An extract from a song by Jacques Brel: “The newsreel of our life/I’ll play it in reverse/Your pain will fall away/We’ll relive yesterday/And start where we began, love . . .”
So, yes, we have load-shedding. But we were not the first. Back in the day, to reduce electricity consumption, and thus conserve coal stocks, British Prime Minister Edward Heath (of the Conservative Party) announced a number of measures on December 13, 1973, including the Three-Day Work Order, which came into force at midnight on December 31 that year. Commercial consumption of electricity would be limited to three consecutive days each week.
Heath’s objectives were business continuity and survival. Rather than risk a total shutdown, working time was reduced to prolong the life of available fuel stocks. Television broadcasts were to shut down at 22:30 each evening and most pubs were closed (difficult one, this). Owing to the power surges generated at 22:30, the Central Electricity Generating Board argued for a staggered shutdown on BBC and ITV, alternating nightly, and this was eventually introduced. The television broadcasting restrictions were introduced on December 17, 1973, suspended for the Christmas and New Year period and lifted on February 8, 1974. So, there you are . . . lasted a month.
Moving right along, in 1998, a five-week-long power outage affected the central city of Auckland, in New Zealand, in February and March of that year. At the time, almost all of Auckland’s central business district was supplied with electricity by Mercury Energy through four 110 kV power cables from the national grid, with two cables each connecting to two central city substations. The two cables connecting to Quay street were 40-year-old gas-insulated cables that were past their replacement date. One of the Quay street cables failed on January 20, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, although this did not warrant a crisis, as the three remaining cables could still supply the central city. The second Quay street cable failed on February 9, leaving only the Liverpool street cables supplying the city. Owing to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, these remaining two cables failed on February 19 and 20, leaving the entire central city supplied by a single 22 kV cable from Kingsland, resulting in about 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) losing all power.
Parts of the city were almost deserted for the first few days, as few businesses could operate. Some brought goods out onto the street to sell, but heavy rain made that impractical. Generators were brought in from around the country to power essential services and some businesses. In the five weeks it took to restore the power supply, about 60 000 of the 74 000 people who worked in the area worked from home or from relocated offices in the suburbs. Some businesses relocated staff to other New Zealand cities, or even to Australia. The majority of the 6 000 apartment dwellers in the area had to find alternative accommodation. Temporary power was supplied to the Port of Auckland by a gas-turbine-powered cargo ship.
Five weeks later, all supplies were restored.
And Australia? In February this year, it was reported: “Resource-rich Australia once enjoyed the cheapest power prices in the world and there was no such thing as mass load-shedding. Now, Australia’s self-inflicted renewable-energy debacle has left it with a power supply that you’d expect to find in Africa or Cuba, and prices that rank it at the top of the international league table.
“Wind-powered South Australia and Victoria aren’t far behind Castro’s Cuba.
“When wind power output collapses, on a totally unpredictable basis, hospitals, businesses and a range of essential services simply get chopped from the grid.”
Oh dear! Whoever next?