Old Posts

No Power to the People

22/01/2008

A year or so back the Western Cape experienced rolling blackouts. These were initially attributed to problems at Koeberg, South Africa's only nuclear power station. Just why there had to be rolling blackouts in a limited area of a national power grid was never explained.

Slowly but surely word began to filter out that maybe there might just possibly be some limited shortfall of electricity supply at some indeterminate time in the future. Nothing to really worry about, just a little occasional inconvenience.

Roughly a year later the truth is becoming painfully more apparent.

South Africa is at the very limit of its current power supply capacity. In fact we are regularly undersupplied.

Whoops! How did that sneak up on us?

As the extent of the shortfall became more apparent Eskom, the privatized national power utility, was initially accused of making gross miscalculations of growing power requirements and gross mismanagement and bad planning.

President Thabo Mbeki grandly demands answers from Eskom.

Now reports indicate that as much as 10 years ago Eskom submitted one or more white papers to government on the growing need for new capacity. Amongst other things it was apparently predicted that, without new capacity, right about now South Africa would run out of capacity.

What happened to the white paper(s)? Who were the bright sparks who knew better and decided that we didn't need to develop more capacity? Why didn't they have the courage of their convictions and say so publicly then and why are they so quiet now?

Now, thanks to the supply shortfall, Eskom is saying that it would be foolhardy to encourage new industrial projects. A quote from Eskom's finance director: 'It would be irresponsible now to aggressively pursue energy-intensive businesses'.

Irresponsible! Irresponsible to grow the economy! Irresponsible to create jobs through new business! What would these wise heads have us do to strengthen the economy, to generate the wealth to address the pressing developmental needs of the country? Let's flood the world's markets with hand made grass baskets. Woe to anyone who calls South Africa a basket case!

Surely it was even more irresponsible to let the situation develop under a cloud of secrecy, to allow the people of South Africa think that our power needs were covered, that while Eskom was making wonderful profits for its shareholders - notably the South African government - we were slowly but surely sliding into calamity.

Considering the revelations about the rejected white paper this is a classic case of not just fiddling but debauching while Rome burns.

Now government is talking with Eskom about setting regulations that will enforce electricity usage quotas.

So when will supply catch up with demand?

Not for a long, long time.

It appears that there is still no re-capitalisation program in place. Eskom has been down rated by international rating agencies and loan finance is suddenly more expensive. Apparently, if new power station projects start almost immediately the earliest any of them would be on stream would be 2012 or even later. If we take Eskom's advice that means we need to put substantial components of the economy on hold for at least another four to five years.

From another perspective it is important for us all to learn to consume less electricity. In fact we need to learn to consume less of all of the precious and finite resources of this earth.

This is a pragmatic, ethical and altruistic issue of immense importance. The need for mankind to leave a smaller, less damaging footprint on earth is long overdue and needs to be strenuously pursued.

How long will it be before Eskom and the government try to convince us that their bumbling was actually done for our own good?

Highveld Storms

18/09/2007

Round about this time of year, up on the South African Highveld, we start looking at the sky. Looking for clouds. And when we see clouds we hope they will grow big and heavy enough to drop rain.

And it is not only canoeists that do this, it is also farmers, gardeners and ordinary people.

By the end of winter the Highveld is really dry. It is a brown landscape except for where the veld has burned, either naturally or due to careless, stupid or malicious human acts.

We long for those magnificent thunderstorms. South African Highveld thunderstorms have to be experienced. The cumulo-nimbus heads climb, pitch black from underneath and blindingly white where the sun catches them, tens of thousands of feet into the air.

They grow as you watch them. And you do watch them because you are hungry for rain. You watch and hope, hope for them to break and release those big fat drops.

The Highveld has some of the highest incidences of lightning in the world. We are blessed with some of the greatest lightning shows anywhere. Massive bolts, sheets reflected in the clouds when the strikes are far away and crashing and rolling thunder that make Phil Spector's wall of sound a mouse peep.

You can smell when the rain is likely to fall. The air is thick with the scent of moisture. And the rich smell of those first fat drop s on the dry red Highveld earth will stay with you forever.

I remember when I was in high school how we would sit in our classrooms overcome with lethargy as the humidity and storm clouds built in the early afternoon. Time and again the bell for end of school seemed to trigger the clouds to release their load and we would pour out of our classrooms to walk home sopping wet with the mouldy smell of wet blazers mingling with the achingly beautiful smell of the newly wet earth.