Will the power go off today

[PCfanatic]

Trade unions plan Eskom shutdown on Thursday over wages

https://www.fin24.com/Economy/Eskom/...ages-20180611?

shared via @Fin24

The "demands" are a bit much anyway. It's fine to strike, but to turn off the power on purpose... It's as if one day if I strike, but I go back into my office and toss my PC and screen out of the window. How pathetic is that. No, these guys must be stopped in their tracks. People have died in the past because of power failures. I'm so gatvol of this I want I want want mentality.

[BBCT]

Wouldn't a national shut down in supply lead to a full national grid shut down? i.e. like the entire grid tripping in a cascading nature. I seem to recall something along the lines that a full grid shutdown could take weeks, if not months to restore. That scenario, if true/possible would be the stuff of nightmares.

Ironically, it's very difficult to start up a power station if you don't have electricity. You are correct in saying that it would take quite a while to start up the whole grid if it was to go down in it's entirety and all stations were to shut down. Such a situation would be called a "black start" and most of our power stations wouldn't be able to do it. One possibility would be to start one of the pumped storage schemes (eg Drakensberg or Palmiet, assuming they had water in their top dam at the time) and dedicate the power generated from that to starting up the base load (coal) stations 1 unit at a time. As one unit starts running, the power from that would be used to start up another unit and so on.......

The open cycle (diesel) stations at Atlantis & Mossel Bay should also be able to do black start & apparently Koeberg too, because it has dedicated offsite emergency power supplies as well as standby diesel generators & multiple other clever tricks. Problem with Koeberg is that it would realistically take 2 weeks or longer to start up, by which time the diesel might have run out. Pumped storage & diesel units could theoretically be started within a few minutes but it could take some time to manipulate all the switchgear to send that power to the coal (base load) stations. Coal powered units could each theoretically be started up in less than a day but successively, not all at the same time.

An interesting prospect and you can be sure that Joe Public wouldn't see much electricity for a few weeks.

I'd be doing my best to turn all the defrosting meat in the deepfreeze into biltong before it goes off!

[Minerva10210]

The Parental units have called me stating that they received whatsapps about the proposed power cuts. So it would seem social media is on the bandwagon...

[noost]

Yup, social media is getting crazy now with it.

No more reports on main stream media.

@Paladin, no news from your side?

[noost]

http://ewn.co.za/2018/06/11/numsa-nu...trike-at-eskom

http://www.sabcnews.com/sabcnews/tot...ut-down-looms/

[Digby]

An interesting prospect and you can be sure that Joe Public wouldn't see much electricity for a few weeks.

Thanks for the reply, it was very informative. Is there any documented theory in terms of what the situation would look like if in SA we had no electricity for 2 to 3 weeks?

I would imagine the economy would largely come to a standstill. Companies(or many) wouldn't be generating revenues, people wouldn't be getting wages. Would they even be able to draw their wages after a while? Would cell towers still have power and for how long? What about water systems? I have no idea how water gets from A to B to my house, but I assume somewhere through the "purification" process electricity is involved, so would we have water? How long before shops ran out of essentials?

I suppose the most important question would be "what scenario could lead to a complete shutdown?" Surely a few days strike action would not be enough...would it?

[marcvbsa]

I would imagine 3-4 days before the shit really hits the fan, maybe less if people go really crazy with stock piling.

Water reservoirs normally have 3-4 days of treated water stored. Petrol stations probably around the same. Shops would run out of essentials in 1-2 days due to stock piling and maybe 3 days later for anything useful.

Keep in mind also that the majority of our population is literally hand to mouth when it comes to food. They earn their days wage and buy food for that day, they do not have the luxury of buying in bulk when items are on special etc.

They also don't have easy access to water like a lot of the middle class, at least we have swimming pools, fish ponds and JoJo tanks to keep us going wrt water.

If the government lets this happen and the power really does go off, this country will most likely never recover.

[Gleock]

Fresh water is the least of your worries, if sewerage can pump, your uphill neighbours effluent will likely cover your floors.

[DeVilliers]

How easy is it really to do something like this?

Sent from my E6653 using Tapatalk

[shooty]

Even if Petrol stations have fuel. How will they pump it out. Unless they have Generators running.

Water filtering plants although they might have water. Will also need electricity to get into system.