A+lose-lose+situation,+Anonymous+News24+User,+21+January+2008



=A lose-lose situation=


 * //Anonymous News24 User, 21 January 2008//**

Having worked with the Eskom guys, I feel for them.

Their planning showed us we'd be running out of power. This was shown to government in 1999. However, under guidance from a massive consulting project, the DME agreed to allocate all new capacity to new entrants. Simultaneously, the NER rejected requests for gradual price increases over a number of years.

Then the California power crisis happened and governments suddenly realised that private companies were not good at investing for long term needs. Further, South Africa's low electricity prices meant that no energy providers wanted to enter into the market. Finally, in 2005 Eskom was reallocated the responsibility to plan and build.

This immediately resulted in the Medupe project (the first of the new coal fired power stations) being actioned. So, even though I have been load-shedded for 7.5 hours each day last week, I appreciate how the history leading up to this is complex.

Dealing with the current problem is complex. Only areas with remote control transformers can be shed. Older areas don't have these. So areas with more modern equipment are disproportionately affected.

Eskom needed to shed 3000MW last week which is about 8% of peak demand. If infrastructure allowed, this would mean we should each have only been cut for 8% of the peak hours (about 07h00 to 21h00 roughly - up and own over this period). That is just over one hour - not 7.5.


 * Skills loss just part of the issue**

Solidarity would have us believe that much of the problems are due to the loss of white skills. Certainly the skills loss and deficit in the country might have contributed towards the problem. However those same genius white skills built a power station (Majuba) next to what turned out to be "not a coal field" - resulting in the continuous lines of coal trucks of the roads that we see today.

The real maintenance issue is that as the reserve margin shrinks below 15% the system takes strain. More things break. And as you have an outage, instead of this being absorbed by reserve margin, load must be shed. This is the very reason for the current "sudden crisis."

Koeberg is planned to go down for refuelling this week. Immediately this results in a drop of 1800MW of capacity. Due to the lack of coal in the Cape, there are no other power stations in the region and 1800MW must be transmitted from Mpumalanga. The distance results in up to 40% line losses, meaning that this actually takes 300MW of generation reducing the grid capacity by another 1200MW.

With the system under strain and old equipment close to retirement struggling, unplanned outages will happen. These can be pumps or even generators blowing. If this takes out a power station, the system can lose another 1000MW to 3600MW at a time. This is clearly a nightmare environment to do maintenance in.


 * Uncomfortable future**

Adding to this is the general disrepair of many distribution networks maintained by municipalities. Power demand has grown so rapidly, that transformers and lines are beyond their maximum levels of service. This results in the catastrophic breakdowns such as those seen in Ekurhuleni last year.

Further, Eskom does not control municipality load shedding. They instruct municipalities to shed a percentage of their total load. The municipality power companies (like City Power) then shed their regions. Just keeping the power on for a hospital or traffic lights in a load-shedded area is not possible. It's not an easy situation to get out of.

The issue now is how best to manage this over the next few years. There needs to be rapid deployment of Scada (remote control) solutions to allow more equitable load shedding.

While price rises are uncomfortable, they remain the most effective means of rapidly altering behaviour. They are regressive (they affect the poor more than the rich) which means that the rate typically needs to be staggered - the more your use the more you pay.

Fundamental systemic issues now need to be sorted out as quickly as possible - power theft being a key one. Organised communication being another. It is going to be an uncomfortable few years.


 * From: http://www.news24.com/News24/MyNews24/Your_story/0,,2-2127-2128_2255631,00.html**

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