entirely down to your preferences. The quality of life in South Africa for upper-middle-class people is pretty good. Anecdotally, many Australians move to places like Thailand or Bali for the sort of lifestyle South Africans enjoy. If you have a home paid for in SA, you can use your savings to travel overseas for relief from the load shedding and crime: I know a few SA upper middle class people who can afford to do that, while I have to pump every spare cent into my mortgage. Am I happy I moved? Yes. Would I have done it if I didn't have a family....probably not.
  - herodoturtle 4y ago
    Some great perspective here, thanks for sharing.
reuben364 4y ago
As a South African, I have a engineer friend working for a company that does solar for places like retail complexes. They have a lot of business. Also there is a widely used app for load shedding timetables called "EskomSePush" which is a pun on "Eskom se poes" roughly translates to "Eskom's cunt" with poes being very vulgar and offensive.
- liampulles 4y ago
  The EskomSePush guys are national heroes
lelanthran 4y ago
FTFA: > "If we continue to burn diesel the way we have for the past seven months, the cost would be astronomical. But we do not have the cash to spend. We would be able to pay if the *municipalities were paying us*," That, right there, is a pretty big reason for the current blackouts: The masses refuse to pay, and the cost of keeping society afloat falls to a minority who cannot really be squeezed any further. Last I checked (2007), each taxpayer was supporting 4.3 people other than their dependents or themselves. It is not a sustainable situation, and the state should have been doing everything it could to encourage foreign investment. Instead, empowered by the voters, they repeatedly loot the coffers.
- epolanski 4y ago
  Democracy can be a double edged sword.
  - kwere 4y ago
    Plato had quite a few issues with populism[0] [0] https://scroll.in/article/943564/does-not-tyranny-spring-from-democracy-how-platos-380-bc-philosophy-is-truer-than-ever-today https://scroll.in/article/943564/does-not-tyranny-spring-fro...
mikaeluman 4y ago
It is incredible how the collapse of SA, having happened over a moderately short span of time, has largely escaped coverage. The infatuation with the "rainbow nation" and Mandela overcoming the evil apartheid government. But the policies have just been a disaster. And in recent years, it's become so bad that we have to read news like this. Anyone that can get out, has or is getting out. I worked in a project with ppl from Johannesburg; suddenly they had moved to my country.
- lgleason 4y ago
  The flight out of the country has been happening for a long time.
gatvol 4y ago
Is this a deliberate strategy of the current regime to "dismantle the legacy of colonialism"?
supernova87a 4y ago
Anyone know, what's the state of utility-scale or even household self-sufficiency solar in South Africa?
- liampulles 4y ago
  Anecdotally, I know it is growing steadily. I just bought an inverter which supports Solar charging. New shopping malls are built with solar, etc. Worth mentioning that this is only really an option for middle class people and up, a sizable portion of the population barely have roofs let alone the money to put solar panels on them.
lgats 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_South_Africa
pifm_guy 4y ago
Diesel fuel isn't the right fuel for a nation grid power supply... Diesel is expensive and normally only used for small scale generation when there aren't other options. Where are the gas turbines? They're cheap, easy to install in just a few months, and can scale nearly limitlessly? They're not great for the environment, but far better than diesel. Then there is also grid scale solar/wind/hydro, which take longer to deploy and have more caveats, but work out cheaper per kWh.
- liampulles 4y ago
  Solar would be a great investment for us given how much sun we get. Unfortunately it was not politically expedient at the time to invest in solar (or any serious generation capacity) a decade ago, so here we are... Sigh.
- _djo_ 4y ago
  These aren't intended for base load at all, they're Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) stations meant to be used for short peak loads, but because of the power crisis they're being run continuously. Eskom's OCGTs are combined cycle, meaning they can run on either diesel or gas, but historically it's been cheaper and easier in terms of supply to use diesel.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
Not as bad as in Lebanon where state power infrastructure totally collapsed, and you now you buy your power from entrepreneurs in the neighborhood who have portable petrol/diesel generators. I work from home so invested in two 1000KW inverters with 100AH AGM batteries for powering my fibre and servers (it has battery banks at the POP) and looking at replacing them with LifePO batteries when the AGM ones die. Some companies are selling a rent a solar conversion for your home - you just make do.
- liampulles 4y ago
  South african here, literally just bought an inverter with 2 100AH lifepo's and solar ports. Sorry to hear the situation in lebanon is not great, I hope your situation improves.
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    Actually Cape Town - which system did you get and LifePo's - decided to split the load in my setup across two inverters so the recharge time would be limited to 100AH battery and not 2 x 100AH. I am reading about the Hubble S-120 drop in replacement batteries with their own BMS but I am reading conflicting reports.
    - liampulles 4y ago
      I went with the SPS-1000 with 2 100AH LifePo4 batteries from here: http://www.smartpowersystems.co.za/ http://www.smartpowersystems.co.za/ I think the batteries in this case are "AOKLY LiFePO4 Battery ALFP-12100", also drop in replacement types, probably similar to the Hubble ones. My email is in my bio if you have any follow up questions.
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago
I would have told what I think, but I'm afraid of downvotes and canceling.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Havoc 4y ago
Government has mismanaged infrastructure on a wholesale scale in South Africa. It's not just electricity. Roads, rail, water, healthcare etc is not far behind. See also this graph - actual civil engineers have functionally vanished in the last 5 years from local government: https://i.redd.it/lgi9xzxlc10a1.jpg https://i.redd.it/lgi9xzxlc10a1.jpg How do you maintaining key infrastructure without engineers? You don't.
davidhyde 4y ago
Some people want to generate their own power at home using solar PV (the electric rather than hot water kind). However this is a big financial investment and there is low confidence of a positive return. An example of why there is low confidence is how the Cape Town Municipality (run by the opposition party btw; mentioned to make this post more politically neutral) is forcing people to register their home solar installations primarily for safety reasons. They promise not to charge a solar tax: https://www.capetownetc.com/news/how-to-register-your-solar-energy/ https://www.capetownetc.com/news/how-to-register-your-solar-... However this requirement is suspicious because there are already laws in place requiring people to use qualified electricians for doing high voltage work. The promise is not legally binging and there is a fear that the municipality will seek to recoup losses from lower electricity revenue (due to lower supply) by charging people for the electricity they generate themselves. This is not unheard of and an EU country like Spain charges this solar tax: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/spain-approves-sun-tax-discriminates-against-solar-pv/ https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/spain-approves-... If a country doesn’t have enough resources to incentivise solar then fine, but don’t threaten to make money from people who will effectively only lower the burden on the grid that can’t meet demand. They just won’t invest in it then.

164 points by herodoturtle 4y ago

> At the briefing last week, Eskom provided a statistical forecast of load shedding over the next 10 months. The forecast showed that until August 2023, SA would experience stage 3 load shedding on most days of the month, provided that diesel was burned to make up for the shortfall. The diesel required to keep the system at Stage 3 varied from R3 billion to more than R7 billion a month. As burning this amount of diesel is physically and logistically impossible, the implication was that load shedding would in fact, be several stages above stage 4.

inglor_cz 4y ago

It is wild what rampant corruption (that voters are willing to tolerate, possibly for tribal reasons) will do to a fairly educated nation with enormous natural riches.

FredPret 4y ago
It's not just corruption. It's a rejection of the values of the Enlightenment (reason, evidence, progress, etc), because those ideas came from colonial powers. Those are also the ideas that work, whether they are applied in Europe or in Africa.
- whatshisface 4y ago
  I don't think that African dictators are rejecting reason and evidence in the course of administrating their corruption, although they might reject evidence of corruption in public.
  - inglor_cz 4y ago
    Some South African politicians are heavily into AIDS denial.
    - whatshisface 4y ago
      Using certain types of denial that western politicians have a history of as a reference, are they doing that because that's what the voters want to hear?
      - zx76 4y ago
        Interestingly I wouldn't say it seemed so. AIDS devastated the political base of the politician in question and people who fought for the right to treatment were also politically popular. I think it may have just been a strange ideological bent in a specific set of political circle. Thankfully these ideas and policies have been pretty much entirely consigned to history now. The consequences were terrible though, nearly a million children were orphaned because of both parents dying of AIDS. I can't find a specific source to cite a specific number, they all reference much higher numbers across the whole Southern African region.
    - buyx 4y ago
      Thabo Mbeki was an AIDS denialist, he's been out of power since 2008 and largely discredited. Jacob Zuma came to power partially because he wasn't an AIDS denialist, and one of the few things Zuma can claim credit for was widespread availability of anti-AIDS drugs, and the resultant recovery in South Africa's life expectancy. AIDS denialism is pretty-much dead in South Africa....it only ever was a pique of Thabo Mbeki, and because of his power as head of the ANC, the rest of the leadership had to be sycophantic.
      - inglor_cz 4y ago
        The legacy is over a quarter million unnecessary deaths, of mostly young people, though. Which means that as far as loss of human life goes, Thabo Mbeki belongs to the same category as Vladimir Putin with his war of conquest against Ukraine. Only the process wasn't as overtly violent, so the world didn't particularly care.
  - FredPret 4y ago
    The real problem is that most of the people there (black, white, and others) reject the mental frameworks that have been proven to work elsewhere, perhaps due to distrusting the West, or for whatever other reason. In my mind this mental framework features capitalism, democracy, and a style of thinking that emphasizes - or at least accommodates - kindness, openness, progress, thinking in nuances. Basically, humanism. From my experience there, some population groups will reject ideas they see as white, which includes capitalism (origin: probably Europe?) but not communism (origin: Germany!). Others, including white folks, might feel inclined to embrace those "white" ideas specifically, but will reject other parts of the Enlightenment framework. Many think problems should be solved by force instead of careful and nuanced consideration, which is seen as effeminate. Corruption is more of a symptom than a cause.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    > I don't think that African dictators are rejecting reason and evidence in the course of administrating their corruption, although they might reject evidence of corruption in public. South Africa isn't a dictatorship, but the voters still vote along tribal lines, with a concerning minority (+-10%?) voting along race-hate lines.
- inglor_cz 4y ago
  They worked beautifully in East Asia too. It was the other imports (Communism, Prussian-like militarism) that would be better discarded.

boeingUH60 4y ago

Typical African country. I've always wondered what's wrong with my continent. You can't literally point to a single African country that's developed and successful...corruption and incompetence rules every sector here...so horrible. Sorry for my rant :(

tomjen3 4y ago
>You can't literally point to a single African country that's developed and successful /me lifts hand and point finger to Botswanna.
- Barrin92 4y ago
  yep. It's a small country but it's the oldest democracy on the continent, ranks quite highly internationally (30th on the democracy index, ahead of Italy), and has a gdp per capita only slightly lower than the baltics (20k). By most accounts a pretty tremendous success.
  - jl6 4y ago
    Any obvious reasons why it has enjoyed this success while its southern neighbour hasn’t?
    - quink 4y ago
      Competent forward-looking leadership. There's plenty of factors that helped, I can think of a dozen right off the top of my head, but the one that made a crucial difference is in my opinion really the above. Basically this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seretse_Khama#Presidency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seretse_Khama#Presidency
      - buyx 4y ago
        And this: https://www.tralac.org/news/article/6931-surge-in-botswana-share-of-sacu-revenues.html https://www.tralac.org/news/article/6931-surge-in-botswana-s...

marcusverus 4y ago

> ...the implication was that load shedding would in fact, be several stages above stage 4. For the uninitiated, "load shedding" is a euphemism for "rolling blackouts". According to the wiki, Stage 4 load shedding leaves 25% of grid users without power. Assuming "several stages above stage 4" means Stage 7, that would mean that, at any given point, ~45% of grid users would be without power. [0] Yikes. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis#Loadshedding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_energy_crisis#Lo...

zx76 4y ago
This is correct. Due to how long these power cuts have persisted a lot of businesses, industry and the middle class & up have almost habituated to the levels up to 4. Shopping centers have generators, business parks have full solar and retail stores have battery backup. For instance a local clothing chain (Foschini) installed 300+ Tesla powerwall setups so that all their locations can be totally uninterrupted even with 2.5/5/7.5 hours per day of power cuts. Cell towers, fiber infrastructure, hospitals, even traffic lights at busy intersections all have battery backup these days. The reason this announcement is making the news is because levels above 4, like the two weeks or so of stage 6 we recently had are much more problematic. You start to run into issues where cell tower batteries can only charge like 80% back up with the number of hours powered per day - and so after a few days they no longer have enough charge to keep up with the interruptions and go offline, disrupting communications & internet access. Additionally the provisions heavy industry has made over the years to deal with this become insufficient and you start to lose shifts and thus there's a lot of evidence the economy is very materially affected at these levels of cuts. Of course the real weight of this crisis lands massively on the poor and disrupts job growth when it's desperately needed, curtails foreign and local investment etc. To discuss how parts of society can easily function with the lower stages of power cuts is not to miss how insane this all is... A society of 60 million people has largely stood by while this has happened for approx. 15 years now. And it's not like this is a matter of a poor nation without the ability to invest - approximately $40 billion USD has been spent by the power utility just in capex alone in this period - and afterwards they are producing less power than at the start... Quote from a local article: "It means that Eskom destroyed 46 GWh of power generation per R1 billion spent on increasing its power generation." [1] [1] https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/465641-eskom-blew-r680-billion-on-power-plants-now-it-generates-less-electricity.html https://mybroadband.co.za/news/investing/465641-eskom-blew-r...

cagenut 4y ago

One of the reasons renewables will have an easier time replacing fossil fuels than people who worry about intermittency/baseload think is that for most people, in most places, the grid simply isn't that reliable anyway. Cheaper and 'good enough' is a relative variable on both axis.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Very much so. Those who can afford it are going to go solar and batteries as soon as they can, and those who can't will be exposed to this low level of electrical service until solar and battery cost declines meet them at their socioeconomic level. The resulting system will be more resilient end state, but the process is going to suck to get there. The average house in South Africa uses 967 kWh of electricity per month. That's roughly a 5kw-6kw system, or 12-15 400W solar panels + inverters. Payback period at current prices is ~6-7 years. https://www.myggsa.co.za/how-much-electricity-does-a-household-use-in-south-africa/ https://www.myggsa.co.za/how-much-electricity-does-a-househo... https://www.handymanhomes.co.za/energy-saving/how-much-will-it-cost-to-install-solar-panels-in-south-africa/ https://www.handymanhomes.co.za/energy-saving/how-much-will-...
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > The average house in South Africa uses 967 kWh of electricity per month. That's roughly a 5kw-6kw system, or 12-15 solar panels + inverters. ... what? That's 11.000 kWh a year. Even in Germany, with water heating by electricity (which is rare because it's just so inefficient), homes rarely hit 6.000 kWh. [1] https://www.energie.web.de/ratgeber/verbrauch/stromverbrauch-einfamilienhaus/ https://www.energie.web.de/ratgeber/verbrauch/stromverbrauch...
  - Semaphor 4y ago
    For a whole house that sounds reasonable? I’m at 4200 kWh a year with only 2 people in a 60 m² apartment. Durchlauferhitzer, but still. The link you posted even mentions a range of 14,000 - 28,000 kWh for houses not built for efficiency.
  - deleted 4y ago

vt85 4y ago

[dead]

damagednoob 4y ago

Usually I like BBC's More or Less but their episode[1] on this situation really rubbed me the wrong way. They dismissed one elderly white couple's concerns with implied racism and didn't look at the trendline of per capita output from Eskom. Any South African currently living there is completely unsurprised by this latest news. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07jm2zy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07jm2zy

Semaphor 4y ago

Ouch. We are planning to visit my mother-in-law for the first time since covid in December. Maybe this isn’t a great time, but then when will it be.

pixelpoet 4y ago

As someone who grew up and went to uni in SA, then later emigrated to NZ (and later Europe) in 2007, this is completely expected. My understanding is that what happened is, in 1994 when the Apartheid government handed over power to the ANC, basically everything the government had in the pipeline was scrapped; of course it was in many ways an evil government, but it was also a surprisingly competent one, the only government to produce nuclear weapons and decide on their own to dismantle them or something? So anyway, all their plans for much-needed energy infrastructure upgrades were scrapped in 1994, and never considered again until the rolling blackouts started, by which time it was far too late. Since then the nearly universal corruption within the ANC and overall state capture meant things rapidly got worse, not better. I distinctly remember writing code to do periodic saves of a long running computation's state, because the power would just randomly go out, and at one point the power went out while saving the state, so I switched to saving A/B alternating state files. Most of my family is still hanging out in SA and things just get worse and worse... don't even get me started on the crime...

karp773 4y ago
Have they ever tried to emigrate? And if yes, why are they still there?
- pixelpoet 4y ago
  The harsh reality is that the programming half of the family got great job offers and stayed in NZ, the other didn't :(
  - karp773 4y ago
    So it's purely paperwork/legal barriers that hold them back? Otherwise they would have left?
    - pixelpoet 4y ago
      Yeah they came with and were not successful in their job searching, had to go back.

knaekhoved 4y ago

oblak 4y ago
This guy's history in this thread alone is crazy. Racist is an understatement
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Simpatico with a lot of the other content in this thread, but more direct. At least he isn't talking about angry blacks with a chip on their shoulder rejecting the white wisdom of the west. All of the Idiocracy mentions aren't very far away from this guy in essence, though.
  - userbinator 4y ago
    It's unfortunate that people don't want to talk about the elephant in the room because it's too politically incorrect to.
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
- jojobas 4y ago
  The real question would be "what if he's right". Imagine there was an island discovered with some sort of transitional, Homo Erectus style people. Let's say they can't, for organic reasons, exceed IQ 50 - can speak, wildly efficient in hunting and foraging, can't figure out 3rd grade maths, can't learn letters, can't understand how seeds work. What would be a reasonable policy towards such people?
  - curuxious 4y ago
    If you find out the answer, let Australia know.
- aaron695 4y ago

liampulles 4y ago

Eish, glad I bought an inverter that can withstand a 4h loadshedding block instead of a 2h one, but the economic and societal implications of this are pretty horrifying. Curious if there any SA expats here that can comment on their experience of emigrating? I have looked a bit but not very seriously. I should mention I do have a Netherlands passport (via my father).

throwawaaaylkt 4y ago
I emigrated to Australia from Johannesburg (northern suburbs). It's safe, the economy is strong with low unemployment and high wages, there's good healthcare (similar to the NHI that's planned for SA) and education, and it's easy enough to fit in culturally. But it's NOT a "cleaner and safer version of South Africa" - it's definitely a foreign country, which is why Pick n Pay and Woolworths SA have come to grief for that reason when expanding here. The downside is that there is a severe housing crisis, and labour is in seriously short supply. I'm in Brisbane, and you can't eat out here after 8PM because everything is closed. Shops close early. Our car was smashed by a reckless driver in early November....it's going to be January before they even start fixing it...doing any kind of renovation or home repair is a traumatic experience because of a shortage of people (you can't do your own plumbing or electrical BTW). I would not live in Sydney or Melbourne because of the high cost of housing, especially Sydney, since I'd probably live in some unpleasant, boiling hot suburb far west of the city to get anything I could afford. No domestic workers is another pain point, although you adapt. I'd say that if you have children, it might be worth emigrating from SA for their sakes, but if you don't have kids, and since you have an EU passport, it's entirely down to your preferences. The quality of life in South Africa for upper-middle-class people is pretty good. Anecdotally, many Australians move to places like Thailand or Bali for the sort of lifestyle South Africans enjoy. If you have a home paid for in SA, you can use your savings to travel overseas for relief from the load shedding and crime: I know a few SA upper middle class people who can afford to do that, while I have to pump every spare cent into my mortgage. Am I happy I moved? Yes. Would I have done it if I didn't have a family....probably not.
- herodoturtle 4y ago
  Some great perspective here, thanks for sharing.

reuben364 4y ago

As a South African, I have a engineer friend working for a company that does solar for places like retail complexes. They have a lot of business. Also there is a widely used app for load shedding timetables called "EskomSePush" which is a pun on "Eskom se poes" roughly translates to "Eskom's cunt" with poes being very vulgar and offensive.

liampulles 4y ago
The EskomSePush guys are national heroes

lelanthran 4y ago

FTFA: > "If we continue to burn diesel the way we have for the past seven months, the cost would be astronomical. But we do not have the cash to spend. We would be able to pay if the *municipalities were paying us*," That, right there, is a pretty big reason for the current blackouts: The masses refuse to pay, and the cost of keeping society afloat falls to a minority who cannot really be squeezed any further. Last I checked (2007), each taxpayer was supporting 4.3 people other than their dependents or themselves. It is not a sustainable situation, and the state should have been doing everything it could to encourage foreign investment. Instead, empowered by the voters, they repeatedly loot the coffers.

epolanski 4y ago
Democracy can be a double edged sword.
- kwere 4y ago
  Plato had quite a few issues with populism[0] [0] https://scroll.in/article/943564/does-not-tyranny-spring-from-democracy-how-platos-380-bc-philosophy-is-truer-than-ever-today https://scroll.in/article/943564/does-not-tyranny-spring-fro...

mikaeluman 4y ago

It is incredible how the collapse of SA, having happened over a moderately short span of time, has largely escaped coverage. The infatuation with the "rainbow nation" and Mandela overcoming the evil apartheid government. But the policies have just been a disaster. And in recent years, it's become so bad that we have to read news like this. Anyone that can get out, has or is getting out. I worked in a project with ppl from Johannesburg; suddenly they had moved to my country.

lgleason 4y ago
The flight out of the country has been happening for a long time.

gatvol 4y ago

Is this a deliberate strategy of the current regime to "dismantle the legacy of colonialism"?

supernova87a 4y ago

Anyone know, what's the state of utility-scale or even household self-sufficiency solar in South Africa?

liampulles 4y ago
Anecdotally, I know it is growing steadily. I just bought an inverter which supports Solar charging. New shopping malls are built with solar, etc. Worth mentioning that this is only really an option for middle class people and up, a sizable portion of the population barely have roofs let alone the money to put solar panels on them.

lgats 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_South_Africa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_in_South_Africa

pifm_guy 4y ago

Diesel fuel isn't the right fuel for a nation grid power supply... Diesel is expensive and normally only used for small scale generation when there aren't other options. Where are the gas turbines? They're cheap, easy to install in just a few months, and can scale nearly limitlessly? They're not great for the environment, but far better than diesel. Then there is also grid scale solar/wind/hydro, which take longer to deploy and have more caveats, but work out cheaper per kWh.

liampulles 4y ago
Solar would be a great investment for us given how much sun we get. Unfortunately it was not politically expedient at the time to invest in solar (or any serious generation capacity) a decade ago, so here we are... Sigh.
_djo_ 4y ago
These aren't intended for base load at all, they're Open Cycle Gas Turbine (OCGT) stations meant to be used for short peak loads, but because of the power crisis they're being run continuously. Eskom's OCGTs are combined cycle, meaning they can run on either diesel or gas, but historically it's been cheaper and easier in terms of supply to use diesel.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

Not as bad as in Lebanon where state power infrastructure totally collapsed, and you now you buy your power from entrepreneurs in the neighborhood who have portable petrol/diesel generators. I work from home so invested in two 1000KW inverters with 100AH AGM batteries for powering my fibre and servers (it has battery banks at the POP) and looking at replacing them with LifePO batteries when the AGM ones die. Some companies are selling a rent a solar conversion for your home - you just make do.

liampulles 4y ago
South african here, literally just bought an inverter with 2 100AH lifepo's and solar ports. Sorry to hear the situation in lebanon is not great, I hope your situation improves.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  Actually Cape Town - which system did you get and LifePo's - decided to split the load in my setup across two inverters so the recharge time would be limited to 100AH battery and not 2 x 100AH. I am reading about the Hubble S-120 drop in replacement batteries with their own BMS but I am reading conflicting reports.
  - liampulles 4y ago
    I went with the SPS-1000 with 2 100AH LifePo4 batteries from here: http://www.smartpowersystems.co.za/ http://www.smartpowersystems.co.za/ I think the batteries in this case are "AOKLY LiFePO4 Battery ALFP-12100", also drop in replacement types, probably similar to the Hubble ones. My email is in my bio if you have any follow up questions.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 4y ago

I would have told what I think, but I'm afraid of downvotes and canceling.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Havoc 4y ago

Government has mismanaged infrastructure on a wholesale scale in South Africa. It's not just electricity. Roads, rail, water, healthcare etc is not far behind. See also this graph - actual civil engineers have functionally vanished in the last 5 years from local government: https://i.redd.it/lgi9xzxlc10a1.jpg https://i.redd.it/lgi9xzxlc10a1.jpg How do you maintaining key infrastructure without engineers? You don't.

davidhyde 4y ago

Some people want to generate their own power at home using solar PV (the electric rather than hot water kind). However this is a big financial investment and there is low confidence of a positive return. An example of why there is low confidence is how the Cape Town Municipality (run by the opposition party btw; mentioned to make this post more politically neutral) is forcing people to register their home solar installations primarily for safety reasons. They promise not to charge a solar tax: https://www.capetownetc.com/news/how-to-register-your-solar-energy/ https://www.capetownetc.com/news/how-to-register-your-solar-... However this requirement is suspicious because there are already laws in place requiring people to use qualified electricians for doing high voltage work. The promise is not legally binging and there is a fear that the municipality will seek to recoup losses from lower electricity revenue (due to lower supply) by charging people for the electricity they generate themselves. This is not unheard of and an EU country like Spain charges this solar tax: https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/spain-approves-sun-tax-discriminates-against-solar-pv/ https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/storage/spain-approves-... If a country doesn’t have enough resources to incentivise solar then fine, but don’t threaten to make money from people who will effectively only lower the burden on the grid that can’t meet demand. They just won’t invest in it then.