Ruminations on grid collapse

Aweh dearly beloved fellow ruminants & groupies

Apologies in advance for talking about the electricity situation in South Africa for two weeks in a row. Perhaps next week I’ll talk about Harry and how he lost his virginity. The substantial deposit has been paid for our home solar installation which will hopefully be installed in the coming weeks. We will then be one of the privileged few who are partially insulated from load shedding.

I remember that when I was at nursery school, we would often sing the Anglican hymn, “All Things Bright and Beautiful” celebrating the many beautiful and inspiring things all around us. Our upcoming solar installation fits into this category and my boys and I look forward to a new toy with fancy software and many knobs and buttons we can play with. This is an exciting toy for techno nerds. When I was an anti-establishment teenager, I became a lifelong devotee of Monty Python who created an irreverent response to All Things Bright and Beautiful entitled, “All Things Dull and Ugly”.  It is nice and inspiring to focus on bright and beautiful things, but every one of us will also need to deal with dull and ugly things. To me, All Things Dull and Ugly represents necessary dark humour but to some more gentle souls, this is offensive.

Perhaps what is beautiful and inspiring cannot exist without its opposite that which is ugly and depressing. There is no light without darkness. A balanced perspective on any complex topic such as renewable energy, ESG or sustainable development has an inspirational and exciting component, but it also has a dark side. Greenwashing is also very real and pervasive. Any analysis which focusses exclusively on the good news, and ignores risks, belongs in the propaganda category.  For every utopian idealist, you need a Debbie Downer. Many organisations and corporates favour the optimists and believers and taken to extreme value destruction and ruin await. Observing how an organisation treats and deals with internal and external dissent including irreverent dissent can be a leading indicator regarding its future success. Organisations that value dissenters and treat them with dignity and respect become robust and good at dealing with risk. My proposition is that good leaders are positive and inspirational, but they also appreciate dissent and dark humour and accept there are no holy cows. They are not easily offended.

Displaying dark humour in public is very risky for a senior leader in today’s overly sensitive world. With the shield of academic freedom and being a non-entity over sixty, it is not necessary for me to shy away from dark humour. Truth be told I have never shied away from it, and it didn’t necessarily help me. I have offended many people although my intent is not to offend for the sake of offending.

The electricity situation in South Africa is dull, ugly, putrid, foul, and gangrenous. A reliable electricity supply is a requirement for South Africa to be a successful state. It is now the most important and urgent issue facing the country. Today I will play the role of a Debbie Downer of where we might be heading if we do not start demanding a better response. We currently have 8 stages of load shedding. Stage 8 involves three four-hour power cuts per day but it is likely that we will need to go to stages 9 or 10 as winter approaches and electricity demand increases. The existential risk we face is what is termed grid collapse or a total blackout. Besides leaving the country without power, a national blackout would put Eskom in a position where it needed to bring power back online from scratch – a “black start”. This is a process which could take two to three weeks. It is not unprecedented in the world and has happened in the USA, Venezuela and India amongst others.  It is difficult to assess what the risk is that this will happen to us, but it is becoming more likely. Those experts I have spoken to still feel the Eskom system operator is still on top of this and see the probability of a grid collapse as low but increasing.

It is now worth thinking about what a grid collapse scenario lasting two to three weeks might entail. There could be a breakdown in fuel supply to service stations as electric pumps cannot supply fuel leading to petrol and diesel shortages. The water supply will break down as pumps have no power. Sewage pumps will lose power and sewage will flow into the streets and rivers much more than it already does. Food supply and the cold chain preserving food could break down leading to food shortages. Ultimately the potential exists the banking system could collapse restricting access to cash and payments and bringing commerce to a halt. The privileged with home solar installations will not be insulated from the anarchy and feral chaos which is likely to follow. This is something to be avoided at all costs. This is no longer a possibility we should ignore.

Are South Africans prepared to stop tolerating our electricity crisis? I do think that we have reached the point where very few people now believe the empty promises made by the government that the problem will be resolved in 12-18 months. This is an encouraging sign. Not even a team of superheroes can fix this mess that quickly and the lie has been exposed. My fellow South Africans, to borrow a phrase, what are we prepared to do to fight this situation? Just voting will not be enough.

What can ordinary South Africans like me do about this? This is a very hard question to answer. Some say that there is an election in 2024 and the electricity crisis will surely dominate the agenda. The hope is that the ANC will lose its majority and some form of potentially unstable coalition government will start dealing with this crisis. How effective will this be? Can we afford to wait that long?

This is an issue all South Africans, except perhaps those involved in corruption at Eskom, need to start taking more seriously. Our collective future depends on this. I would like to suggest this is now becoming a fight-or-flight situation. I cannot fight this on my own.  I have until recently, despite my Debbie Downer role today, never seriously considered the flight option. I was always optimistic that resilient South Africans would find a way to deal with our problems and muddle through. I am not so sure anymore. This week we had a family meeting where we started discussing the flight possibility in earnest. Plan B is now an open agenda item in our family. Nerine and I can perhaps muddle through for the remainder of our days but what future is there for our boys? I’m sure many similar conversations are being held by thousands of families. I’m also ready to fight but look to you dear readers for advice on how best to fight effectively.  This blog isn’t enough and fits into the category of urinae in ventum.

Thank you for all the ideas and comments. I really appreciate them and please keep them coming.

Regards

Bruce