This is the main one. But it is also one I see changing abruptly before I move on to the hereafter. Because at some point, the old guys must retire, and it cannot be more than a decade away.
The question is, who takes the space. More moderates, or more extremists with red hats?
Ideology. The current elitists are on the bell curve, closer to the edge, even thou they may think of themselves as intellectuals. The CancERous ones are still clinging to the same old ideology and that ain’t as servants to the people or the country. “It’s our turn in power, we must eat and did not get into politics to be poor” a quote…
Inbuild in culture over many many millennia, consume everything and then move on. There is no maintenance in that philosophy. And even if the politics changes abruptly, little else will change immediately.
Moderates are getting nowhere fast, it’s always the firming and the extreme that wins out, even tho it should not be so. There is a golden thread to stay in power, or to gain power, be extreme.
yea, but no grid access… And not even just that, Transmission is not expanding, and Distribution is not even coping with all the failures. Remember of the distribution grid, Scam owns ~50%, Munich the other %. All the rolling blackouts crates havoc with the infrastructure, none was designed with this in mind.
To say nothing of thieves stealing neural busbars and wires wherever these are accessible. And saying nothing of the non technical losses (shows us what they thinking, it’s illegal connections and theft ) and the havoc that creates, bot in damage to infra and loss of revenue.
None of this will go away wit political changes at the top.
There is hope, private enterprise, but under the current political regime, and a few other matters to be also dealt with, it is not going to take up the “full load” - will stay “private” largely. Pockets of power if you want.
The level of incompetence keeps on astounding me time and time again.
I always believe it is going to get better and get sorted - just because it is impossible to run things as badly as its being run. But every time it gets even worse.
Some of the current bout of load shedding is because of scheduled maintenance. Some stations were scheduled for maintenance in September… and then it became September and they took them down. This is a good thing. It is better than (as in the past) running them longer to keep the lights on at all costs.
But then, there are also a few unplanned outages (Duva and Hendrina I think?), and of course units that should have been back but didn’t come back on time. Which is not new, that always happens.
It appears that factors for the current increased load shedding include the increased planned maintenance as pointed out by @plonkster but 2-3 other factors also seem relevant.
demand appears still quite high and/or eskom’s prediction models have copped a wobble (not quite the 26GW odd of Sunday)
some bigger units needing to be shutdown on Monday but possibly more importantly (this is my wild speculation) some of the units out are pumped hydro at Drakensberg (2 units i.e. ~ 500MW - 1&2 September in below graphic) and planned outage of Ingula (1 unit i.e. ~330MW). The pumped hydro appears to have been used a lot during the week days and then mostly replenished weekends. So, the pumping back of water at Drakensberg is probably taking longer but also possibly means that Drakensberg’s remaining capacity will be kept in reserve (seeing that Drakensberg is part of the black start recovery with the OCGTs already faiirly utilised for “base generation”).
*“Unit On” in above table should refer to “on short term outage for minor repair”
Some possible positive news coming out of the media briefing is that Tutuka’s units appear to be stabilising with four units (600MW each) expected to return to service during this week (apparently Tutuka has been struggling to run with more than one unit without tripping).
Then, seeing as it all links in and around Gov, maybe the ANC now needs to sort this out… especially where Eskom is concerned ito “cadre deployment”, if any.
Was thinking about this but there is still “grid use reduction” and its distributed so doesn’t need any infrastructure upgrade (note it does need maintenance…).
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