South Africans Fear 'dark days' Ahead As Power Cuts Bite

[Maritz]

Businesses have shut up shop, generators have sold out and cars play cat-and-mouse at darkened road junctions in South Africa, where power cuts have suddenly become a daily reality. Under white minority rule, South Africa subsidised electricity heavily to attract foreign investment, although much of the black-majority had no access to power. In the twenty years since apartheid ended, most of the population has been connected to the grid, although around 15 percent of the poorest still have no electricity. But investment in new power plants has not kept up with demand. "This government has ignored the problem for a decade and now it's too late," said pensioner Hugh Gardener, scouring a hardware store for gas camping stoves, candles and torches. Periodic rolling blackouts, which spooked investors in 2008, returned in March this year. Last week, things got worse as creaking infrastructure buckled. Households in most parts of the country have been without electricity for around 4-5 hours a day since Friday, when state utility Eskom lost up to a third of its 42,000 megawatt capacity as plants shut down for emergency maintenance. "We're starting to see dark days ahead," Gardener said. Eskom's Chief Executive Tshediso Matona said on Monday that regular power outages could continue well into 2015 and it might take 3-5 years to restore reserves needed to avoid blackouts. "The status quo as it is, is untenable. Something has to give," Matona said, citing various problems, including a lack of maintenance, power plant breakdowns and a dearth of funding.


WIDER IMPACT


The rand fell to its weakest level against the U.S. dollar in six years on Monday and fears power outages could hit the mining sector helped push platinum, of which South Africa is the biggest producer, 1.4 percent higher. At grass-roots level, generator salesman Matt Sly said he received 500 emailed enquiries in five hours on Tuesday from customers ranging from large industrial users to homeowners, swelling his inbox to almost 7 times its normal daily size. "We're sold out," he said from his now empty warehouse. Eskom, which supplies almost all the country's electricity, says it will have a funding shortfall of 225 billion rand ($19.6 billion) over the next four years and will have to increase electricity tariffs. The ruling African National Congress (ANC) said in October it would inject 20 billion rand ($1.8 billion) of cash into the struggling utility and it could also convert its existing 60 billion rand subordinated loan to state-owned equity. But the sum is due to come from the sale of "non-strategic assets", privatisation that is sure to come under attack from President Jacob Zuma's far-left opponents and powerful trade unions. Economic growth averaged 5 percent in the five years before a 2009 recession, but has languished below 2 percent since. Ratings agencies Standard & Poor's and Moody's cited the bleak power outlook as a contributing factor in recent credit downgrades. Businesses say it is set to get worse. "Major industry hasn't returned to full capacity since 2008 because of power constraints," said Shaun Nel, spokesman for the Energy Intensive User Group of Southern Africa (EIUG), a body representing businesses consuming 41 percent of the country's power.


"What is worrying is the impact in the future because projects are being cancelled, investment is being deferred or scrapped," said Nel, whose members account for 27 percent of South Africa's GDP, in industries like mining and manufacturing. The steel and engineering sectors alone have lost 6 billion rand ($520 million) in output due to power outages in recent months, according to an industry body. For the general public, the outages are wreaking chaos. Many restaurants, shops and offices simply close their doors when the blackouts hit, although some, including large shopping malls, have invested in generators to stay open. Drivers on Johannesburg's busy streets blast their horns and jerk their cars forward in risky dashes for the other side of heaving junctions where traffic lights have gone dark. Crime is already a major concern for most South Africans and with no power going to electric fences or security gates and streets pitch black at night, criminals have new opportunities. Around 50 households are robbed or attacked every day in South Africa and it has one of the world's highest rates of road fatalities per capita. For 30-year-old lecturer Candess Kostopoulos, the light bulb she has just bought, which stores up energy when it is switched on to keep it alight when the power has gone, is little comfort. "I'm worried about the future," she said.


http://www.worldbulletin.net/economy/150341/south-africans-fear-dark-days-ahead-as-power-cuts-bite

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

It is a wonder there are any white people there left. Even 15 years ago everyone Who had British ancestory was going back there to get a "right of abode" visa to eventually get a passport.

So now the blacks run it does anyone actually think they can run it as well as white people? They are totally different and people shouldn't even think they can do what we do. They are people designed for hunter gatherer sorts of lifestyles, hunting animals with primitive tools and the like.

They had no need to build buildings to shelter them from harsh winters .. or reason to store food over those long winters. Just merely nomads from the stone age.

They are:- child like, hot headed,selfish, disrespectful, violent,impulsive and corrupt. To put it bluntly they couldn't organise sex in a brothel!

I would say we go to South Africa and get the power grid going by giving the niggers the jobs they wanted. Making them run on treadmills and millstones to generate power for the grid. Then when they are busted.. make a fertiliser plant.

[Maritz]

Nope, its Apartheids fault ... 

... when in fact this is whats happening ...

ESCOM- BEEE CONSCRIPTS BLOWING UP POWER STATION TURBINES SO-THAT YOU CAN HAVE LOAD SHEDDING...

Not really intended for the  public, BUT, amazing how pics  like these can get out  even after Eskom  put a blanket of secrecy around the whole incident. Eskom like hiding stuff like this!

So I found out what happened at Duhva power station and the busted turbine. They were doing a test of the turbine over speed protection system, and in short, the protection did not kick in. Conventional wisdom tells me that there should be a better way to test a protection system than to try and destroy the turbine and see if it feels like protecting itself, but that's basically what they did.

The turbine has a "governor valve " which controls the amount of steam coming into the turbine In order to keep it running at the right speed (3000 rpm for our grid frequency) – and then it has a main isolation valve to shut the steam off completely. The protections systems (of which there are 3 independent systems, and a dude with his finger on the emergency button) are supposed to close this main isolation valve in a fraction of a second when the turbine over-speeds.

So they get ready for the test, they dump a helluva lot of steam onto the turbine, speed starts going crazy, it went from 3000 RPM to 4500 RMP in ten seconds (they are generally only designed for 10 to 15% overspeed, all three protection systems should have kicked in by the time you get to 110%). Anyway, I don't know why, but all three systems failed, and the BEEE dude with his finger on the manual trip button wasn't at his post.  So the result was a big bang, some fire and a lot of steam going where it shouldn't go.

Scary thing is Duvha has a shared turbine hall. All six units are placed in one long straight stripe, with no missile shield between them. And if you look at the third last pic you can see how big that shaft is, if that landed on another turbine it would have destroyed that too. They are very lucky they didn't lose the entire station.

So anyway, what gets reported in the news? "Unforeseen maintenance" at one of the units at Duvha requires it to remain shut down for 18 months. understatement of the century in my book. But you shut off the containment ventilation system at Koeberg for one hour and a radiation alarm goes off, then it's a front page news national crisis. They now have blown up Koeberg turbines, Mossgas turbines...SASOL tanks- and Duhva turbines. Looking at what their BEEE " technicians" could do to a mega structure like this.....imagine what  their BEEE DOCTORS do to YOU? I give up.

http://www.whitenationnetwork.com/paper/?p=35836

You cant make this sh!t up !

[Br.IanVonTurpie]

  The machine and what happened to it is kind of symbolic of South Africa as a nation

You can't soar like an Eagle when you are working with Turkeys.

[Maritz]

While living in these conditions you learn to adapt, people go into "survival mode", make plans and people become stronger. While you don`t face these extremities, you become relaxed


DISASTEROUS DARK AGES ARE CREEPING EVER SO CLOSER FOR SOUTH AFRICA AS ESKOM SHUT DOWN ANOTHER MAIN REACTOR

Johannesburg - Eskom will shut a 930-megawatt unit at its Koeberg nuclear power station for three months to perform regular maintenance, the utility told 702 Talk Radio on Monday.

Cash-strapped Eskom has implemented rolling blackouts for six straight days due to tight electricity supplies caused by ailing infrastructure and technical faults. Eskom said on its Twitter feed there was a 50-percent chance of more power cuts on Monday. "Any unexpected changes on an already constrained power system could result in load-shedding," Eskom said in a tweet. The electricity grid will remain severely constrained for the rest of week, the power utility said in a statement on Sunday.

Eskom is struggling to keep the lights on after the country failed to invest adequately in generation in the 20 years after the first democratic elections in 1994, even as the government expanded supply to an extra seven million people. An average of 29 percent of Eskom's installed capacity of 41 995 megawatts has been out of service since the start of the year due to breakdowns or planned maintenance, according to data compiled by Bloomberg using information provided by the utility twice weekly. Eskom removed 2 000 megawatts from the electricity grid from 8am until 10.10pm on Sunday. According to Khulu Phasiwe of Eskom- a part of the scaffolding erected for the maintenance "touched a flip-over switch and unfortunately created an earth leakage problem.." ( What a lot of bull!!) THIS little" err" apparently will cost Eskom  R250 million  rands!!!? ?

(Eskom seem to operate from "err" to "err" QUITE a lot  lately- it appears.)

( Eskom long became just another term for utter frustration as the ANC's cadres move from one disaster to another. This utterly ueseless company nowadays offer more excuses and power-cuts than actually rendering any services. In 20 years they were too glutenous and hell-bent on their "BEEE" racist laws to allow professional whites to take over management and operations to save whats left of this rubble. Now- through this idiocracy- the whole national power supply grid are collapsing- but LO- the hardened commi racists in Lethuli- House will still pursue a very dangerous and stupid racist ideology of non-white cadre deployment for self enrichment purposes. The end of this macabre communist ANC games is neigh....VERY soon- and the start of a Tunisian Spring is about to unleash it's deadly venom on these foolhardy dregs of society that created it...bringing with it a total chaotic collapse of the economy and melt-down of it's whole infrastructure and security abilities as the banking, financial, social, Defense, industrial and health facilities crash overnight. BUT that little scenario doesn't seem to bother either the ANC or the idiots running the country and Eskom into the ground at all. They only seem to care to safeguard Zuma, the Federal Reserve- and their propaganda machine- the ANCBC – three of the most useless operators in the country- if the worst is about to befall the rest of us- we are "expendable."  The ANC  rats are  playing a dangerous game of Russian roulette with a twin-barreled loaded shot-gun- and soon one of the Eskom idiots is going to figure out how  to pull the triggers. The ANC like to play musical chairs on the deck of a South African Titanic while singing " Nkosi Sikelele God help South  Africa."  The only difference between the REAL Titanic and the ANC's Titanic- is that te real Titanic went down with it's lights still on...which DEFINITELY will NOT be the case with the ANC's version! -Ed)

http://www.whitenationnetwork.com/paper/?p=37846