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

General Discussions
931

At the end of the meeting, Scopa chairperson, IFP MP Mkhuleko Hlengwa, told Eskom executives and newly appointed board chairperson Mpho Makwana that certainty was needed over the rolling power cuts – not “grey language” at best, or obfuscation at worst.

“The people need certainty. The economy needs certainty,” said Hlengwa.

“If it is four years (of rotational power cuts), tell the country now, ‘For the next four years we are stuffed’. Otherwise, we are normalising load shedding as a permanent reality.”

The takeaway from Scopa on Wednesday? Eskom may not be able to keep the lights on 24/7, but moves are under way against those who’ve dipped into the state-owned power entity for their private gain.

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But that happened already. The CEO said back in 2019 already that there was going to be a lot more load shedding to come, for many more years.

I suspect it is the nature of the uncertainty, and I also think this uncertainty is somewhat unavoidable.

We can be certain that there will be outages. We cannot be sure how much though. And there is a very good reason for that: Sales.

When the power is available, you want to sell as much of it as possible. In other words, when your power stations are running, you don’t want to be stuck on some level of “shedding” for the sake of scheduling and unable to sell that energy. Therefore, when the energy is available, the load shedding level must reduce. Conversely, when the energy is not available, we must immediately move to a higher level.

In other words, the uncertainty that exists at the technical level is communicated rather directly to the customer, and there really is no way around this.

I mean, we already have people saying that Eskom is hiding energy somewhere in a closet until they get the requested rate hike… can you imagine what would happen if Eskom actually sat on extra generation capacity, but they are not lowering the load shedding level “for the sake of certainty”… that would just get them roasted by the other half.

Edit: To put that into a car analogy…

I know my car has bad CV joints. I know that thing is going to pop out and leave me stranded some time in the next month. I do not however know if that time is going to be today… and this is one of only 5 cars in my fleet that is still mobile… so we proceed with hope that we make it another day until one of the others that are in the shop is fixed again…

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What I’m reading, and it is less and less between the lines:
On the one side, Eskom Shareholders are saying “Keep it on at all costs!”. Eskom then has to apologize profusely when they have to cut power.
The same shareholders do not want to admit to a fixed LS ongoing schedule, as that would also be admitting it is totally f…d.

Eskom Shareholders are doing their level best to not “give up” and admit how bad it really is as it will cost them voters and international investments.

Then we have non-shareholders, in this case Parly now, who is slowly getting to grips post-Zuma with more and more actions taking place to weed out the weeds, who can now say, hold on, what is it now, do you (Eksom) officially say it is f…d , or not?

The faction that wants to make SA better, is the one driving it … the other faction is maybe loosing ground, the one that caused this.

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This, this is a hiding to nowhere. Prediction, a house of cards or a field of dominoes…

Get the crimes, yes crimes under control. Fire the troublemakers and excess staff. Do the LS crap, short term a lot, medium term much less.

Groetnis

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Like in AA, the first step is to admit there is a problem.

Maybe this is slowly heading toward the admitting that there IS a problem part.

Once that is done, then we need a Benevolent Dictator to tell SA, this is how it is going to be, to start the fixing process.

SA, we can handle it …

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BUT, that is not all … this elephant in the room … Eskom may not be able to get the prep work done in time.

Mantashe had the report months ago … Mantashe must also go.

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Let me just add here. I think it is a very very positive step that people are saying: Maybe we need to accept that a permanent level of load-shedding is necessary for the foreseeable future. This will give Eskom much needed room to do maintenance. Room I expect they didn’t really get when they were told to keep the lights on at all costs.

The other side of that coin is funding. Eskom needs money to do maintenance. It is pointless to have a power plant out of service, but with no money to fully bring it back to operation.

Using my car analogy, that’s like that CV joint finally popping (leaving me with a greasy mess on the side of the road), and then sending it to the shop to repair only the CV-joints, but leaving the equally badly worn ball-joints untouched because I don’t have the money. That car then goes back into service next week just to pop a ball joint a few days later.

With cars we do a lot of “while you are in there” maintenance. When you do a clutch, you also do the rear main oil seal. And sometimes the clutch slave, which for some idiotic reason lives inside the bell housing on some cars. We need to get Eskom to a place where the same can be done.

One way Eskom gets more money is rate increases. I know these things are not popular, and I know that if all that money wasn’t stolen it would not be (as?) necessary, but we are here now. Would you like to have power, or do you just want to complain?

Then, if you can get those stations properly fixed, that will get you to a more stable baseline power value which will then allow for better scheduling too.

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I am the kind of glass half full person. The Pragmatic Optimist or the pessimistic realist… So as I have said plenty o times, they are so done you can stick a fork in em. That being the plant. I have visited every on of those coal fired plants, they were done for some time ago already. Any hope that this will be fixed, imho, is wasted.

I was helping with the de-mothballing as well, and all the old control systems that had to be rescued/fix/ patched/replaced. All the local labs on site that were no longer, had to be replaced and equipment sourced and brought in. Now imagine the plant be mothballed, how many times were those turbines stationary during that time? They supposed to be rotating at a few RPM or they bend due to the sagging from own weight.

Many valves were frozen, many pipes corroded, transformer oil contaminated, electrical equipment stripped for using on other plant. Then the staff to get the whole lot running again, and managers, and coal supplies, yada yada yada. You get the idea.

Do I have any hope, not really. Will anything else work, maybe the BESS project and the IPP program will provide relief. Will that be enough?

And I do apologise for typing all this, not what people want to hear. But this is my reality with what I have seen and experienced on the inside.

Groetnis

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In a car analogy, the car is EOL, scrap it.

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No apology needed Sarel. The world needs to hear this and it is as we have suspected!

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Sometimes what we want to hear is not what we need to hear. I appreciate your inside knowledge on this matter.

I was thinking more… it needs a whole new engine, or at least an engine rebuild.

My analogy of the “ball joints” was actually quite deliberate. You see, to get a CV joint out, the very first thing you do (after jacking up the car and taking the wheel off) is to remove three bolts holding the ball joint assembly in, so you can pop the shaft out of the splines. Replacing the ball joint at the same time as the rest makes sense if you have the money.

Similarly, there are two oil seals on the final drive where the drive shaft pulls out. You should do those as well.

Then while the thing is in the air and the drive shafts are out, you might as well drop the transmission and do the clutch. And since you have to unbolt the starter to do that, you may as well service/replace that as well, and check your ground strap and stuff like that. In other words… do a whole refurb essentially, not unlike an unmothballing.

To do that, the whole station needs to be out of commission for months… but after that, the EAF should be such that it gives you room with the rest.

The longer you wait, however, the less room you have to take something out of commission for a few months… and I worry that we may already be past the point of no return.

Even the proverbial “point of no return” is not really a static thing. So you can only provide half the power needed in a country. The economy shrinks (regrettably so!) and peak demand drops, and that actually helps to improve matters for a power producer. The main thing here is: Stop letting it get worse!

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From when I started this thread, what I’ve since read, and what Sarel has posted at times, and now, here and there a few other pieces of insider info shared possibly at risk of a potential conflagration of a signed NDA, I’m literally waiting for an “O shiite, thar she blows” moment, when a station or a few, catastrophically fails for the last time.

The fact that it has lasted so long, still running, my utmost respect for the dedicated people that are making it so.

Am I being negative, nope, to use a car analogy, at one point it is all over, CV joint breakage leads to “while you are in there” maintenance, discovering so many defects that it is all over for the car, you have to scrap it.

The money problem … SA can get huge international renewable investments at very favorable interest rates, but NOT to fix what is. Renewables only.

So admit the problem, get the finance in place, whilst keeping what is producing, and start the massive projects for renewables build, to replace one station at a time. Maybe province for province or station for station, do it now, do it better, faster, mitigating it all as best one can, but just do it, start by admitting the problem publicly.

We have the brains in SA, can tap into many experts in the world, we have the labor, we have a chance to restart.

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But then this must also be a just transition, or that is something you will hear. A transition to renewable energy should not make the poor poorer and the rich richer. It should not sell the soul of a country to a foreign power (eg, as many African Countries have done with China).

But I think you are right here. There is another opportunity here in the green economy. Many companies in other countries are looking for places to offset their carbon footprint, and one way of doing it is to pay for green infrastructure elsewhere. In other words, some people may be willing to give us money and expect back only the (green) credit(s).

Of course the third problem, is that a politician thinks about staying in power, which means he needs his voters to stick around. Putting a large number of miners out of work is never a good strategy.

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The third problem, now THAT is actually the one and only problem to deal with.

If that is sorted, in place, under the right strong dedicated to SA leadership, using common sense, strong leadership having to make hard decisions i.e. “towns closing”, the transition can happen.

There will be drama, how that is dealt with, wisely yet with a firm hand, another key point to solve.

The core is for the common good of SA, not a faction, not an individual, no, for SA. United we stand.

You cannot make an omelet without breaking some eggs. Pan is hot … are we jumping or making omelets?

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To any rational logical person, it makes sense. But Who actually runs Eskom? Politicians and the Union, oh yes and don’t forget, the crime syndicates. The management are along for the ride.

To our way of thinking, like engineers do, that type of thinking, you get fired for. None or almost none of them left. Between the syndicates and the politicians, they were all shown the road or elected to take the road.

Saw that slow train wreck in person….

But now, with the landscape set, the cards dealt or the dominos stacked, what to do? And remember, we cannot do what needs to be done, the elites in power and their ideology must be the doers, or be the undoing of it all. Only those to options really exist.

Groetnis

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Or wait for the next election… :thinking:

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Holy shiite … how the #($&*% did this go blatantly unchecked in the open … o wait, this is on a scale that defies normal logic.

Good thing is, one by one this saga is slowly slowed down, don’t think it will be allowed to restart as unchecked as before when it is reported in the media for everyone to see/read.

Bet more and more people/communities will see it, there are many good honest people in SA, getting the guts to say No! Not again … because the strangle hold from before, compared to today, feels like it is slowly lifting, one saga at a time.

Even feels like the courts are getting more robust on sentencing.

One saga at a time … the RET/Taliba factions are weakened.

Burst out laughing at this report … ingenious word use, the arrogance, the conviction, “they have decided”.

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That is nothing apparently - can you imagine the truck with all the stones unloading its cargo into the Eskom Power Station stockpile and then the mill milling and sending it to the furnace… they recon that’s why the boiler tube leaks are becoming bad… stones and coarse dust wearing them out way faster due to all the foreign objects and poor quality coal being substituted …

The can’t steal coal if its on a conveyer direct from the mine… Not as easily anyway!