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Hello, darkness, my old friend.

At what point do we say ‘load shat’ instead of ‘load shed’?

“Sorry I dropped off the call, I was just load shat out of nowhere.”

Anyway, I write this with the power off so thank goodness for UPS devices (some options via Takealot here) and keeping the WiFi on. If you haven’t yet invested in one, I suggest you get on that ASAP because winter is coming and load shedding is back with a vengeance.

Eskom CEO André de Ruyter hasn’t minced his words, saying we face a bleak energy outlook. The latest round of load shedding, ramped up to stage four this morning, came as a result of  “unacceptably high” unplanned outages.

Poor weather causing wet coal has been blamed (the overall problems are far, far bigger than that) and we’re once again forced to cut power to avoid a complete grid collapse.

Here’s BusinessTech:

[A] grid collapse would take a week or longer to restore and have a substantial impact on the economy…

Philip Dukashe, group executive for generation, said that the power utility will reassess whether to suspend load shedding by Thursday evening, or Friday morning.

The best-case scenario is that load shedding will be suspended sometime on Friday, however, Dukashe warned that outages might need to continue into the weekend as Eskom replenishes its reserves. He added that stage 6 load shedding is unlikely to occur this week.

So best case scenario is stage four load shedding until Friday, but likely through the weekend as well.

And then into May, and through to 2023, and so on. Open EskomSePush and have a look at what stage six entails – frightening.

Who’s keen on more bad news? Sure, sign me up.

Energy expert Chris Yelland, speaking to Radio 702, has warned South Africans about what lies ahead:

“The coal fleet of power stations is proving to be unreliable, unpredictable and we have more than 50% of the coal fleet at the moment that is unavailable, so that is a serious problem. So looking ahead, the year is going to be really difficult…

“I think winter is going to be a very difficult period because demand for electricity is high and supply of electricity is proving to be unreliable, so the combination of two is a difficult time ahead, I don’t think there is any quick fix…

“Truly the coal fleet is the problem because more than 50% of the coal fleet is out of action – and remember, 80% of electricity from Eskom comes from coal so when you are relying on coal-powered power and half of it is not available you got a big problem.”

The City of Cape Town’s efforts to get us off Eskom’s grid cannot come soon enough.

At least we’re ‘only’ on stage three thanks to the Steenbras Hydro Pump Station. More on that via IOL:

“At night, if there is no load shedding, we typically pump to replenish power reserves to assist customers the next day.

“It’s a tough choice about when in the day we apply reserves (day or night) to limit the impact of load shedding on customers and livelihoods.

“It’s simply impossible to pump to replenish power reserves and to load shed at the same time, which sometimes limits the contingency measures,” the City previously explained.

Small mercies.

[sources:bustech&702&iol]