Dark matter

News blues

Covid and its tribulations relegated to bottom of the news – best way of handling the reality that the “powers that be” have lost the plot.
In the hospital’s central office for doctors – my current location during the work day – one doctor jokes he was at a wedding in New Orleans and, so far, a third of attendees have come down with Covid. He’s testing regularly, expecting to do that same.
I, in the meantime, will go for my second booster today. It’s free, I’m in the hospital already, and Covid is around. For the first time, I’m expecting I, too, will contract it. May as well avail myself of the more vaccine – lessen the effects and try to avoid Long Covid.

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© Zapiro, zapiro.com

Escom/Eskom sePush app informs me that loadshedding stage 2, 3, even 4 is about to start, then that loadshedding is suspended, then that it is pending, then that it in process…. In other words, the app is (almost) as uninformative as the electrical supply is unstable. So far, this year, a total of the equivalence of 31 days in South Africa without electricity.

Eskom spokesperson Sikonathi Mantshantsha explained that since Saturday evening Tutuka, Camden and Majuba power stations each experienced a breakdown on one of their units.
Mantshantsha said, “we currently have 2,094MW on planned maintenance, while another 17,640MW of capacity is unavailable due to breakdowns.”
… Mantshantsha ended his statement by reminding South Africans that “load shedding is implemented only as a last resort to protect the national grid,” and appealed to the nation to help limit the impact of load shedding by using electricity sparingly by switching off all non-essential items, especially between 5am and 9am and 4pm and 10pm.
… On Wednesday morning, Eskom announced that Stage 4 would be implemented from 9am and continue until 5am on Friday. Thereafter, load shedding will be lowered to Stage 2 until 5am on Monday, 14 March.

Moreover, “Stage 4 load shedding was implemented on Wednesday morning to prevent Eskom’s diesel and pump storage dam supplies from reaching ‘critically low levels’. Should it run out of diesel and water supplies, South Africans could face Stage 6 blackouts, the power utility warned.”

CEO André de Ruyter said in a state of the system briefing on Wednesday afternoon, “I think it’s important to emphasise that we should not accept load shedding and the lack of generation capacity as the new normal.
“While it’s been going on for 14 years now, we need to take urgent steps to address load shedding.”
This year to date we’ve had 32 days of load shedding compared with 26 days of load shedding in close to the same period last year.
As of the end March 2022, Eskom’s Energy Availability Factor — the amount of energy generation a plant is capable of supplying to the grid — was at 62%, below their target of 74% for the financial year.
The most urgent issue to be addressed is that Eskom needs at least 4,000 megawatts (MW) of additional generation capacity to serve the country’s energy demand.
It needs the space to take some of its units off for planned maintenance. Until this capacity is met, the risk of load shedding remains.

This is also a ubiquitous problem of corruption and theft. “A sophisticated crime syndicate – in cahoots with Eskom officials, police and trucking companies – is stealing fuel by exploiting a design flaw at the Kriel Power Station in Mpumalanga. And it all has to do with a weighbridge on the wrong side of a gate.
In March, amaBhungane revealed how armed gangs were stealing fuel from buried pipelines owned by Transnet. >>