Power crisis: disaster looms

SOUTH Africa teeters on the brink of a total shutdown as the electricity crisis is stretching food, home water, financial, security and communication networks to breaking point.

And it could get worse, with some suggesting civil unrest if the electricity network suffered a total collapse.

Despite earlier promises that load shedding would be downgraded, Eskom yesterday said diesel constraints meant that it might not be able to do so and that higher stages of load shedding may have to be implemented.

This comes as the effects of nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts start to ripple through the economy.

Farmers warned that continued power cuts were putting South Africa’s food security at risk because it affected their irrigation schedule, which runs off electricity.

Abattoirs, processing plants, dairy farms that used electricity for milking and cold storage facilities were also affected while equipment like compressors were also damaged by power surges, said Agri SA executive director Christo van der Rheede. “You can easily lose a lot of your perishable products if there is not sufficient cold storage to keep it in.”

He said if load shedding persisted, all the problems would increase while a total grid collapse would result in a toxic mix.

“It means all sectors in the country will come to a standstill. Food production will come to a standstill, all sectors will come to a standstill. To what extent that will lead to social instability remains to be seen, because if you have a situation like that it will be a massive disaster for the food security and the country,” said Van der Rheede.

Higher stages of load shedding also have an impact on water services.

Water expert Professor Anthony Turton issued an ominous warning, saying South Africans should “think the unthinkable” should load shedding go beyond stages seven and eight.

“Without a doubt there will be a catastrophic collapse of water services across the country. It’s not even speculation. It’s a fact.”

Turton said he had been part of a group of former intelligence professionals who had been assembled by a private consultancy company at the start of load shedding “to do some serious modelling” that identified triggers that unlocked latent circumstances and looked at their effects.

“One of them was water.” He pointed out that very few cities in South Africa had kept up with infrastructure development since 1994.

“They now have less than 48 hours of buffer capacity. Once we are past stage six, your off-time is so great, you can’t replenish your reservoirs in the time available.”

Turton warned that advanced stages of load shedding would have serious implications on the digital world because the integrity of cellphone towers and networks would be compromised.

A digital system failure would have implications in banking, at Home Affairs and deeds offices, and could see ATMS running out of cash.

The Banking Association of South Africa (Basa), however, said they were ready to deal with power cuts.

“Banks have contingency plans in place for operations during load shedding and endeavour to continue to service their customers the best they can in the circumstances,” said Basa.

Network operator Vodacom said it was working hard to keep its customers connected during protracted periods of national power outages, through the use of generators and batteries. Vodacom admitted that protracted power outages had impacted their ability to recharge their batteries fully.

Security companies are calling on their customers to invest in alternative power sources and link them to their home alarm systems.

Another industry that has been negatively affected is the funeral industry. The Unification Task Team of the Funeral Industry of South Africa said load shedding was killing their business.

Spokesperson Muzi Hlengwa said the power cuts led to delays in the payment of burial policies and the issuing of death certificates, and it was expensive to keep generators running all day.

“So people demand that we give them the bodies without us receiving payment. How do we know they will return to pay us? We can’t run a business on ubuntu,” said Hlengwa.

And it is all likely to get worse with energy experts warning that it will take years before things improve.

Des Muller, the spokesperson for the SA Nuclear Build Platform and director of Nuenergy Developments, said: “If we start aligning our observations with appropriate decisions and effective actions, the next decade will be our recovery period toward prosperity. But we need to act now.

“When you break your base-load foundation, you are in the long haul to recover from that, as we are experiencing.”

Energy economist Lungile Mashele agrees. “Things can and will get worse,” said Mashele.

“Stage 6 is simply 6GW of demand being suppressed to make up for a shortfall in supply. Should more units fail, there will be a need to request higher levels of load shedding. It’s important to remember that when these load shedding stages were developed in 2007/8, it was envisaged that the addition of Medupi and Kusile would solve our issues forever.

“This is not the case. More stages can still be developed – we can still go to ‘stage 20’ if required.”

Mashele added that now more than ever transparency was required from the power utility.

“People will fill in the gaps when there is no leadership or transparency. There are problems with skills, fault detection systems, worker morale, lax leadership, procurement, money and project management. All this will invariably affect the fleet.”

Mashele said that while a total blackout in South Africa was possible, it was unlikely.

A national blackout event could take weeks before electricity is restored. Load shedding is a measure to prevent such a catastrophe, added Mashele.

Professor Hartmut Winkler, from the department of physics at the University of Johannesburg, agreed that a total blackout was unlikely.

“They have always been a possibility, and when load shedding reaches stage 6 the danger increases. I do, however, think that the chances of total blackouts happening are still relatively unlikely.”

However, Winkler expects load shedding to continue for the foreseeable future.

“While the expectation is that Eskom will gradually fix many of the currently broken units in the coming few days, there is always the danger that some of those still functioning will break down. Breakdowns are a semi-random process – if you are lucky the number will be low, whereas if you are unlucky the number can be high.

“If working units break down at a rate higher than Eskom is able to fix broken ones, then load shedding has to be stepped up further. Thus load shedding stages 7 or 8 are not impossible, although I think that the chances of that happening in the next few days are less than 50%.”