One thing that people seem to be overlooking is that Eskom's electricity supply problems originate or could be solved in Zimbabwe, DRC and Mozambique.
How so? Twenty years ago around 1997 I was working with the forecasting engineer for ZESA, the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority.
Most people seem to be unaware but there is a body called the Southern African Power Pool. The electricity transmission grid of the region is linked from Tanzania to Cape Town. That means power generated in say Inga Dam in the DRC can be utilised in Port Elizabeth through the common transmission system.
Those familiar with power system economics may know that the cheapest form of electrical power is hydroelectricity. You build a dam and gravity does the work for you for decades. Coal power stations are expensive and difficult to operate.
With a hydro-plant you just open your sluice gates and within minutes you are ready to synchronise your unit to the grid system.
With a coal plant it is like lighting a braai fire. You have to get the fire right before you put the meat on. And that is a very small fire which does not require precision or very high temperatures.
With a coal boiler it takes several hours to a day to get the boiler temperature right and steam generation going. So say if an alternator has a problem and you fix it 30 minutes you may spend the rest of the day just getting the boilers going again.
While I was working with the ZESA forecaster we discussed the electricity needs of the region, by 2007. Then that was ten years in the future. Expert opinion was that demand in South Africa was going to grow strongly due to increased domestic demand as the black population was brought online. The natural growth of industry and commerce was also expected to increase at above average rates due to the fact that the black population would now be participating more in those activities without racist restrictions of the past.
I remember going through Mr Ikhupileni Dube's spreadsheets which indicated that by 2007 South Africa was unlikely to meet it's own demand. What SAPP experts considered to be the most optimum option then was that Zimbabwe and Zambia would build Batoka Gorge, a long talked about additional power station on the Zambezi upstream of Kariba, DRC would increase capacity at Inca Dam and Mozambique would increase capacity at Carbora Basa and those countries would supply South Africa with cheap hydro-electricity.
That was in 1997 and thinking was that governments would provide funding and definitely by 2007 and latest by 2010 more hydro-capacity would be available in the SAPP. The Matimba-Insukamini transmission line was build around the time as part of the strategy to increase transmission capacity to South Africa.
The longest DC transmission lines in Africa, Inca - Kolwezi build in 1979, and Carbora Basa - Apollo Substation (in Midrand) build in 1982 were built as party of the strategy for South Africa to tap into the cheap hyro-power potential of large rivers to the north.
That is what experts thought.
I find irony in that infrastructure to that end was built by the apartheid government despite countries being hostile to it, while the post-apartheid government seems to have the opposite intentions. We will build everything on our own, is their thinking.
Zimbabwe descended into economic chaos, DRC into war and in Mozambique nothing significant happened. In Zimbabwe the mismanagement is so bad that the country is now having to scrounge for electricity from South Africa despite its much smaller population and the massive hydro-potential of the Zambezi.
It looks like South Africa decided to go it alone and rely on its coal reserves, which are expensive . You have to mine the coal and transport it constantly. It is also less reliable. You are working with high temperatures thus your MTTF (mean time to failure) is bound to be short compared to hydro.
South Africa scrambled to build Medupi and Majuba power stations. I think it was part necessity and part isolationist thinking.
However building very large coal power stations has its own drawbacks. A failure can knock out your grid by removing significant capacity. Recovering from the failure will take long if boilers need to be restarted. Recently I observed another problem, the high demand for labour in mining and transportation increases the possibility of labour issues halting power generation. It also exposes your system more significantly to workmanship issues. A driver strike almost caused the shutdown of several power stations in Mpumalanga.
I am no longer involved deeply in energy scenarios and I am not sure what the experts think is the best long term strategy now. But the politicians do not seem to be thinking about the hydro-potential up north because I have not heard anyone mention it.
Tuesday 12 February 2019
Thursday 7 February 2019
Whose government is it?
Yesterday I got one of the usual snide remarks about "your government" being corrupt based on the fact that I am black, and the recent revelations about the activities of Bosasa.
"It's Gavin Watson's government." was my immediate retort.
The person jerked his head back a little and gave me a very surprised look.
"Of course your side of the border is bad too."
Apparently he had now remembered that I am a Zimbabwean citizen. Maybe he thought I was basing my reply on that, but I knew what his point was and I was replying to that exact point. I could not be bothered by the artificial lines drawn by his ancestors down the middle of our Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Swazi, Sotho, Khoi, Karanga and Namaqua communities.
Oh by the way do people know there are Xhosa people in Gwanda district of Zimbabwe who were there before colonialists came?
"And Angelo Agrizzi's government too." so I added.
Then the topic became about Agrizzi being a turn coat and a backstabber, but I had made my point. Corruption is not the sole fault of blacks.
When blacks steal big, it is often at the behest of someone else who knows the system and makes off with most of the loot.
Look at the case of the Mozambican minister. He facilitated the theft of US$2 billion of which he was given only 50 million.
Look at the Guptas, they made billions while in the end Zuma had to borrow from other thieves (VBS) just to be able to pay less than 10 million he was eventually asked to pay back over Nkandla.
Look at the Bosasa saga. The company and Watson made over $2billion while those who facilitated the theft were given amounts in the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands if they were lucky.
Look at my Zimbabwean government? They don't know where US$15 billion worth of diamonds went. The politicians stole mere millions and they think they made a killing. The rest was bilked out of the country.
That kind of, for lack of a better word, idiotic thinking by our politicians is what we need to get rid of.
You go and buy a buffalo for millions. The person selling you the buffalo found it walking in the bush, on land he took from your forefathers.
In any case the buffalo is of no use to you for that much money. The meat is not much more than that of an average cow. You cannot use it for many other things that you can use a cow for such as drawing a plough or scotch-cart.
The buffalo will be expensive to look after because you have to keep it away from people with expensive fences. It is a dangerous animal after all, that can even kill a lion. What more mere humans in the village.
Yet our politicians somehow think they are doing something extra-ordinarily clever when they get bamboozled by marketing sweet-talk, hype and propaganda into making such senseless 'investments'.
Why not invest on a better school or vocational training centre in your village and out of that you can get brick-layers, carpenters, metal-workers and other skilled people who will be of use to your businesses and the wider community, not buffaloes.
Matric is basic education, so that you can read, write and do the simpler sums. Beyond Matric you need a skill.
Why not teach our young people that skills are not just for finding jobs, but also that can eliminate costs by doing basic chores around their homes and communities.
Despite all the things that I list on my CV, I find that the skills that I use most frequently for my own benefit, not for an employer's benefit, are carpentry, metal-work and brick-laying.
The house that I live in now, I extended a couple of rooms over a few weekends, doing all the measuring, plumbing, brick-laying and roofing myself.
Recently my welding machine got stolen but I want to buy another one. What with all the handiwork I do. From fixing trailers to building structures for various uses around the home. I recently made a gantry to take out engines from cars. Professional mechanics are even hiring it from me.
Back to my main point, our leaders get used to steal from us, and they are not even the main beneficiaries of the theft. They do not even seem to see anything wrong when those for whom they steal, shift the blame back, not just to them but to the entire black community, including the real victims of the theft.
Victims today who have been victims of colonial and racist theft before.
"It's Gavin Watson's government." was my immediate retort.
The person jerked his head back a little and gave me a very surprised look.
"Of course your side of the border is bad too."
Apparently he had now remembered that I am a Zimbabwean citizen. Maybe he thought I was basing my reply on that, but I knew what his point was and I was replying to that exact point. I could not be bothered by the artificial lines drawn by his ancestors down the middle of our Tsonga, Tswana, Venda, Swazi, Sotho, Khoi, Karanga and Namaqua communities.
Oh by the way do people know there are Xhosa people in Gwanda district of Zimbabwe who were there before colonialists came?
"And Angelo Agrizzi's government too." so I added.
Then the topic became about Agrizzi being a turn coat and a backstabber, but I had made my point. Corruption is not the sole fault of blacks.
When blacks steal big, it is often at the behest of someone else who knows the system and makes off with most of the loot.
Look at the case of the Mozambican minister. He facilitated the theft of US$2 billion of which he was given only 50 million.
Look at the Guptas, they made billions while in the end Zuma had to borrow from other thieves (VBS) just to be able to pay less than 10 million he was eventually asked to pay back over Nkandla.
Look at the Bosasa saga. The company and Watson made over $2billion while those who facilitated the theft were given amounts in the thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands if they were lucky.
Look at my Zimbabwean government? They don't know where US$15 billion worth of diamonds went. The politicians stole mere millions and they think they made a killing. The rest was bilked out of the country.
That kind of, for lack of a better word, idiotic thinking by our politicians is what we need to get rid of.
You go and buy a buffalo for millions. The person selling you the buffalo found it walking in the bush, on land he took from your forefathers.
In any case the buffalo is of no use to you for that much money. The meat is not much more than that of an average cow. You cannot use it for many other things that you can use a cow for such as drawing a plough or scotch-cart.
The buffalo will be expensive to look after because you have to keep it away from people with expensive fences. It is a dangerous animal after all, that can even kill a lion. What more mere humans in the village.
Yet our politicians somehow think they are doing something extra-ordinarily clever when they get bamboozled by marketing sweet-talk, hype and propaganda into making such senseless 'investments'.
Why not invest on a better school or vocational training centre in your village and out of that you can get brick-layers, carpenters, metal-workers and other skilled people who will be of use to your businesses and the wider community, not buffaloes.
Matric is basic education, so that you can read, write and do the simpler sums. Beyond Matric you need a skill.
Why not teach our young people that skills are not just for finding jobs, but also that can eliminate costs by doing basic chores around their homes and communities.
Despite all the things that I list on my CV, I find that the skills that I use most frequently for my own benefit, not for an employer's benefit, are carpentry, metal-work and brick-laying.
The house that I live in now, I extended a couple of rooms over a few weekends, doing all the measuring, plumbing, brick-laying and roofing myself.
Recently my welding machine got stolen but I want to buy another one. What with all the handiwork I do. From fixing trailers to building structures for various uses around the home. I recently made a gantry to take out engines from cars. Professional mechanics are even hiring it from me.
Back to my main point, our leaders get used to steal from us, and they are not even the main beneficiaries of the theft. They do not even seem to see anything wrong when those for whom they steal, shift the blame back, not just to them but to the entire black community, including the real victims of the theft.
Victims today who have been victims of colonial and racist theft before.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)