A glance into South Africa’s electricity crisis

Up until recently, I took for granted the availability of uninterrupted electricity that many Americans enjoy. I also underestimated a brainless, heartless invertebrate’s ability to halt the production of all hot stovetop meals. I know what you’re thinking… what does that have to do with anything? Stay tuned.

Things changed when I came to South Africa for a semester and discovered just how deep the electricity crisis goes. Some would say as deep as the ocean.

I’m going to shed some light on (pun intended) the effects of the Eskom crisis here in South Africa.

Eskom

What is Eskom? Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd is the state-owned utility supplier that provides power to the whole of South Africa. Most of the power provided by Eskom comes from coal-fired power stations.

There are many factors that go into this crisis: political corruption, mismanagement, high demand and debt. There are many repercussions to these factors. The mishandling of the electricity crisis impacts every South African citizen.

Typing the keywords “Eskom” or “Load shedding” into any search engine will lead you to endless articles covering the latest corruption scandals or power station failures. But what it will take you longer to find is information on just how deep the roots of this problem go.

In the early 2000s, the government had plans to build two huge power plants – Kusile and Medupi. According to BBC News, the new power plants were supposed to be fully operational by 2015, but increasing costs and corruption scandals delayed these plans.

According to South Africa’s engineering news, the Medupi project’s completion date has been pushed back to the 2020/21 financial year. As for the Kusile project, South Africa’s Business Insider outlines the nitty-gritty of the situation: Kusile is only expected to be completed in 2023, nine years behind schedule.

The original plans for the Medupi and Kusile projects were expected to only cost around R163 billion. South Africa’s rand is quite weak but $1 is around R16. In today’s exchange rate, that equals nearly $10 billion. The cost of construction for Medupi and Kusile has taken so long that now there is a LOT of accrued interest. I could not find an approximate number for the cost including interest but according to Eskom, the cost for only the Kusile project as of Jan. 31, 2015 was already at R118.5 billion.

Enough boring talk about the numbers now. What does this mean for South Africans?

Load shedding

Well, this is where the load shedding comes into play. Load shedding refers to scheduled blackouts that are meant to reduce the load of power to meet demands. Depending on demand and maintenance issues, there are various stages of load shedding.

While Americans check the weather daily, South Africans check the load shedding conditions.

Each stage implies how much of the national load is to be shed. For example, stage 1 allows for up to 1,000 megawatts of the national load to be shed. The frequency of load shedding increases as higher stages are used. Conditions can change within the same day if one of the poorly maintained power stations decides to breakdown.

Let’s fast forward to the most recent Eskom utility issue that sent South Africa’s load shedding status from stage 1 into stage 4 within the same day. The country has two nuclear power plants that generate 5 percent of its electricity.

On March 10^th one unit at Cape Town’s Koeberg nuclear power station tripped due to a clogged drum filter. What was the drum filter clogged with? You guessed it… the brainless, squishy invertebrate more commonly known as the jellyfish.

The jellyfish and other marine life clogged a filter at Eskom’s Koeberg nuclear power station, causing blackouts to be implemented for the following week. According to Eskom, maintenance was already scheduled for this plant sometime during the upcoming week. Perfect timing, jellies.

This is one of many examples that exemplify the mismanagement at Eskom.

“In total, the national grid was experiencing a shortage of supply of more than 17,500 megawatts,” explains the African News Agency.

So, next time that you think you may have it rough back home, just remember that jellyfish were the reason many businesses and citizens could not use credit card machines or cook a hot stovetop meal!