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Dropping the ball

21st November 2014

By: Terry Mackenzie-hoy

  

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I really wanted to go on stage. I wanted to be an actor. To this day, I weep, real tears, in stage productions.

The last stage production I saw was Ons Vir Jou. By the time we came to the theme song, I was a snivelling wreck. I blindly asked for a tissue – it was handed over by the person next to me – a 6 ft 8 in boere seun, crane driver, Afrikaner, tears streaking his cheeks. It is serious stuff.

These days, every moment seems to me to be similar to other moments – even my engineering experiences seem to be drama filled. I remember in 1998 when Auckland, New Zealand, had a power crisis. This was due to the takeover of the Auckland Electric Board by a private company, Mercury Energy. An Auckland incoming 110 kV cable failed, overloading three remaining cables. Mercury Energy, being inexperienced, allowed the remaining three cables to fail, one by one. This resulted in a five-week power outage, with 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) losing all power. I thought at the time, al la Bob Dylan: “There but for fortune, go you and I . . .”

Then we had outages in South Africa in 2008 and one Koeberg turbine was out of service since somebody had dropped a bolt into the generator. South Africa ran out of electricity because Eskom contracted to sell a few thousand megawatts to the private sector instead of keeping it to maintain public power supplies.

I had the feeling that I should not be watching this play: Eskom gives away baseload to some aluminium smelters, fires competent people and then drops the power system. Oh, what a show! “It’s a beautiful day, sky falls . . .” But we staggered on. Medupi and Kusile began. I wondered how, if Eskom could not maintain the existing power stations, how it would maintain the new ones. It turned out it could not, on the face of it – in February 2011, a Duhva power station turbine blew up during an overspeed test, depriving Eskom of 600 MW of power. In February this year, then Eskom CEO Brian Dames disclosed that the coal conveyor belt that transports coal from the adjacent mine to Duvha had been damaged in December. Then, in April, a Duhva boiler overpressurised, and damage resulted.

Fortunately, and perversely, it is not only Duvha – as we all know, the Majuba power station coal silo collapsed recently, which brings us to now and perhaps a song to Eskom : “Do you know where you’re going to, do you like the things that life is showing you, where are you going to . . . ?”

However, if it is any comfort, Eskom is not alone. Auckland has not failed us. Well, it has failed itself – there was a large blackout in 2006 and right now a transformer fire in Auckland is depriving about 85 000 people of electricity. Other power systems have also come to the party – in India, in July 2012, hundreds of millions had no power for more than 24 hours. Bangladesh had a blackout affecting 150-million people earlier this year.

The difficulty I have is that I grew as a young engineer during a time when Eskom was invincible. Engineering-wise, the parastatal was over the top. I worked for Eskom (for about 18 months) and I loved it. We had such pride that we would not fail to keep the power system going. “And we were sharp, as sharp as knives, And we were so gung-ho to lay down our lives . . .”

Well, not our lives, actually. But we were gung-ho. What has now happened is not sustainable. I have written this before, to no effect: if any of the present management in Eskom reads this column, I am sure it is in the smallest room in the building with paper disposal in easy reach. Traditionally, in columns such as this, this is the point at which I give some ideas of a possible way forward. But I have none. Eskom has deprived itself of all options it once had: “We’re just hanging around . . . burning it down.” Is that what they want?

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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