SOUTH Africa teeters on the brink of a total shutdown as food, home, water, financial security and communication networks are stretched to the limit through load shedding. Some have hinted at civil unrest if the electricity network suffered a total collapse.
Despite earlier promises that load shedding would be downgraded, Eskom yesterday said diesel constraints meant that it might not be able to do so. “Should this uncertainty of diesel supplies persist, higher stages of load shedding may be required,” it said in a statement.
It comes as the effects of nearly two weeks of rolling blackouts start to ripple through the economy.
Farmers warned that continued power cuts put South Africa’s food security at risk.
This, coupled with rolling blackouts, higher interest rates and unforeseen costs to farmers that were passed down to consumers would result in a toxic mix, said executive director at Agri SA Christo van der Rheede.
He said farmers needed electricity to irrigate their crops and orchards and not all of them had the money to buy and run big generators or solar panels.
Abattoirs, processing plants, dairy farms that used electricity for milking and cold storage facilities were all affected, while equipment like compressors were also damaged by power surges, he said.
“You can easily lose a lot of your perishable products if there is not sufficient cold storage.”
Van der Rheede said the ripening facilities at markets had to be kept cold so that the produce would not ripen overnight and rot, leading to wastage.
He said if load shedding persisted, all the problems would increase while a total grid collapse would see the country come to a standstill. “Food production will come to a standstill and to what extent that will lead to social instability remains to be seen,” said van der Rheede.
His warnings came as several areas around the country battled to get power back even after load shedding had ended and dysfunctional traffic lights caused chaos on the roads.
EThekwini Municipality said because most of the city’s electrical equipment was submerged in water during the April floods, residents would continue to have intermittent problems leading to outages.
Stage six load shedding also impacted on water treatment works and water tankers were sent to areas where water outages occurred.
Water expert Professor Anthony Turton issued an ominous warning, saying South Africans should ”think the unthinkable” should load shedding going beyond stages seven and eight.
“Without a doubt there will be a catastrophic collapse of water services across the country. It’s not speculation. It’s a fact.”
Turton said he had been part of a group of former intelligence professionals who had been assembled by a private consultancy at the start of load shedding “to do some serious modelling” that identified triggers that unlock latent circumstances and looked at their effects. One of them was water.
He pointed out that very few cities in South Africa had kept pace with infrastructure since 1994. “They now have less than 48 hours of buffer capacity. Once we are past stage six, your off time is so great, you can’t replenish your reservoirs in the time available.”
KZN’s biggest water utility, Umgeni Water, said it was in the process of collating information while eThekwini Municipality spokesman Msawakhe Maiysela said that in the event of 12 hours a day load shedding, wastewater treatment plants wouldn’t be affected.
“This is a crucial service. Some of our wastewater treatment works are exempted from load shedding,” he said. “Those that are not, have back-up generators.”
He confirmed that load shedding impacted on the city’s pump stations that sent water to consumers’ taps as the stations relied on electricity.
“As a result we have experienced water outages in some areas,” he said. “Temporary measures include the use of water tankers that are sent to the affected communities.
“We are also working closely with the electricity department to exempt those pump stations,” said Mayisela.
Turton also warned that advanced stages of load shedding would have serious implications on the digital world because the integrity of cellphone towers and networks would be compromised.
A digital system failure would have implications in banking, at Home Affairs and Deeds offices and could see ATMs running out of cash.
Turton said small businesses that had been hit by Covid would become “completely distressed”.
Large corporates could hire professionals to help them work out a way forward while small businesses would have do it themselves and “think the unthinkable” as the current trend of failure accelerates..
Meanwhile, the Banking Association of South Africa sought to allay fears saying it was ready to deal with power cuts.
“Banks have contingency plans in place for operations during load shedding and endeavour to continue to service their customers the best they can," it said.
Network operator Vodacom said it was working hard to keep its customers connected.
“This includes deploying back-up power solutions, such as generators, to as many sites across the country as possible. Vodacom has spent about R2 billion on batteries over the past two years to enhance power resilience to base stations during load shedding.
“Stage 6 loadshedding does, however, mean more frequent and protracted power outages which impacts the ability of our batteries to recharge fully”
The organisation said certain coverage areas would only have intermittent connectivity.
On its website, Vodacom said if there was a national blackout of over 12 hours the radios would go down and the network would shut down. However, its core facilities would still be up and generators with huge fuel tanks would kick in but the radio base stations would start going down about eight hours into a blackout and there wouldn't be any signal.
The Fidelity Services Group has encouraged homeowners to consider UPS back-up systems to help keep them and their property safe during power cuts.
CEO Wahl Bartmann said technology wasn’t designed to cope with load shedding and homeowners should ensure that they understand the impact it could have on any security system.
“Sufficient battery back-ups and charging capacity can extend the uptime of alarm systems during load shedding.”
He said a total collapse of the electricity system would cause security system batteries to run out and the systems to be non-operational unless there was an off grid solar solution to replace Eskom.
Yesterday the Health Department confirmed that it was business as usual in all its facilities. It said where intensive care units existed, they had batteries and generators.
Spokesman Foster Mohale said they were exploring all avenues to ensure that essential health services were not disrupted.
However, the Unification Task Team of the Funeral Industry of South Africa said load shedding was killing their business.
Spokesman Muzi Hlengwa said the power cuts lead to delays in the payment of burial policies, issuing of death certificates and it was expensive to keep generators running all day. “So people demand that we give them the bodies without us receiving payment. How do we know they will return to pay us? We can't run a business on Ubuntu,” said Hlengwa.
And it is all likely to get worse with energy experts warning that it will take years before things improve.
Energy economist Lungile Mashele says. “Things can and will get worse.”
“Stage 6 is simply 6GW of demand being suppressed to make up for a shortfall in supply. We can still go to ‘stage 20’ if required.”
Mashele added that now more than ever transparency was required by the power utility. “There are problems with skills, fault detection systems, worker morale, lax leadership, procurement, money and project management. All this will invariably affect the fleet.”
Mashele also said that while a total blackout in South Africa was possible, it was unlikely. A national blackout event could take weeks before electricity is restored.
Professor Hartmut Winkler, from the department of physics at the University of Johannesburg, agrees that a total blackout was unlikely. However, he expects load shedding to continue for the foreseeable future.
“While the expectation is that Eskom will gradually fix many of the currently broken units in the coming few days, there is always the danger that some of those still functioning will break down. Breakdowns are a semi-random process – if you are lucky the number will be low, whereas if you are unlucky the number can be high.
“If working units break down at a rate higher than Eskom is able to fix broken ones then load shedding has to be stepped up further. Thus load shedding stages 7 or 8 are not impossible, although I think that the chances of that happening in the next few days are less than 50%.
Des Muller, the spokesperson for the SA Nuclear Build Platform and director for NuEnergy Developments expects the situation to get worse.
“If we start aligning our observations with appropriate decisions and effective actions, the next decade will be our recovery period toward prosperity. But we need to act now. When you break your base-load foundation, you are in the long haul to recover from that, as we are experiencing.
“We last had a total blackout in South Africa in December 1975 caused by transients on a then vulnerable grid. Camden managed to survive and got us back on load almost a week later.
“Today our grid is more robust but with the destructive chaos happening in Eskom, we could well shut down the grid or experience a prolonged stage 8 while this status quo remains.
“Eskom’s restructuring process may help, but Eskom needs to get back in control of the organisation and run a tight ship as it did till recently. Power stations used to be run like a battleship at sea with navy ranks in place when Eskom took over control from the Victoria Falls Power Company in 1948.