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A dark Africa lays ahead.....load shedding


Mojoman

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Cool story and pics - thanks for sharing. About the concept of scale....

 

A gazillion years ago as first year engineering students, we went on a site trip to Kendal who were finishing the last of their units at the time. We went to the top of the boiler house unit and walked around on the roof. You can see in the picture of the boiler pressure gauge the sides and roof are just IBR sheeting, like any old carport. So there we were, walking around on top of what is just a ginormous 100 m high shed, with the tin sheeting creaking ominously underfoot. I was glad to be back inside on the structural steel staircases after that.

 

Anyways, a visit to one of the 6 packs is pretty educational in that you can see how complex these things are and how much maintenance is required to keep the hamster wheels going. And short-changing on that maintenance has a serious bite.

 

Yep. Essentially a very large car-port!

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These (not very clear) pics were taken on top of the Boiler - above the 72m level. You can see that the whole Boiler hangs on steel rods from massive steel girders (so that it can expand when it heats up)

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Reading thru this thread...sad state of affairs......but now looking for a reliable company to assess and supply suitable power system for 4 bed home.....preferably solar....PM me....

Edit: Location Cape Town....

Edited by capediver
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I dont get the loadshedding. What I understand is that power is turned off to save enough to supply the grid/network. So how come for the last few weeks you see street lights on during the day. Surely if they are switched off, then there will be some saving. Also so many people have gone off the grid and so many are saving so much units a month!! We hardly use eskom power these days.

 

Things must be really extremely bad, alot worse than what we are all aware of!!

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I dont get the loadshedding. What I understand is that power is turned off to save enough to supply the grid/network. So how come for the last few weeks you see street lights on during the day. Surely if they are switched off, then there will be some saving. Also so many people have gone off the grid and so many are saving so much units a month!! We hardly use eskom power these days.

 

Things must be really extremely bad, alot worse than what we are all aware of!!

 

It's a high stakes juggling game . . . .

 

Imagine a clown juggling with chainsaws. He's balanced on a plank of wood which in turn is balanced sideways on a beer barrel. The clown has half a dozen little yappy yorkshire terriers nipping at his ankles. One is wearing a little waistcoat with "no maintenance for years" written on it, one is wearing a little waistcoat with "we are the townships - don't you dare switch us off!!!" written on it, another one is wearing a little waistcoat with "we are the municipalities - talk to the hand!" written on it . . .  Also, the clown is blindfolded and has people shooting at him with super-soakers . . . . 

 

That's possibly an average day at ESKOM . . . . . 

 

:-)

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It's a high stakes juggling game . . . .

 

Imagine a clown juggling with chainsaws. He's balanced on a plank of wood which in turn is balanced sideways on a beer barrel. The clown has half a dozen little yappy yorkshire terriers nipping at his ankles. One is wearing a little waistcoat with "no maintenance for years" written on it, one is wearing a little waistcoat with "we are the townships - don't you dare switch us off!!!" written on it, another one is wearing a little waistcoat with "we are the municipalities - talk to the hand!" written on it . . . Also, the clown is blindfolded and has people shooting at him with super-soakers . . . .

 

That's possibly an average day at ESKOM . . . . .

 

:-)

????????????????????

 

From knowing people who work there,as well as others who have worked there in the past, that's an exceptional description of it all. And management just doesn't care. Engineers on the ground are using loudhailers to get the attention of the people who have the authority to make calls, who in turn are YOLOing with their noise cancelling headphones thinking "if I don't log a problem, I won't get into trouble. So nothing's wrong. Easy." Press skip, I don't like this song.

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  • 10 months later...

Farking vagrant criminals shoved a steel rod through the radiator of our generator at work, that after stealing its 4 huge truck batteries over the last few months. After round 3 we then placed the batteries inside the building 10 metres away, at huge cost. We also built an expensive steel cage for the machine itself. The only thing that could be reached with a koevoet was the radiator. I think ******* up the generator was just out of spite.........so, our practice currently has no back up power. Quote to come and remove radiator from the big diesel machine, repair or replace core and reinstall is farking scary! Money we have already poured into the Covid hole. If I catch the who did this I am personally going to pull all his teeth without anaesthetic. :cursing:!>

Edited by DJR
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Third 'shed in 12 hours.

 

It's going well here. Really well.

We have been having power issues for the last 10 days.

A mini substation for the area is not coping with all this rain so they do localized load shedding to try and keep things going. We've had days where we've been off for 24 hours. Then to top it off we get his with the scheduled Eskom load shedding too.

backup batteries for gate, alarm and ups are just not getting enough time to charge up and the constant draining to zero is killing them.

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We have been having power issues for the last 10 days.

A mini substation for the area is not coping with all this rain so they do localized load shedding to try and keep things going. We've had days where we've been off for 24 hours. Then to top it off we get his with the scheduled Eskom load shedding too.

backup batteries for gate, alarm and ups are just not getting enough time to charge up and the constant draining to zero is killing them.

 

Same as my folks (and they're not out East so you're not alone). But they just had a 24 hour outage till this morning. And their substation must be one of the oldest ricketiest in Joburg because every time it rains with any sort of vigour, they're out.

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Same as my folks (and they're not out East so you're not alone). But they just had a 24 hour outage till this morning. And their substation must be one of the oldest ricketiest in Joburg because every time it rains with any sort of vigour, they're out.

We have ongoing issues.

About 15 years back the bigger substation that serves most of the area burnt. As a quick solution they ran alternative cables to certain area to get them up and running. Our was one of them. These cable were left in place.

The problem is these cable are not deep underground and at on point the cable feeding our area crosses over the highway on a bridge.

This is a weak point security wise and cables are often stolen at this point, leaving us without power for long periods. New Years eve seems to be a very opportune time over the last few years.

 

This article popped up in my news feed this morning, I did not know about the protest until I read the article a few moments ago, but it is the residence from mine and surrounding areas.

 

https://boksburgadvertiser.co.za/404678/power-crisis-boksburg-residents-subjected-to-daily-power-outages/

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