Preppers have plans to stay in place …
Preppers have detailed planS to bug out fast …
Preppers are also survivalists when all their plans failed …
Here is a scenario one can “play with”:
Over a weekend, week is tougher … to “feel how it can feel”.
- Switch off your Eksom supply. You only have the UPS’es, solar system, for everything.
- Turn off your municipal water, only use what is in your pipes, geyser/s, maybe some rainwater tanks.
- Walk to the shops, no driving, as if there is no fuel supply.
- Only pay with cash you have on hand, as if the ATM’s are empty.
- You get hurt, broken arm, fever … what do you have on you to take care of that?
Did that as a thought experiment once … but only once. 
The riots we saw in Kzn recently … extrapolate that to where you live.
Did your wife make another video, with glass in hand, explaining that “Jaco decided”… ? I loved the previous one, when you were building… 
What where … refresh my memory!!!
Told the wife in Dec 2019, something is off, I think we need to watch what is potting.
Come Mar 2020, we stock up, the best case, we save a ton on groceries in 6 months, let’s try it. So we did.
2 days later LD level 5 … 6 months later, bugger me things got expensive!!!
Was fun though … but damn it was 1) not cheap and 2) thank you for enough freezers on solar.
So last week I heard about this solar storm that was supposed to hit us 31 Oct, then that quake in Namibia.
Told my wife about it like "Uhm, I just read a novel about earthquakes, the big ones and another on solar flares hitting earth, see these articles … " she told me to just shut up and don’t say one word further! 
Off-grid already
Got a borehole
Not the greatest, but have an electric golf cart.
I don’t know what will evolve in this space.
(Barter system? - I’ll trade ice cubes 
)
Hopefully, the local doc is a prepper and hasn’t gone to Namibia.
I remember, the one where I decided to make some more doors, and we forgot to close the doors/windows when we used a “dustless grinder” (has a vacuum cleaner built-in) that was not dustless … 
Wanted so bad to use a hosepipe … but my wife refused.
This thread is making me nervous… At least we seem to have this loadshedding thing down. Surely they will just be able to shed everything and bring it back online piece by piece without first letting all the big generators grind to a halt?
What one needs to further consider, how many people in your surrounding area, will have same?
Then think for a moment, how do you protect what you have, being a HAVE, against the thousands of HAVE-NOT’s?
And don’t tell me you have ample bullets …
You will be shot with your own gun/bullets. As it is another level of thinking that does not get thought through properly, when masses are involved.
If a national blackout happens, I switch off all lights. I keep electronics going, fridges etc. but I will not be advertising that I have power.
1 Like
In theory yes … LS as much as one has to, to protect against a Black Start as Phil said.
But worst case, as I said, Level 4 and above, is worrying me. Can they keep control all the way all the time?
But here is a question to ponder on:
Which country in the world, has had to restart from scratch, a Black Start?
Far as I know … none.
And does SA have the expertise, or is it just a manual based on theory, on how to do that?
Having watched what happened in Venezuela, the one in Queens, New York, man, it is a sight to behold.
Depending on what size transformer it is, some of them need to be ordered, then built, then shipped in, taken off the ship, and moved to where they need to be installed … can take months, even years for some of them. Also wondered, which harbor can handle that today? And where are those trailers to move them overland today in SA?
If power stations suffer catastrophic failures, how do you fix this quickly: Photos: 'Extensive damage' at Medupi after massive explosion - TechCentral
And there is the core … switching off your lights is a good start, but consider the ripple effect of the blackout. THAT is the drama.
That was the one. I thought to myself… respect for that lady. She managed to laugh at it all, have a glass of wine, make a funny video. I would not get away with that nearly as easily. On the other hand, they do say a woman marries a man like her father, and for me that seems true enough: My father in law also tends to just do things… and deal with the inevitable fall-out later
1 Like
This is a very valid point. I think though, in that scenario, the humanitarian thing to do is to share with the have-nots. I certainly wouldn’t deprive people of water, but I would expect their allegiance and protection after making it clear that the power supply providing said water needs me.
There have been a few, but they have had neighbouring countries/states with better infrastructure than ZA’s neighbours.
They used to, but I don’t think they do anymore. Some utilities ( including ireland) have mock drills from time to time.
I think you’ve misconceived what a black start is. Firstly it isn’t a repair job, it is literally putting a system back together.
A coal power station literally needs a lot of power to start. Those conveyors need to transport fuel, mills need to pulverize it, massive fans have to blow it into a boiler, water has to be pumped to make steam etc etc. This all has to happen before the power station makes any power.
Once it makes some power that can be used to start the next station and so on.
But all the while this is a balancing act of load versus generation. That’s where expertise is required.
The more power stations on the grid the more stable it becomes.
The problem is, is where does the first power come from to start the ball rolling?
That’s where your pumped storage and your diesel power stations step up.
But if you have no diesel and no water in those top dams…
There is a specific process for this.
Let me perhaps expand on this a bit, for other readers.
The first important part of the information: Many power stations cannot run without power. They need power to make power. You cannot run your conveyor belts or coal grinders or what have you unless you have power. So coal stations, as a rule, cannot black-start. If they are small enough, they can start with a large Diesel-generator, though I do not know if this is done here.
The other station that cannot black-start, is a nuclear power station. It needs backup power at all times, and it takes a really long time to get up to full power.
Good black-start stations are hydro, or gas turbines.
Some stations are designated black-start stations. They have the ability to start from nothing, and then other stations can bootstrap from these stations.
There are designated separate power lines for black-starting, at least in part. So the first few steps goes according to the black start plan, they are pretty much cast in stone.
So the question is, what needs to happen for the big turbines to grind to a halt? Is it possible that the grid frequency drop quickly enough to grind them to a standstill before managing to disconnect themselves from the grid to begin with (and then just reconnecting little by little)?
Generators will trip if the power system frequency becomes unstable. However, it is those same generators that provide the inertia to keep the power system frequency stable.
So it can happen that the loss of generators, leads to the loss of stability, leads to the loss more generators, leads to the further loss of stability and so on.
That’s what happens in seconds.
1 Like
I fully understand a Black Start … having read a bit up on what it takes to build new transformers that must be replaced, can transformers get damaged, worse, explode, during those seconds it takes the grid to collapse?
Yes and No.
A fault should be cleared from the system without severe system consequence.
However, if there was a protection maloperation and that fault was not isolated from the system fast enough, this would affect the frequency.
So Yes a transformer could be destroyed, but it would likely be the match that lit the fire (the initial fault) and not actually be damaged in the fire if you know what I mean.
And eventually you end up with several power stations that are still running (the boilers are still hot, the steam is still under pressure), but they are completely unsynchronised with each other and there is no hard signal to tie with. Except Koeberg. I’m pretty sure over there they’d just drop the rods and stop the thing for safety reasons.
Now we understand a teeny bit more, of why it must not happen, grid failure that is.