Eskom ... is there ANY chance? In CPT there is

General Discussions
1

Friday before elections, LS is suspended.
Tuesday after elections, LS starts again … interesting.

Seeing where the elections are heading i.e. ANC still in control, the financial state of SA, international woes, whom of you think that Eskom can be sorted in due course, and if so, how?

Keeping in mind:
Existing old generation infrastructure is being run hard to try and keep going.
Karpower - we cannot afford it long-term, and the impact on their surrounding areas?
Nuclear - if approved, how long before that comes online … another Medupe/Kusile?
Renewables, suddenly just before elections, being approved - we still need baseline power, so where is that going to come from?
Yes, Cyril did get some investment secured recently for getting SA off burning coal, but with ANC’s track record, lack of skills in SA, I have no hope really for that. And it is R108bill, Eskom owes wot, R400bil, not even enough to cover expenses?

Methinks:
Every time we hit Level 4, I wonder when is there going to be a “misjudgment” with SA jumping to level 8, the next moment a catastrophic grid collapse as they “lose control”?

Ok, with grid collapse, ja ja, TEOTWAWKI, but how close have we come to date I sometimes wonder.

For as I sit here musing, even IF we have solar systems, that will make NO difference on the scale of SHTF a grid collapse will bring upon us.

Does anyone else want to share their thoughts?

EDIT 1: And less I forget, is Cyril going to keep control?
EDIT 2: Will André de Ruyter and Gordhan see it though?

2

I don’t even want to go there. In the back of my mind, I am thinking… yeah maybe, but there is the risk of 1) this is merely anecdotal, ie there are plenty of counter-examples, 2) Cum hoc ergo propter hoc, 3) running an election without power is hard enough, so it is possible that some peaking plants did work a bit harder to smooth this over…

It sounds too much like people who think the COVID numbers are cooked because the numbers just happen to be low right before an election. In other words, they argue that it is too much of a coincidence that the current low-point coincides with an election.

Well… not it isn’t. Normally elections are in April(ish). It got moved to later in the year precisely to align it with a lower infection point. It is no damn coincidence… :slight_smile:

3

While I think it is inevitable that renewables will start playing a large roll in South Africa, it is going to be us, the private citizen/small business owner that will force the revenue collection issue, through both reducing the strain and the revenue on the outdated electrical system.

This also then ties into the other “prepping” thread, as in how do you, who invested and planned for this, safeguard your property?

Last night our load shedding slot was from 8pm to 10:30pm. I took a walk outside during that time and saw that it was only my house out of the whole block, that had the outside and indoors lights shining away.

4

We were off on the same slot. But there was one other house in the area also with lights on :slight_smile: (at least I am not alone)

5

Hence the word … “interesting” …
I found it interesting that many people observed last week already, “Watch, this weekend LS would be suspended, to continue after elections … ?”

On a lighter note …

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Am NOT going down THAT rabbit hole. Will however say, if the numbers did not drop as they did, this election would have been most definitely postponed.

That was one of the discussions I had with some other folk, them saying it could be an ideal situation to “help” all homes and businesses, to go grid-tied, feedback, AND have batteries to carry evening/morning peak further. One hell of a decentralized system … but it also has its challenges.

Jip, another rabbit hole … one, I think,is not as deep and dark as the rabbit hole (Covid) above. :wink:
I HAVE considered switching ours off … the police say otherwise …

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6

I think we’re up to 5 houses in my street now, of which 4 also have solar panels.

7

I can see in our area more and more are going off grid. But the biggest problem is manufacturing cannot really go off grid and this could kill economy if the grid dies or becomes very erratic. But I see solar powered homes becoming the norm in the future.

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8

Well, exactly due to my general feeling of uncertainty I wanted to buy another two 3.5kWh batteries… Which should be enough for my house, come hell or high water (given that I manage it very tightly in the crappy winter) to take my essentials completely off grid… but I didn’t, because my wife wanted outdoor furniture.

Perhaps I’m just going to have to do it anyways…

9

I also see it becoming the norm but I don’t see how that’s possible without some form of solar tax/levy.
Eskom/Nersa are not going to allow their paying customer to all walk away as they have a responsibility to offset costs for the non-paying customers.

The same way how electric cars at some stage will need to contribute to all the taxes which make up the fuel cost.

10

yip i think so too, was wondering same about the petrol tax with electric cars coming. I read about Zimbabwe starting a bicycle tax because people couldn’t afford taxis anymore, don’t know how true it is :man_facepalming:

11

like the late announcement of the petrol/diesel hike. Normally it’s like 5-7 days before it goes up it is announced, this time it was Monday night… in time for Tuesday morning.

G

12

This makes a lot of sense, to a point in the future … privatize it all, or huge chunks of it?

BUT, then there is this possibility, at a point in the future …

13

That’s part of the reason we are where we are. The Mbeki administration wanted to privatise the SOEs. The unions objected – which should not be a surprise to anyone, the same happened in the UK back when Thatcher did the same thing – and the whole thing dragged along. Now, you don’t put new mags on a car you intend to sell, neither do you put much cash into a power station you want to privatise… so come 2002 Eskom was practically begging government for help, by 2003 they were unmothballing power stations, by 2007 we were load-shedding.

Around the same time, a new overlord came to power, quickly approved plans for new power stations… and of course it would need a coal supply, etc etc… and we all know what happened then. That left us in basically the same situation, 10 years later… except that now the money is also gone.

So what I am saying is… if you are going to privatise… do it swiftly and with some force, or don’t do it at all. We’ve tried this before, and if we’re going to try it again, we have to somehow avoid the old mistakes. And no… you cannot bypass the unions, you will have to sell them the idea.

One thing Thatcher did, was to actually sell some of the assets to the workers :slight_smile:

14

Yeah, the more I read the more I think Eskom was told to make it happen before elections … probably “pushed” by all the parties.

In other news, there is just no way Eskom can keep this thing going with an annual shortfall of R5bn on maintenance …

Yeah, I think it is time …

15

Sure, but it’s not really surprising, I think. It’s happened before, when they were told to keep the power up for the opening of parliament, for example. With the use of peaking plants, and pumped storage, you can move things around a little bit, so by borrowing some pump-back time from the next day, or spending a little more on Diesel, the odds are that there is some emergency capacity available. So you are probably right: The elections got special treatment. But I would say that it should… :slight_smile:

16

Elections did not just happen overnight … you don’t need power to vote last time I checked. All the computers that was needed, could have been powered with generators, UPS’es …

Cause the thing that bugs me with that, is that the damn politicians, all of them, caused this drama over the last few decades.

Maybe not all of them stole, raped nor pillaged Eskom, but they “knew” what was going on.

I don’t for one minute believe that the banks, reserve bank, police, politicians did all they could to stop it all as one after the other media outlet reported fiasco after fiasco … none of them could read?

They ignored it all.

So it irks the shiite out of me, that when they need votes, NOW they force the last bit out of Eskom, bugger the costs to companies, economy, by using that teeny weeny spare that Eskom “may” have left in the tank.

Eskom is running on empty and was pushed by the people who stood by watching them being drained year after year.

EDIT: As a matter of fact, if SA had power failures during elections, I would bet the votes would have looked different.

17

Perhaps where you and I live. But not everywhere, in poorer areas this could cause significant disruption.

Look, this isn’t an either/or thing. On the one hand you are absolutely right that things were badly managed. Nobody is contesting that. But on the other hand, an election is important. Even if I don’t agree with the way everyone votes, it is extremely important that they get the chance to vote, and therefore, on a balance of evil vs evil, telling Eskom to step up for that one day is the lesser evil.

The way the vote turns out is also a great barometer to measure the political temperature of a country. As an example, there is a certain red-coloured party that I am watching carefully. The more votes that party shows, the more it tells me something about the ideological underpinnings of my countrymen… and that might lead me to adopt different countrymen at some point, if you get my drift. It is important that the people who vote for that party also get a fair opportunity to do it… otherwise the barometer stops working :slight_smile:

18

Methinks it could have been a good thing in the long run …

I also keep said party under scrutiny, and it is telling that another party dropped from 59.39% in 2000, to ±45.94% in 2021 ito national votes.

EDIT: I like that there are a myriad of smaller parties getting more votes, ESPECIALLY where it is a municipality wanting to right the past wrongs themselves, getting their local votes. Brilliant!

Do we have another 5 years to “spare”?

Methinks, we need to get “angry”, but in the right sense, do it civilly …

19

just want to point out that The SA Vine is a satirical site and this was made up. Probably because they hit far too close to the truth that this is funny / believed, though :slight_smile:

20

I agree - and it was pointed out just before the election that Load shedding is a BIG issue for poorer communities.

Soweto is known to have ongoing issues with Eskom – and this and loadshedding probably contributed quite a bit in the recent election results where they are punishing the ANC.

(19) Dawie Scholtz on Twitter: “Johannesburg Township Summary, ANC % Diepsloot: 61% (-3) Rabie Ridge+Ivory Park: 58% (-7) Orange Farm: 57% (-19) Alex: 56% (-4) Soweto: 53% (-18) Soweto now the ANC’s weakest township in Joburg, which was unthinkable 2 days ago. Tectonic shift.” / Twitter