SoylentNews

The Lights Keep Going out in South Africa

posted by martyb on Tuesday April 23 2019, @11:10PM   
from the there's-an-app-for-that! dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Once the highly infrastructure developed economic powerhouse of Africa, South Africans these days are more interested in the outlook for rolling blackouts. The country’s most-downloaded app provides schedules, alerts and forecasts for power outages.

Eskom, the state power monopoly, is struggling to generate enough electricity to meet needs, and has re-introduced a byzantine system of rotating outages known as “load-shedding.” On February 11th a whopping 4,000 megawatts of power, enough to power some 3m households, was cut from the national grid to prevent it from collapsing. Some businesses have bought generators and battery systems; others close during outages. In big cities, there is chaos at rush hour as traffic lights go dark. The blackouts suit copper-cable thieves, who can steal without fear of electrocution. And when the electricity is switched backed on, substations sometimes explode, resulting in secondary outages.

https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2019/02/21/why-the-lights-keep-going-out-in-south-africa
[paywall: you can see the whole article in 'anonymous view' through startpage.com]

More on the situation:
https://mybroadband.co.za/news/energy/267263-south-africas-electricity-system-is-falling-apart-and-it-is-much-bigger-than-just-eskom.html

How to bring back the lights in South Africa?

---

Original Submission

• I have some inside info on this topic (Score: 3, Interesting) by Alfred on Wednesday April 24 2019, @08:45PM

  by Alfred (4006) on Wednesday April 24 2019, @08:45PM (#834481) Journal

  I worked for a company building a huge power plant in SA. It was a good big project for the company. Like other places I worked "the customer is always right" certainly didn't apply. Typical Government BS.
  
  One point that had nothing to do with us that showed their ineptitude was they were selling most of their existing power generation outside of the country. "Ok no problem we will build a new plant." Except they don't do it quickly, government BS reprise. They avoid contractual liquidated damages by not powering their own country, sorry citizens we have to sell the power to not-you because legal stuff. I asked why they didn't build a series of smaller plants so they could get more power online faster. Nope they wanted one big plant.
  
  Bad management (government) they look at the end numbers and all is well no matter how long the citizens have to suffer before that (and during all kinds of delays imposed by their stupidity).