My 2c
Q1: Never, but - things are going to get worse (7/10 now => 2/10 in future - 18 months)
Q2: 1/10
Q1: Right now I see it as a gradual collapse, as is currently experienced, till SA can hardly operate. The flip side is any moment due to major catastrophic breakdowns, or even a larger cascading catastrophic breakdown.
Q2: 0/10 if nothing major changes in Gov as bandaid fixes will be presented as “there, we fixed it”. 5/10 if ANC allows the private sector to get involved, and if it is a “hands-off” approach, ANC steps back, Eskom is split, then we can fix it, 10/10 chance.
To answer truthfully, we don’t know, but we can extrapolate and guess. Most nothing in life is linear, mostly always logarithmic.
So what is grid collapse really. It is a cascading fault condition really. When the 50Hz frequency gets to low (demand higher than generation) and they do not shed load fast enough, the generators disconnect. This cascades as there are now even less support for keeping that 50Hz at 50Hz. Now more generation disconnects cascading the fault. A total grid collapse is when all generation disconnects.
Demand management is really only Generation scheduling (or LS if you like when Generating capacity is at max) to prevent the frequency from falling below a set value like 49.8Hz or something like that.
The EAF really (a measure of efficiency of generation plant) is a very good indicator of the trend of how much is available from design versus potential generation capacity.
Now we have something to work with. What are the probability of a total collapse, currently kinda medium but it ain’t getting better by the day. LS will be used and we will get this more and more frequently if this deteriorates further, and it will.
So LS is the only tool they can use to prevent a collapse. The EAF is strongly trending down and the more units are offline, the less likely the others will be maintained. It takes longer and longer to return tripped units to service due to many factors. This cause more breakdowns due to less servicing, a viscous circle.
Second part, I give them a 0.1% chance of fic=xing this. Yes that is better than nothing, but for reasons. Ideology is in the way, incompetence too. Then there are the criminality with the CancER at the top of the totem pole. Their members, also unions in that tri partite thing, are the biggest culprits and criminals.
The issue at hand is really not even an Eskom thing, it’s a law enforcement thing, and we have the CancER to thank for that.
PolisieGroetnis (Ex SAP Sergeant)
One of my thoughts is they actually have no reason to fix it despite some arguments that it’ll serve them politically. It might, I mean logically it should. But despite popular opinion that the anc and eff-off will never coalesce as the effers will eat the anc from the inside out I expect they may well, they are the same beast and eat with the same utensils, ie their snouts. Basically, my jaded view is you don’t need a functional country to keep thieving. Just a show of ‘doing something’ might suffice.
(I accept this is an ugly view, but I’m not exactly feeling chipper)
So failure, at first is slow and gradual, then fast and sudden. Non linear. In Engineering and IT, projects all normally fail on the last day (D day if you like) as that is the day the project slipped timelines by a year. Up to the previous day, the project was still on schedule and budget!
LaatGroetnis
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I’m going to agree with the other posts. Probably never, but with one important caveat: That there is no deliberate sabotage.
If things are left as they are now, we should hit stage 8 by around the August, and then simply extrapolating we’re probably around Zambia levels (12 hours a day) by 2025, which is still far off from Zimbabwe levels (4 hours a day). Even at 4 hours a day, technically it hasn’t collapsed yet.
I’ll be optimistic and put it at 2/10. The current knuckleheads. The old guys who knew how to build power stations retired or went to heaven. We haven’t successfully built a power station in 20 years. We don’t have the skills.
So how long… well, probably enough for me to get to retirement age. And then I’ll move to Gobabis where everything takes another 10 years and that should see me through.
Ja boet, this has been ongoing since they started Medupi and Kusile, everybody and their dogs are involved. The last few years this has escalated hand over fist. Attempted murder is just the tip o the iceberg really. Coal contamination, theft and and and…
GeenwetstoepassingGroetnis
African National Congress (ANC) President Cyril Ramaphosa made the call during the party’s two-day Lekgotla earlier this week, where he called on BRICS allies to use their expertise to help address the crisis.
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Deleted … I cannot verify it anywhere.
This is a fake message, no need to stress. I really don’t understand why someone would make it in the first place, but I guess you get all sorts of trolls out there. 
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I think I’ve seen the message before, but without the Santam logo. So it is probably a cut-and-paste job of sorts.
2022 was worse than 2015 and 2018-2021 combined, twice over. January 2023 tops all of 2021.
Wow… just look how well things went in 2018! We should get Matshela back!
I’m being facetious of course. Koko resigned in February of 2018, Hadebe was then made acting CEO in May 2018. He lasted 17 months, then resigned citing health and difficult working conditions. Kinda makes sense does it not?
Hadebe has gone completely silent and the internet does not know where he is now. He was also a man that came with excellent credentials, and couldn’t fix Eskom. In many ways he’s the forgotten CEO of Eskom, being one of the few that had no scandal around him.
He was also the one who caused a former Land Bank CEO to go to prison in 2018. Maybe Andre and him should get together and write that book I so dearly want to read one day.
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Here is a good story … business my daughter works for has cleverly sorted this LS thing.
Like when there is 8am LS for example, or afternoon, the staff comes in later, or goes home earlier.
The manufacturing staff works evenings at times to fit jobs in between LS slots.
End result:
The same working hours are “scheduled” into the LS slots. Clever.
With no additional cost of overtime.
Nor a generator expense to power through LS events.
Staff is happy to have a job, and the boss is happy to be able to keep them all on, with clients still getting their orders fulfilled at the same price.
Respect.
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One of the reasons where permanently alternating between stage 2 & 3 makes sense due to the predictability of it.
As nice as this is I’m sure it’ll be even nicer if it’s known with relative certainty what level we’d be at instead of the current see saw between stages 1 and 6.
Yeah, my personal “pea under the mattress”.
Seems I was not wrong either, just this week we had Level 3 - 5, yet because of the shuffling, we actually had 6 hours of LS, 3 x 2h, if you do not count, or get, the 2.5 x 3, then it would have been 7.5h.
It is not about “being fair” either, it is all about the predictability for businesses to operate sensibly, barring units failing.
I say, set it fixed for the week … weekends the slots swap, and be done with it.
As a matter of fact, default to like 6, to cater for units failing (more time for maintenance) but set the slots “cast in stone” for the week.
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Not to be overly negative, but I found that as I transitioned into parenthood (and probably, this will happen again), some of this flexibility disappeared. Days are pretty much cast in stone. School starts at 07:45. I can’t leave for the office before then. School comes out at 14:20. Got to be there. Then there is the extramural activities, sports, at set times. Kids have to be in bed by 21:00, and before then dinner has to be cooked and on the table. Mom goes to a lot of trouble to make a meal and needs about 90 minutes, dad can “flans” a meal together in 45 minutes. All in, it means you need to start cooking at 18:30 at the latest, or this is not working.
Holidays? You got to align those with the school holidays. No off-peak savings for you until the kids leave the house.
Mad respect for the people who can make it work, but also my condolences to the parents of school-going kids among them.
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Depends on the personalities of the parents, new habits. My daughter has a 14mo who also “goes to school” every day at 8am, in bed by 7pm … they adapted. Their “biggest” frustration, I forgot to put the garage motors on solar. Ja ja, I’ll get to it.
Cooking is “easy”. You can cook one meal in 45-90 minutes per night, or you can cook 3 meals in that same time.
Titbit: They are now moving out, so sad (not), so now they will experience the full might of LS, with no Dad and his “Nazi-controlled” solar system. They asked for prices though … and promptly left the conversation.
But, that is not the crux of my posts. I’m focussing on the office workers, the factories. If they keep on going under due to not being able to operate cost-effectively, some more “kids are going to go hungry” (some author’s freedom please), parent/s having all day to sort the kids and cooking. 