Tag: Eskom

Day 501 – New thing go bang

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It’s only been a week (note the literal “7 days ago” on the screenshot below) since our occasionally electricity-generating parastatal Eskom proudly, officially added a new big, dirty, coal-fired power station to its big, dirty, coal-fired power station collection:

And it was last night at around 11pm that Unit 4 at Medupi exploded after a hydrogen leak was apparently not dealt with correctly. Hydrogen is used as a coolant [why? Well, see Hydrogen Cools Well, But Safety Is Crucial], some of it leaked and instead of flushing the area with CO2 as per the standard procedure, some air was used at the wrong point and that exploded the place a bit. Here’s Sikonathi Mantshantsha (you may remember him from the proud “it’ll last 50 years” quote just above) again:

“The incident occurred during the activity to displace hydrogen with carbon dioxide and air respectively, for the purposes of finding an external leak. Following the power station preliminary investigation, it appears that while performing this activity air was introduced into the generator at a point where hydrogen was still present in the generator at sufficient quantities to create an explosive mixture, which ignited and resulted in the explosion.”

“It also appears that there was a deviation from the procedure for carrying out this activity.”

Here are some photos: Oops.

I know that it’s deeply uncool (literally) to use coal to make electricity these days, but in South Africa’s defence, two things:
Firstly, coal is plentiful, local, and wonderfully cheap and easy to heap into Mpumalanga power stations, and we simply don’t have the money or the technology for anything else at the moment (shout at me all you want, I get it, but like it or not, you’re going to need a billion* wind farms to match the 4.8GW capacity that each of Kusile or Medupi provides (when they are working), and secondly, two units at Medupi aren’t using any coal at the moment because one has exploded and another has tripped because the one next door exploded.

Another win for the environment.

We’re probably looking at a few more billions of Rands and a couple more years before this 800MW generator is back online, which given our continuing precarious relationship between supply and demand of the sparky stuff, is not good news.

And who knows how long it will last next time? Hopefully a bit longer than a week.

* back of a fag packet calculation

Day 105, part 2 – And perhaps a loadshedding side salad, Sir?

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If the massive cold front hitting Cape Town this morning was the starter, and the ongoing virus pandemic was the main course, might I be able to offer you a side salad of loadshedding with your meal, sir?

Side salad because it doesn’t require a microwave or oven, because yes, Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha was on the radio this morning telling us that:

The generation system is constrained due to the cold front… some of the generation units have broken down. There is a high probability of load shedding during the evenings between five and nine, starting today.

These machines – as we keep reminding the people of South Africa – are quite unreliable and prone to break down when they’re run hard.

We’re seeing high demand due to the cold front. We’ve had to use all our resources – including burning diesel… Even that may not be enough…

Unbelievabeagle.

As the old saying goes: It never rains… (although it clearly does and it clearly is).

So dig out your candles and your blankets and please switch off anything electrical that you don’t need (because maybe we could still avoid this if demand drops enough).

Here’s the PDF of the Cape Town schedule that you’ve buried at the bottom of the kitchen drawer, and it looks like Stage 2 would knock off Areas 3, 4 and 5, 11, 12 and 13 at some point this evening.

Bugger. Thank goodness the good football was on last night…

Aside: And it was so, soooo good. 

Anyway, if we are actually running through some sick, twisted menu as described above, I’m going to pass on dessert this time around, thank you very much.

Just the bill, please. And don’t expect a tip.

 

God to call in overseas power company

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I have news. Huge, if true.

While the rest of the world was worrying about some microbiological thing or other, SA has been in the grips of a huge bout of loadshedding after jellyfish blocked an inlet pipe at our local nuclear power station.

Actually, this happens more than you might think. 1.73 million results can’t be wrong, right?

But I don’t care about Canada or Sweden or Japan. Our issue is with Koeberg, just up the road. And it seems that we’re likely to get our 980MW back into the grid by Sunday. But will that be soon enough?

Because suddenly, God’s on the job:

I wouldn’t normally believe this sort of nonsense, but this was said with authority – and not just anyone’s authority, but with authority in the might name of Jesus Amen and Amen.

I’m not sure if this is a different Jesus to the one we learned about at school. I think he was called Jesus Christ and not Jesus Amen and Amen. But that was a long time ago and I think it was all made up anyway.

Anyway, given that Mighty God and Jesus Amen and Amen are omnipresent and omnipotent, I think that questions should be asked about whether they had anything to do with the swarm of jellyfish that blocked our power station and prompted this overseas takeover of our power generation. I’m not saying that things were all rosy before, because they really weren’t, but this convenient squishy invertebrate plug being applied to the inlet pipe just up the west coast has certainly paved the way for their sponsored coup, hasn’t it?

Get what I’m saying?

Follow the money. Just saying.

I don’t think that Adele has anything to do with this. She just seems like the spokesperson for the cult on this particular issue.

I’m not big fan of the Mighty God and JAaA, but if this theist-led company sweeps in from overseas, I won’t miss the loadshedding. And if it goes well, then maybe  they can make a start on sorting out this virus thing as well.

12 minutes

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Seriously, who starts writing a blog post 12 minutes before loadshedding is about to start, taking with it computer equipment, connectivity and safety?

Hello. It’s me.

I wouldn’t want to work for Eskom’s social media department. It’s a thankless task, constantly relaying bad news to a bloodthirsty audience of rabid, baying hounds, simply waiting to pounce on your every word.

Or to the keyboard warriors of middle-class South Africa, at least.

Same same.

But you can help yourself out if you’re in that situation. Like by not linking to an article in the Randburg Sun entitled:

Tips to help prevent burglaries during load-shedding

Firstly, this makes people feel (even more) unsafe within their own homes, and secondly, given that Eskom is responsible for the loadshedding, does that not imply some sort of responsibility for the increased crime during loadshedding?
I”m no legal expert, but I think it probably does.

The prosecution rests, your honour. Whenever it gets the chance.

But did they even read the article in question? In fact, did the person who wrote the article in question even read the article in question?

I’m just asking, given that some of the tips include:

Make provision for good outside lighting but switch the lights off during the day

Good outside lighting being imperative when there’s no electricity, of course.

And:

If your house alarm goes off or you hear strange noises or your dogs bark, switch on the outside lights, but do not go outside.

Of course, there being loadshedding, those good outside lights will be of limited no use, but you can flick the switch and hear the click of nothing happening if it makes you feel any better.

Also, because we have a beagle, our dog barking is quite a strange noise, anyway.
Two birds right there.

Ah yes. The lights have just gone out and they won’t be back on for another 2½ hours. It’s the third of these blackouts today and there will be at least another three tomorrow. I’m going to have to post this via my cellphone using the tower in the adjoining neighbourhood – our local one is down, as it always during these times. So now, I need to go and stand in my front garden to get signal.

It’s looking rather dark out there. I’d better go and switch on the outside lights.

 

Oh.

Rush Hour Relief

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Careful now.

This isn’t some dodgy spin off of the hilarious* Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker series of films. This is Eskom’s plan to suspend loadshedding between 6 and 9 in the morning, and 4 and 6 in the evening. Many (but not all) traffic lights rely on mains electricity to work, and when there is no mains electricity, the situation is a right beagle’s breakfast. And so this is good news and a sensible decision to spare South Africans even more suffering at the hands of the sometime power generating company.

It’s not all happy happy joy joy though. In order to have regular relief from loadshedding, you need to have regular loadshedding, and yes – just checking – we’re getting close to the middle of a week of Stage 2, during which we lose up to 5 hours of power each day. It’s necessary, it’s unavoidable, but as I’ve mentioned before, it’s also infuriating and abnormal.

And then there was this evening, whereby I had plans to use the oven during the 4-6 safety period, but it never arrived (the safety period, not the oven). Not enough generating capacity to provide those extra two hours, apparently. Breakdowns, planned maintenance, an aging system hanging on by its fingertips over the precipice of total collapse. You know, just the routine stuff.

And so we missed out on our relief this evening. Tomorrow morning, we’re due to be loadshod between 6 and 8:30 in the morning. Theoretically, we should avoid the power being cut then as well, but then theoretically, we should have avoided it this evening as well. I had to change my cookery plans this evening, and it wasn’t a train-smash.

If I have to wait two and a half hours for my first coffee tomorrow, the consequences might be slightly different.

 

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