The Electricity Minister in a Stage 10 Panic
Should we be worried?
Our newly appointed minister of electricity Kgosientsho Ramokgopa is promising stage 10 load shedding while he scrambles to solve the Eskom crisis. We are in stage 6 load shedding almost continuously, with ominous warnings by Ramokgopa of reaching stage 10 this winter!
Today we are in stage 5 which resulted in 4 blackouts of 2.5 hours each in Sandton - who knows what stage 10 load shedding will look like?
We are in it, load shedding is here and will remain for the foreseeable future. Our minister says it will be highly irresponsible to predict when load shedding will end.
He does seem convinced that prayer won’t help either!
What exactly is the power problem and how can we solve it?
Hoping and wishing that it power supply will go back to normal soon is pure folly. The factors involved are complex and will take time and effort and a lot of money to solve.
The minister himself is not promising anything.
Eskom's reponse
Eskom temporary CEO, Mr Calib Cassim is also losing sleep over this issue.
He says we could slip into stage 8 at any moment.
All we need is another power generating facility to break down.
We have zero spare capacity for planned maintenance.
But why are we facing load shedding in the first place?
The primary factors seem to be Crime, Corruption and Capacity
Crime
Rampant cable theft is costing a fortune and causing outages over and above loadshedding. Pylon theft is now added to the list . Thieves are literally cutting supporting struts off our power pylons resulting in massive failures as pylons collapse like they did in Pretoria east this weekend when 7 pylons collapsed across the highway, effectively stopping all traffic and power.
Surely somebody is buying the copper and pylon struts? Effective policing at every scrap dealer with massive penalties for scrap dealers who are complicit in this crime will surely stop cable and pylon theft in its tracks.
Corruption
Corruption in Eskom and government has been extensively reported in the media like Carte Blanche, but nobody is being brought to book.
Where there is smoke there is fire, and there seems to be lots of smoke!
Capacity
According to our minister, Eskom is only capable of supplying around 27,000 MW and yet our winter demand is around 37,000 MW . With existing shortages like this, planned maintenance is severely affected resulting in Eskom groping in the dark from one emergency to another. As any engineer will tell you, emergencies are very expensive -and open to massive corruption, as the tender process gets compromised by the urgent nature of the emergency.
Our situation
Clearly our power problem is complex and unlikely to be solved quickly.
Covid resulted in many people having to adjust to working from home, and now those same people have to adjust to loadshedding. As a business owner I can testify that It is extremely difficult to run a business when your work-from-home staff are all being loadshed at different times.
High schools and Universities have also shifted their focus to online work since covid. Before we solved our loadshedding problem at home, my 16 year old son suffered severe stress as he juggled his online homework assignments with the loadshedding schedule.
Townhouse Dwellers have it especially hard. They cannot use generators and “installing solar” is simply not an option. Stuck in the dark!
The solution
We have a solution to this dilemma, which is a staged approach to loadshed-proofing your home office, your student and your household TV and WIFI connectivity.
Step 1
Step 1 would be a Power in a Box UPS inverter capable of giving you at least 4 hours backup power. Your inverter battery will be charged by the power grid when it is on, and will then keep the power on for your essentials during loadshedding events.
Step 2
Adding a portable 200W solar panel, would give extra protection from extended blackouts (stage 10 loadshedding or cable theft events). This solar panel could be propped up on a townhouse balcony during an extended blackout or placed in your garden to charge your Inverter battery while it supplies continues power to you.
Then after the sun goes down you will still have 4 hours of power available for the evenings.
Put your lights back on
Find out how you can personally put the lights back on in your home, office, factory or farm.
Get more info here [click here]