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

General Discussions
2401

Keep on telling my wife … stop reading what you think you want to hear when I say things. :rofl:
As I also tell her, most of the time if I say i.e. it is black, then it is black, not shades of grey black, just black.

I am NOT talking of any of that, just the parts in black “suddenly” getting done.

The ANC said … stop this plundering, get things fixed, we need to show the country we can run this Eskom thing … we need votes next year, we failed on everything else, let’s fix this Eskom “quick”.

They said this year still … did they not!?

After a lot of people in and around the ANC, funders(?) having made their voices heard loudly, mostly in private, that “this shiite will stop now!!!”

That we are still on a knife edge, absolutely. Immense damage has been done.

But this reprieve I’m seeing, right where we live … my last LS was on 2023-06-10 22:07:18

This is TOO convenient …

OBVIOUSLY, I can be totally wrong … “ek kry net nie die kloutjie by my oor.”
Where are the breakdowns!?

This thing is happening on the grassroots level … the stations keeping up in their dilapidated states, reserve margins “in sy moer”.

The flip side of my coin… we are running so hard right now, in winter, due to the reprive of the cold, repairs are holding, that when the weather changes, SA having gotten this reprieve, it is going to “blow up” when we hit LS 6 again.

People … I’m seriously uncomfortable here …

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2402

No idea but another way to interpret some of this is that a different approach to dealing with the people part of the running of a power station is perhaps getting a better result?

Knowing that whataboutism and whatifsm are considered bad form in conversation I am really curious what conspiracy theories we would need if the current (not yet) stage eleventy six load shedding happened with AdR and COO still there.

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2403

It might help if you switch off your mains breaker three times a day for about 2 hours at a time? :wink:

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2404

Buring through the Eskom budget like no tomorrow.

We have no solar power to talk of in the last few weeks.

As a matter of fact, we now have a seeping fountain in our braai room.

If we had LS during this time, it would have been a real PITA.

2405

To improve production dramatically in an organization, the size of ESKOM takes the buy-in of tens of thousands of people.
To sabotage production dramatically in an organization, the size of ESKOM takes the buy-in of tens of people.
If this turnaround isn’t a fluke, it isn’t because tens of thousands of people have had a fortnight’s morale boost.

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2406

And THAT is what I’m saying. ANC told them to STOP.

2407

And as Phil said, that needs the buy-in of thousands of people. I don’t buy that.

I also don’t buy “suddenly”. Power stations aren’t things you pull on the lift on a Saturday afternoon, and then you quickly pull the engine and do a bottom-end overhaul. There is no suddenly.

I think that crime, even the organised kind, has a high amount of “opportunity” involved. If the ANC loses an election, there are two possible outcomes. The one is that the opportunity goes away, and if at least half the criminal gangs decide to keep going as long as the opportunity remains (you know, skep as dit pap reën), I don’t see the criminal part going away merely because someone in the ANC said so.

There isn’t just one gang running a racket here. There are multiple.

Edit: To be clear, while I do think the ANC is enabling the situation, possibly for the benefit of some internal members, or even for funding, I don’t think they are in control of it. There are many more people in it for the opportunity only.

2408

If it was said at all, it was ment for the ears of the press en people in general. There is no such thing as saying stop to criminals, or by criminals and that having any effect, at all.

The EAF is everything here, we literally live and die by that number. It’s not id suddenly maintenance is done, it was and remains the quality of maintenance, and sabotage. Unplanned breakdowns are just that, unforeseen. One thing to note, in lots of areas like boilers and others, there is advanced warning of the breakdown. It can be fixed before becoming a real issue.

Maintenance from this point of view is what was frequently lacking when I had some internal insights. Diligent inspections and reacting to those signals, was frequently delayed for a verity of reasons. Some of these were political, some by contractors, some by crime syndicates, some by lack of spares as the warehouses were robbed blind.

Frequently the managers of those sites, sold off the warehouse stock (sometimes for scrap value) to meet KPI’s or just to profit a buck or more, is the speculation.

So no, none of this suddenly is meaningful at all, don’t be fooled…

Groetmis :wink:

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2409

Read again …

2410

My mind goes far on this … the ANC needs a lot of funds to run their organization, their coffers have dried up.

As a whole, probably not all involved, the powerful individuals with excessive control inside the ANC, the untouchables, a whole new ballgame that.

2411

I think the reverse is also true. To tell a large group of people “you stop it now, okay!?”… and that actually happening, takes buy-in. I am not convinced the criminal gangs operating inside Eskom will listen to the ANC. The money is way too good, and there is a possibility it might go away.

Like the virus that kills its host, this WILL eventually kill even the ANC.

I am not at all convinced that the cancer has been cured. The patient is just having a good week.

Sorry to be so negative. But honestly, has the fundamentals changed?

2412

What was said? That high-powered individuals in the ANC was involved?

2413

Involved yes. Not the only one. I think there are many powerful non-government people dishing up from the pot too.

2414

The calm before the storm? How does power generation suddenly change from one week to the next? A miracle new chairman?

There’s nothing that convinces me that the amelioration (gotta luv that term) is sustainable. The coal fired stations weren’t suddenly fixed overnight. New transmission lines didn’t appear overnight. More standby transformers, switchgear, etc didn’t land at our municipalities last week to fix the distribution failures. New engineers weren’t employed overnight. Koeberg didn’t suddenly come online (the opposite is scheduled to happen in July). A moral boost cannot bring Kusile and Medupi units back online overnight.

The temporary cessation of LS is political pressure to run the existing generation harder and drive a message of confidence in the new executive and management style.

Look at OCGT (gas turbine) usage - when these are ALL used more than just at peak times it tells a story of a fragile, decaying infrastructure that increasingly leans on backup/emergency power. It would be naïve to consider that that is fixed from one week to the next.

I was at Siemens when the first two OCGT units were installed for about a max of three hours use at peak times to augment the base load that had a decreasing reserve. There wasn’t an electrical engineer not saying “hier kom kak”, but I don’t recall anyone forecasting just how bad it would get over the decades ahead, and that they’d at times be running continuously as frequently as they have over the years. This has ballooned to thirteen I think (2 private). Quick, costly solutions to a long-term problem for which there has been insufficient (to use a kind term) planning.

But FOLLOW.THE.MONEY. Between capital expenditure and consumable expenditure (diesel to the knee pads) there is massive cashflow to a connected elite, who are not about to be weaned off winning the lottery every month. If it were so, then we’d see many people in orange pajamas. Does anyone see that?

OCGT usage is a good barometer and leading indicator for the state (planned & unplanned maintenance) of the base load stations. There are a multitude of stats at OCGT usage (eskom.co.za) and elsewhere on the Eskom portal. But looking at short term stats like the chart below is deceiving - the long term trend is what counts.

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And long term it has all been in the decline that we know of, and which cannot be turned around overnight.

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2415

Precisely. The fundamentals remain unchanged.

To be fair, there were some arrests. It does look as if law enforcement is coming to the table, though I am unsure if anyone deserves credit for that, it took them long enough. I think it is too early to announce a trend.

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2416

If sabotage at power station level was the only reason for reduced production then the obvious factor to consider when production increases is a change in sabotage. I do not think sabotage is the only factor and the sabotage that is there is not part of a single organised origin.

Will 50 people at the coal face so to speak, not giving a damn about their performance, possibly be as detrimental to production as one criminal who opens/closes a valve contaminating the plant’s water supply?

has there actually been a turnaround though? The biggest single factor change at the moment is the reduced planned maintenance leading to overall more units available. The unplanned losses still seem to be tracking along the 33-35% region.

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2417

by reducing the number of units that were taken offline for planned maintenance - this planning happening months in advance ?

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2418

Perhaps we’ve just been experiencing the symptom of a huge amount of planned maintenance, which just ended and the units were all brought back online. Wouldn’t it be interesting if someone in the know inside Eskom, who is not a talking head (referring to the execs), would tell us?

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2419

We use stats here … my question is: How accurate are those stats? Are their sources 100% attentive to details? OR are the stats for the media, the real stats not compiled? Lies, Damn Lies, Statistics come to mind.

With the criminal networks, just look at the recent reports in Cpt on the construction mafia and their actions to make 10’s of thousands “bow down” … just shoot a few people… if I can be that “kras”.

If I was a criminal mastermind (being a psychopath will help tremendously)… how would I have done it if I was there at a station or 10?

Can think of a 10’s of ways I would have dunnit with Gov protection … knowing where the skeletons are buried, me owning a pool business for exactly that purpose.

2420

I concur, there hasn’t been, and therefore Makwana’s rationale to explain this non-happening is absurd.

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