What did we use for light before we had candles?

[MajGenl.Meade]

23 Nov 2014 Sunday Times
ANDRÉ JURGENS and ISAAC MAHLANGU PHILANI NOMBEMBE and NASHIRA DAVIDS

Lack of fuel blamed for blackouts
Eskom says diesel supplier PetroSA cannot keep up with rising demand

THE lights have gone out and now Eskom says its diesel supplier — state entity PetroSA — has added to its woes.

There have been sporadic power outages and rolling blackouts around South Africa this weekend, and Eskom’s electricity supply over the next few days depends largely on frantic efforts to stockpile millions of litres of diesel.

The national grid has been under severe strain due to unplanned maintenance at power plants and the collapse of a coal silo at Majuba power station on November 1.

By lunchtime on Friday there was not enough diesel to prop up the wafer-thin reserve margin of available power, and all major municipalities have been asked to implement rolling blackouts as well.

Eskom spokesman Andrew Etzinger said: “The issue here is that ever since the Majuba incident we have been running the diesel generators very hard and putting a lot of pressure on our suppliers, PetroSA and Chevron. They have been basically pumped dry, not Chevron so much but certainly PetroSA. PetroSA is trying to get ships in.

“On a normal day we would have survived this but . . . we just ran out of diesel,” he said.

Eskom spent R10.5-billion on diesel fuel in 2013-14 to run these emergency plants

Note for poison dwarfs: the purpose of this post is to promote tourism in South Africa. Ghost walks are increasingly popular in the major cities such as Johannesburg. Some of the ghosts are, almost unavoidably, South African

[rubato]

Oil.




yrs,
rubato

[MajGenl.Meade]

Oh



and fire!

[Guinevere]

Just watch an episode of Survivor and recall how important flint and dry kindling can be. No petroleum or wax products needed.

[wesw]

survivor, is that the show where we teach our children to stab each other in the back?

[MajGenl.Meade]

Returning to the OP, Eskom's problems are historical and (of course) related to the prior apartheid regime - or rather, its policies. In those days, the poor blacks in townships were poorly served and those in illegal settlements note served at all by power lines. Fast forward to the Brave New World and Eskom turned its resources to the very rushed effort to provide power lines (and power) to ALL - a noble notion - but in order to do that they removed almost all maintenance and new generator monies and kept on doing that. The result is that the formerly disadvantaged living in townships and informal locations have lots of power lines (when they are not being torn down for scrap sale) and the lights are going out because the generating base is dying. Baby/bath water?

I hasten to point out for any poison dwarves that may ramble by, the majority population is immensely distressed (to say the least) by this situation